Deadly Sparring

He's, like, 20 meters away, and he STILL couldn't dodge?!

Raiden: With our history, we should not fight.

Liu Kang: This is training, Lord Raiden.

Raiden: I fear unintended consequences.

— Mortal Kombat 11

Two or more characters engage in a friendly spar, training session, or pretend fight that starts out safe enough but gets more brutal to the point the participants could (and often times do) get seriously hurt or killed.

How this happens may vary. In many cases, the match escalates due to the combatants becoming more brutal and violent than the match would require. This can be the result of an existing rivalry or hostility between the combatants. It can also be the case if one of the fighters is a Bad Boss or a Blood Knight. In other instances, one of the combatants is using the fight as an opportunity to harm or kill the other who is ignorant of their intentions.

This can be a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome if the fight involves deadly techniques or lethal weapons like swords and knives not meant to be used in safe sparring without protective gear. A Deadly Spar can also be disguised as a Training "Accident" or result in an Accidental Murder. In the case of the latter, expect the perpetrator to lament "I Didn't Mean to Kill Him". Compare with Practice Target Overkill when a training dummy is involved.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• My Hero Academia: During the Joint Training arc, the class 1-A and 1-B students perform a training exercise in which they split into teams and try to capture as many of their opponents as possible before a time limit runs out. Everything is going fine until Midoriya faces off against Monoma and becomes enraged by his taunts, suddenly manifesting a new Quirk which creates massive, destructive tendrils that instantly go out of control and attack the other students. Everyone is horrified as Midoriya can only scream at the other students to run and hope he doesn't harm them. Luckily, Uraraka is able to get Shinso to brainwash Midoriya and end the attack.
• Samurai Champloo: One episode deals with a disgraced martial arts student from China who took to killing his sparring opponents when they couldn't defeat him, an action which horrified his peers and the dojo master.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: When she was a little girl, Akiza had a friendly Duel Monsters match with her father which was interrupted by a business call. This greatly upset Akiza due to how little time her father spent with her. Unfortunately, this caused Akiza's Psychic Powers to manifest for the first time and led to her injuring her father by having monsters attack him.

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics:
  • Avengers: The Initiative: During the team's first training session, Trauma turns into a spider, causing Armory, who is afraid of spiders, to freak out. She loses control of her gauntlet weapon and ends up killing MVP.
  • Captain America: The Red Skull is known to have Taskmaster send him students for sparring practice and killing them during their sessions. The only reason he does so is that he savors the horrified realization his opponent has when they figure out he intends to kill them.
  • Daredevil: Anyone who trains with the Kingpin is at risk of this. Fisk hates being made to look bad and will kill a sparring partner if they are too good of a fighter. Similarly, if a sparring partner is too easy, he'll still kill them because he sees them as a waste of his time and money.
  • Marvel Knights Spider-Man: Logan accidentally stabs Peter during a sparring session in issue #13. This, as well as an earlier incident in which Peter walked in on Logan and MJ in what seemed like a compromising position, result in Peter going berserk and attacking Logan in issue #14. The only thing that stops further violence is Peter passing out from blood loss.
• Vampirella: Feary Tales: Draculina was sealed inside the book of Feary Tales by her mother Lilith when she made an attempt on Vampirella's life during one of their sparring matches.

Fan Works

• The Nightmare House: Lynn's nightmare has her engage in a boxing match with Lincoln in her homemade boxing ring. She punches him too hard and cleanly decapitates him, much to her horror. When interviewed, Lincoln's disembodied head comes to life to say how Lynn only cares about winning, which makes her wake up.
• Pound and Pumpkin Cake's Adventures (and Misadventures) in Potty Training: One chapter has the twins play-fighting with some stuffed animals. Pumpkin accidentally hits Pound in the eye, requiring her to go to the doctor and leaving Pumpkin wracked with guilt and fear.

