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"Remember, men, take him alive... so there's something left to kill ."
"I will not tell my Legions of Terror 'And he must be taken alive!' The command will be 'And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical.'"
Maybe the villain wants the satisfaction of killing the hero himself, especially if he considers himself The Only One Allowed To Defeat Him. Maybe he needs the hero in order to finish a magic ritual. Maybe he wants someone to take hostage. Maybe the villain just wants the hero. Or, perhaps, he may need information that only the hero has. He announces to his minions, "I want them alive!"
Usually sets up an increased amount of urgency with the scene. After all, you can only be killed once, but if the Big Bad wants you alive, then you know you're in for a really bad time.
For extra sadism, he might instead ask for only the protagonist to be taken alive, and everyone else to be killed.
Less menacingly, this is a standard line for a Noble Demon who would genuinely prefer to keep the body count as low as possible while carrying out his nefarious scheme - a sentiment his minions may or may not share. If the villain is a Worthy Opponent or Friendly Enemy, expect an Antagonist In Mourning scene if his henchmen choose to ignore this stipulation. (It's okay, though, because they probably Never Found the Body and just assumed that No One Could Survive That).
If the minion who receives this order is Genre Savvy, they may respond with Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?
Justified if they have important information and the Big Bad wants them alive for interrogation.
Sometimes used on the heroic side, especially if the hero is a Technical Pacifist or, conversely, if killing the villain is Something He's Got To Do Himself. The Kid with the Leash may need to add this injunction to all his orders.
A variant of Leave Him to Me.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Akatsuki want all the Jinchuuriki alive because killing them would kill the Biiju sealed inside them, which is what they're after. In something of a subversion, this doesn't stop them from trying to cripple them (Kisame suggested cutting off Naruto's legs to keep him from running away, and later tried to actually do it to Killer Bee).
- Well, in Naruto's case it would kill the fox; not all the seals work like that, but having a free bijuu rampaging around is...inconvenient.
- Fullmetal Alchemist- Father and the Homunculi want Ed and Al alive. So that they can be used as sacrifices, of course.
- And Roy and Hohenheim and Izumi. Ed gets the most profit out of this, followed by Roy. If anyone else had walked into the middle of the Ancient Conspiracy the way he did, they would have been quietly offed.
- Riza survived. Even after her coded message was intercepted. But then, she was being used as a leash on Roy, and Pride seemed to enjoy messing with her.
Comic Books
- In an early issue of Daredevil, the Masked Marauder tells his men to capture "Daredevil" (in reality Foggy Nelson, whom the world is convinced is old Hornhead), but makes especial note that "Once you have him helpless, leave him for me! The Masked Marauder must have the honor of actually finishing him!"
- A more reasonable variant in a 1950s or '60s newspaper comic, when the villain told his troops to take Tarzan "alive if you can — dead if you must!"
- Parasite is one of the few members of Superman's Rogues Gallery that doesn't want to kill the Man of Steel. No, he wants to keep Superman alive so he can keep feeding off of him for his powers.
Film
Literature
- Big Bad Lord Hong from the Discworld book Interesting Times orders his army to capture Cohen and the Silver Horde alive, so he can spend months or years torturing them.
- Saruman does this "off screen" with the Uruk-Hai in the Lord of the Rings saga. He wants the hobbits that they capture alive because he believes that one of them is carrying the One Ring that Saruman wants.
- And in case you wonder why alive, he fears that if the orcs killed the hobbits and searched the corpses, one of them might realize just how powerful item they have in their hands and try to claim it for their own rather than bringing it back to their master. That, and carrying the Ringbearer doesn't have the general negative psychological effects that carrying the Ring has.
- The hobbits are also wanted alive so they can be interrogated. The leaders of both Saruman's and Sauron's orcs say as much.
- In both the books and The Movie, the orcs have orders to bring them back "Alive and as captured; no spoiling."
- It is interesting to note that both Saruman's orcs and Sauron's orcs were under orders not to search the prisoners.
- Strange how the orcs didn't find this at least a bit odd. Then again, they aren't particularly smart.
- Actually, one of them does find it sufficiently suspicious that he picks them up and carries them away from the scene of a battle in order to steal whatever it is. Pippin takes advantage of this, and it's what leads to everybody winding up in Fangorn.