Films — Animation

• Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme: Strange and Mordo face off in a training session, during which Strange is able to knock Mordo back. Mordo responds by conjuring two axes and trying to kill Strange, forcing Wong to intervene.

Films — Live-Action

• The Crimson Kimono: What is meant to be an exhibition kendo match between the Japanese-American cop Joe and his white partner Charlie turns into a brutal brawl due to a combination of their rivalry over a woman and suppressed racial tensions between the two of them.
• Die Another Day: When Bond and Graves first meet, they decide to have a somewhat friendly fencing match. The match grows more and more competitive due to both men's egos — and the fact that Graves is actually the temperamental and vengeful Colonel Moon — eventually escalating into a full-on Sword Fight with the intent to draw blood.
• Elektra: A flashback shows Elektra brutalizing her fellow students during a training sessions, much to Stick's disapproval. He orders her to leave the dojo as it is clear she cannot control her violent tendencies.
• The Mummy Returns: The flashback scenes between Anck-su-namun and Princess Nefertiri (Evelyn's previous life) show the two dueling with protective masks and sais. They then switch to a sword and a battle axe, and take off the aforementioned masks. Only the watching crowd and Pharoah Seti's presence prevents them from really going all-out against one another.
• Never Back Down: Ryan invites Max to his house under the guise of hanging out. Ryan proposes a friendly spar which he uses as an opportunity to beat Max brutally as a message to Jake. This is what prompts Jake to finally accept Ryan's challenge to settle their rivalry in the tournament.
• The Rocketeer: Neville Sinclair's Establishing Character Moment shows him filming an action scene of his latest movie, where his heroic character is engaged in a sword fight against a villain. When the actor portraying the villain is stabbed for real, the director yells "cut," and the other actor accuses Sinclair of hogging all the attention for himself, an accusation that Sinclair neither confirms nor denies, and then Sinclair asks his driver to use his limo to take the actor to the hospital.
• Rocky IV: What starts as a simple exhibition match between Apollo Creed and Soviet boxer Ivan Drago gets serious when Drago starts really laying into him. Despite this, Creed refuses to throw in the towel, leading to his death.
• Romeo Must Die: Mac and his friends invite Han to play a "friendly" game of pick-up football with them, but becomes clear that this is just an excuse to smack Han around. When he is told that it is legal to hit the guy holding the ball, Han starts passing the ball to other players and then hitting them, giving Mac and his friends A Taste of Their Own Medicine.
• A Serious Shock! Yes Madam!: During a training match, Yang gets her hips broken by May, who is secretly trying to screw her over.
• Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie: A variation. Tommy, Adam, and Rocky are practicing for a martial arts tournament. Despite being warned by the coach and his teammates that he is working himself too hard, Rocky ignores their advice and attempts to perform a complicated move that results in him hurting his back. This takes Rocky out of commission for the rest of the movie, forcing him to pick Justin as his replacement on the team.

Literature

• Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade: Altair and Abbas have a sparring match with live weapons shortly after the former tells latter about his father committing suicide rather than leaving the order as Abbas was led to believe. Abbas refuses to believe Altair and tries to kill him right then and there, only stopping once Altair falsely admits to lying. As a result, both are forced to spend a month in Maysaf's dungeons, and Abbas is forced to spend an extra year in training due to his outburst. The event causes an enmity between them that lasts for Abbas' entire lifetime.
• Ciaphas Cain: A downplayed version occurs during a friendly match with the Techmarine Drumon.^note Drumon is in armor and allows Cain to turn on his chainsword; meanwhile Drumon wields a power sword with its power field deactivated, as Cain is in his commissarial greatcoat Cain nicks Drumon's armor with his chainsword and is horrified at having damaged a centuries-old relic, especially since he's a guest of the Reclaimers. However, Drumon reassures him that it's just a nick and he intends to keep it to remind himself of the dangers of complacency.
• The Death Gate Cycle: In the fifth book, Hugh the Hand is given a magical blade by his assassin's guild that was made by the Sartan and looks like a dagger in its default state but can transform into any weapon. The oldest recorded use of the weapon involved two elven brothers going through their deceased father's treasures; one brother took the dagger while another grabbed a different blade. When they playfully sparred, the dagger suddenly changed into a longsword at an opportune time and impaled one brother, much to the horror of the brother who was wielding it.
• Halo: The Fall of Reach:
  • A fourteen-year-old John is confronted by four ODSTs (short for Oribital Drop Shock Trooper) before being ordered into a boxing ring to fight five men at once. Due to his SPARTAN augmentations, John winds up killing two men and maiming the rest without breaking a sweat. This incident led to widespread distrust and resentment toward the Spartanss by most ODSTs in the Marine Corp.
  • The following chapter also mentions how one of the Spartans accidentally killed an instructor during a sparring exercise when they returned to their training.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Gilderoy Lockhart starts a wizard dueling club at Hogwarts. He calls on Harry and Ron as volunteers for a demonstration, only for his assistant Professor Snape to veto Ron because his broken wand could cause a serious accident. His substitution of Draco Malfoy makes things worse because Harry and Draco immediately take the practice duel as an opportunity to take their rivalry out on each other.
• Downplayed in Hurog when Tosten and Oreg are assigned to spar while the party are on the road, and Tosten's resentment of Oreg leads him to fight as if it were a real battle, swinging too hard and deviating from the preordained drills, to the point where he could easily cause a serious injury if Oreg weren't a good enough fighter to fend him off. Ward notices before it goes too far and tells Tosten to tone it down.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: This trope is defied when Oliver Horn and Nanao Hibiya square off for a demonstration duel in their first period sword arts class. Both fighters prove themselves both Master Swordsmen, with Oliver's sword arts training matching well against Nanao's battlefield experience as a samurai. When the duel starts getting very serious, the instructor calls a halt to the match because their intensity has broken the dulling spell he'd placed on their swords beforehand. Nanao, who was trained in a sword school that idealized a Duel to the Death with a Worthy Opponent one admires and respects, asks Oliver for a rematch without restraints afterwards, and is hurt when he refuses—starting their Romance Arc off on a rough note.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • The Essential Guide to Droids profiles the Duelist Elite fencing droid, which first appeared in the 1982 Star Wars comic strip The Power Gem. The droid is designed as a practice opponent for swordsmen and will fight to kill on its maximum difficulty setting. The blurb mentions that Darth Vader owned several, but rarely used them for lightsaber practice because they were expensive to replace, preferring modified ASP laborer droids.
  • Shadows of the Empire: This is mentioned to be a problem regarding Darth Vader. He buys combat droids for the purposes of training, but is such a skilled and ruthless fighter that he ends up destroying all but one of the five droids in question. He does order more of the surviving droids' series, indicating this may less be accidental and more an attempt to find a suitable sparring partner.
  • Young Jedi Knights: Jacen Solo and Tenel Ka Djo were practicing with their newly built lightsabers when Tenal Ka's malfunctioned because she had cut corners when building it. The blade shorted out right when she needed to block Jacen's swing, costing Tenel Ka her arm. She chose not to get a prosthetic as a lesson to herself and her fellow students about the dangers of not doing things properly.
• Warrior Cats: When Lionblaze was an apprentice, he was mentored by Ashfur, who'd act very cold and distant towards him. During battle practice, both of them had the tendency to go a little overboard, drawing blood and attempting to hurt each other for real. This happened once when he was Lionpaw, and then once when he wanted to keep sharp after receiving his name. Ashfur would later be revealed as wanting Lionblaze and his siblings dead the entire time, to get revenge on his ex-mate Squirrelflight. These battles serve as foreshadowing the later twist, while also being examples of Ashfur trying to kill Lionblaze as early as him being an apprentice.

Live-Action TV

• The Americans: When she was newly recruited, Elizabeth was raped by her trainer at the end of an initially-friendly boxing session.
• Bel-Air: During lacrosse practice, Connor mocks Carlton's poor performance with a line about black people "stealing" lacrosse from white people. Carlton, who is already on edge due to issues culminating from previous episodes, retaliates by breaking Connor's wrist.
• Cobra Kai: This type of sparring is encouraged within the titular Thug Dojo as part of their "strike first, strike hard" philosophy. As Cobra Kai believes in showing no mercy to their opponents or expecting any from them, their sparring sessions are often just as brutal as a real street fight. This means that unsuspecting potential students trying out for the dojo can find themselves on the receiving end of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown as Brucks did at Hawk's hands.
• Daredevil (2015): A flashback to Elektra's training as a child under Stick shows her nearly killing one of her fellow students in a sparring match.
• Desperate Housewives: In "Would I Think of Suicide", Susan and Bree attend a women's self-defense class where they get paired up during exercises. Susan, who has now become aware of Bree's relationship with Susan's ex-husband Karl, uses the opportunity to choke Bree. Bree is only saved when the instructor orders them to swap positions.
• iCarly: In "iFight Shelby Marx", Carly agrees to a fight with teen MMA-fighter Shelby Marx, but is promised that the fight is entirely for publicity and no real blows will be thrown. However, Nevel uses this as an opportunity to cause trouble for Carly by making Shelby think Carly deliberately attacked her grandmother during the pre-fight press conference, leading to Shelby hitting Carly for real during the fight.
• Killing Eve: This is suggested to be Dasha's specialty. While we don't see it, Konstanin and Villanelle both make reference to a part of Villanelle's training where Dasha sabotaged Villanelle and nearly caused her death.
• My Wife and Kids: "In Papa Said Knock You Out", Michael decides to get back in shape by taking up boxing and picks Junior as a sparring partner. During one of their sessions, Michael encourages Junior to be more aggressive with his blows, resulting in Junior accidentally knocking Michael out.
• Peacemaker (2022): A Flashback in "Stop Dragon My Heart Around" shows Auggie Smith having his sons Christopher and Keith fight each other as he and his friends watched. While the boys treated it as just a fun match, a lucky hit from Chris caused Keith to fall backward onto a rock, killing him.
• Power Rangers Time Force: In "Movie Madness, Part 1", the Rangers visit a movie set for an action film starring Frankie Chang, Jen's favorite action star. When one of the stunt doubles is injured, Wes decides to take his place. Everything seems harmless enough until Wes realizes that the sword Frankie is using is very real and the actor is very much trying to kill him. As it turns out, the entire movie set is a trap for the Rangers; the director is the Monster of the Week, and the cast and crew are revealed to be Cyclo-Bots in disguise.
• Ray Donovan: In "Sold", Mickey and Daryll help a client named Jay White who accidentally decapitated his trainer with a sword during a training session for a samurai movie he was starring in.
• Room 104: Two female MMA fighters preparing to face off for the championship decide to fix the match, and use the hotel room to spar and choreograph the moves. As tensions over who will get to win rise, they begin attacking each other with more ferocity until they engage in a full-on Brutal Brawl, destroying the room.
• Shadow and Bone: During her training with the Second Army, Alina is sparring with Zoya and gets angry when Zoya not only keeps knocking her down but taunts her about her crush Mal. When Zoya arrogantly lowers her guard, Alina is able to punch her in the face, prompting an enraged Zoya to use her Squaller powers to send Alina flying across the field, briefly knocking her out. When Alina comes to, Zoya is being furiously reprimanded by the trainer for using potentially lethal force and even gets temporarily reassigned away from the Little Palace. Considering that Alina is the Sun Summoner, it's unsurprising Zoya is punished so severely.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: "Harbinger" features a sparring match between Lieutenant Reed and Major Hayes that turns into an all-out fistfight due to the professional tension between them. This leads to a trip to sickbay and a serious chewing-out by Captain Archer.
• Superman & Lois: In "Girl... You'll Be A Woman, Soon", Jordan and Jonathan have a sparring match as part of Jordan's training. Jonathan — who unbeknownst to both Sam and Jordan is using X-Kryptonite drugs — gives Jordan a nasty beating requiring Sam to step in before it gets further out of hand.
• Ugly Betty: Daniel is seeing Molly, the ex-fiancée of his friend Connor. After a day of helping him while trying to hide his relationship with Molly, Daniel and Connor go to the gym to have a friendly boxing match. Connor is much more aggressive than usual, beating Daniel up and revealing that he knew Daniel was seeing Molly all along.
• Yo Gabba Gabba!: In one episode, the protagonists are having a snowball fight. When they hit Plex the robot, the snow gets into his circuits and he blacks out. They feel guilty about it and worry that they've permanently damaged him, but DJ Lance is able to fix him.

Music

• Amon Amarth's "The Way of Vikings":
  • The lyrics describe a sparring match between two Jomsvikings who are best friends but are still fighting all-out. The second verse ends:
    Sun beats down with intense heat
    The swordsmen start to break
    Pain shoots through their tired feet
    With every step they take
    In this fight of iron wills
    One man takes a knee
    The other goes for the kill
    Like an enemy
  • The video for the song depicts two men bare-knuckle brawling in an underground fighting ring. One man wins by knockout, only for an angry audience member to immediately blow him away with a shotgun.

Mythology & Religion

• Classical Mythology: Athena and her mortal friend Pallas were having a friendly sparring match that ended with Athena accidentally impaling Pallas with a thrown javelin. Out of guilt, Athena chose to add Pallas' name to her own. In some versions of the story, it is Athena's father Zeus who kills Pallas out of concern that she would hurt his daughter.
• Norse Mythology: The gods made a friendly game of Baldur's immortality by throwing weapons at him harmlessly. Loki learned that mistletoe was the only substance that could harm him and tricked Hodur into joining the game with a mistletoe spear (or arrow), killing Baldur on the spot.

Theatre

• Hamlet: Laertes challenges Hamlet to a supposedly friendly duel. However, conspiring with Claudius to get rid of Hamlet (Laertes holds Hamlet responsible for Polonius's death and Claudius wants to be rid of Hamlet because He Knows Too Much about his father's death), Claudius and Laertes arrange to have the wine poisoned and for Laertes to wield a poisoned blade. Both Laertes and Hamlet (and just about everybody else) get killed in the duel.

Video Games

• The Dog Island: Francis spent years thinking that she accidentally killed her friend during a play-fight. It turns out her friend just moved to a different town.
• Dragon Age: Origins: Oghren was stripped of his right to bear arms within the city after he killed an opponent in a Proving that was only supposed to be to first blood.
• Dwarf Fortress: In earlier versions, your dwarves could accidentally kill each other while wrestling or sparring with real weapons. This was fixed since 0.4x, though it can still happen if they throw each other, or if they dodge into a pit or through a wall, directly into your magma reservoir.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Uthgerd the Unbroken was an initiate in the Companions guild but was thrown out when she accidentally killed her sparring partner. She's been bitter over the experience ever since.
• Final Fantasy VIII: The introductory cinematic depicts a training match between military cadets Squall and his rival Seifer. Their match escalates to them viciously carving each other's faces up, leaving them with mirrored scars that emphasize their duality.
• The Legend of Dragoon: Haschel was overseeing a training match between his daughter, Claire, and another student when Haschel's criticism of Claire led her to put too much force into a strike out of frustration, killing her training partner. Between her guilt over killing her friend and Haschel's fury at her for putting "killing intent" into her fist, Claire ran away. Decades later, Haschel has realized that his own training methods were ultimately to blame for the whole incident and is searching for Claire to ask her forgiveness. Haschel never finds Claire, but does become good friends with her son.
• Mortal Kombat: Starting with Mortal Kombat X, characters will engage in some brief banter before a fight. Characters who are friends or otherwise on the same side will often frame their bout as sparring or practice, even though they can still cripple or kill opponents even when they're helpless. Some of the intro dialogues will sometimes lampshade this by having one character mentioning how the other character has a history of not holding back during "sparring", or that they have a bad feeling that things may get out of hand. Take the page quote from Mortal Kombat 11, which is an exchange between Raiden (a god who defends Earthrealm), and Liu Kang (his chosen champion) as they prepare to face each other in a match.
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: You can get into a friendly fistfight with your monk companion Lann during his character arc. If you beat him, he still refuses to back down, and you have to either concede the fight or intimidate him into conceding, lest he be at risk of permanent injury or death.

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!: The "All Might VS Might Guy" and "Iron Fist VS Po" fights are portrayed like this. The ninja and the panda are impressed by the Symbol of Peace and the champion of K'un L'un, respectively, and challenge them to a friendly sparring match (preceded by an arm-wrestling contest in Might Guy VS All Might's case). As the fights wear on, the combatants start using increasingly more powerful attacks, until they end up using lethal force. Both matches end with the friendly hero killing the hero they respect, though Might Guy also dies shortly after All Might, due to opening the Eight Gate, whereas Po successfully escapes from the Spirit Realm after killing Iron Fist in there, as fight-cheery as always.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series: One of Rupert Thorne's lackeys is holding a heavy bag for him as the mob boss punches it. Trying to be encouraging, the man makes the mistake of mocking Thorne's punches for being weak and saying it is no wonder Batman kept walking all over him. Thorne decks the guy, knocking him out and then tells another lackey to inform the unconscious man that he's fired when he wakes up.
• Blue Eye Samurai: In a flashback, Mizu sees Chiaki practicing his swordplay and tries mimicking his movements. He offers her to join him in a practice match. The spar goes much further than Mizu expected, with Chiaki hitting her hard enough to draw blood and laughing sadistically. This is the first hint that Chiaki is not the soft-spoken man seeking to avenge his father that he claimed to be.
• Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet: In "The Homecoming", a Mysteron Replicant of Commander Lewis challenges Scarlet to a seemingly friendly fencing match, using it as an opportunity to try and kill Scarlet. Thankfully, he is interrupted by Lieutenant Green.
• Steven Universe:
  • In "Steven the Sword Fighter", Pearl gets impaled by her holographic copy while demonstrating basic sword-fighting techniques to Steven. While he is quickly reassured Pearl will be fine, due to Resurrective Immortality, he spends the episode feeling disturbed and guilty that his distraction hurt her.
  • Steven Universe: Future: In "Fragments", Steven seeks training from Jasper to help him control his unstable Diamond powers. Being the Blood Knight that she is, Jasper constantly pushes Steven over the edge throughout their training, which only makes him become Drunk with Power to the point of accidentally shattering her at the end of their rematch.
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!: In "Versus Chiro", Mandarin creates numerous faulty clones of Chiro for the purpose of eliminating the monkey team from within. The first clone that impersonates Chiro tries to kill the monkeys during a training session by dialing up the training to level 10, beyond what the monkeys can take during sparring.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): Splinter and Shredder accidentally swap bodies in "The Old Switcheroo". Shredder takes advantage of this situation by using any opportunity to bully or humiliate the Turtles, such as making them do an unreasonable amount of exercises or brutalizing them in a training match.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): Season 4 has Leonardo suffering from PTSD due to the Turtles' near-fatal last battle with the Shredder in the previous season. This results in him becoming more aggressive and harsh to the point he ends up accidentally injuring Master Splinter during a training session. This action leads to Leo leaving the team to undergo training with the Ancient One.
• The Venture Brothers: While in college on a football scholarship, Samson ended up killing a teammate when he went into one of his trademark berserk furies during practice. To his credit, Samson does feel guilty about it as evidenced when he imagines the guy forgiving him during a wish-fulfillment sequence.

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