- In The Silmarillion, Morgoth and his then minion Sauron order for several characters to be taken alive, although in these cases it's because they either act as hostages for their allies or know very classified information.
- Lord Voldemort consistently orders this where Harry Potter is concerned, although in a slight subversion, some of his mooks (of the Psycho for Hire type) reason that he would be equally happy with a brain-dead and badly injured Harry so long as he was able to deliver the Coup de Grâce (of course, they never get an opportunity to test this plan out).
- A handful of Deatheaters figure out a way to do this without personal risk (which is common in Harry Potter kidnap attempts). They call Dementors to eat Harry's soul. He'd technically be alive, but wouldn't fight back. Brilliant though it was, the plan didn't work.
- The titular Villain Protagonist of Artemis Fowl uses the Noble Demon variant as his Battle Butler leaves to deal with the Redshirt Army:
Artemis: I prefer scared to dead. If possible.
- In Stephen King's The Stand, Randell Flagg's second-in-command Lloyd Henreid issues this order to the people belatedly chasing after escaping spy Tom Cullen. Although in this case it's more Flagg will want him alive, and if he isn't, everyone's gonna be very sorry...
- Both used and averted in The Executioner novels by Don Pendleton. The hero Mack Bolan is a One-Man Army conducting his personal war against the Mafia. On one occasion a mob boss demands that Bolan be taken alive and unharmed so he can torture him to death. The button man assigned to the task retorts that from what he's heard of Bolan's reputation, the boss had better be happy with getting him in any condition whatsoever. On another occasion a hitman who's discovered Bolan holed up in a motel tells his mooks that if they find Bolan "in bed with his pants down" they're to capture him, if not just blast him on sight.
- Subverted a couple of times in the Star Wars Expanded Universe:
- In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian novel The Hour of the Dragon, Valerius inverts it:
You all know the Countess Albiona. Search for her, and if you find her, kill her and her companion instantly. Do not try to take them alive.
- In "A Witch Shall Be Born" Constantius orders it for Conan.
- A big part of the reason why Galbatorix was ultimately defeated by Eragon and Saphira in The Inheritance Cycle. Had he wanted to, he could have easily had them snuffed out like candles, or done so himself, well before the fourth book. But no, he was hoping to break their will and turn them to his side, hoping to use Saphira (whom he believed to be the last female dragon), to establish a new line of Riders.
Live Action TV
- In Farscape, John Crichton knows his buried knowledge is invaluable to his enemies, uses it, and abuses it to the point of strapping himself with a bomb to blow up an enemy base and getting away with it. Twice.
- Scorpius himself, who was at the wrong end of this prior to his more-or-less Heel Face Turn, acknowledged the tactical genius of this move before ordering the evacuation of his doomed base.
- Not to mention also facing down heavily armed troops once using this: after being captured by Scorpius' right hand man Braca, Crichton is subjected to a bit of gloating by radio from Scorpy, who in the process mentions that Crichton's wormhole physics knowledge is possibly unique in the universe. This leads Crichton to realize that Braca's threat to shoot him, even in a non-vital limb, is a bluff, since the human tendency to bleed out (something Sebaceans don't share) would make it impossible for Braca to seriously harm him without endangering the information he carries. Crichton has no such reservations about hurting Braca, though.
- In the sesaon one finale of Burn Notice, Michael uses the knowledge that his pursuers need him alive to take himself hostage and force them to let his family go.
- Used in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. In an earlier episode, Captain Archer had escaped from Rura Penthe and a bounty was placed on him. He is turned in to the Klingons by a bounty hunter, but then manages to escape in an escape pod. One of the Klingons asks if he can charge weapons, but the Klingon captain responds, "No, I want him alive." Later, in the first "In a Mirror, Darkly" episode, the Dark Malcolm Reed offers to kill the Dark Admiral Forrest and Dark Jonathan Archer replies "I want him alive."
Video Games
Webcomics
- Sluggy Freelance: During the "That Which Redeems" arc, Horribus insists that Torg be taken alive so that Horribus can rip out his soul and torture it for all eternity.
- Ferretina's reaction
 to Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer.
- Frans Rayner in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja subverts this when Doc's father is making his way towards Rayner's base.
Rayner: "Bring him in, dead or alive, whatever. It would be cool if I could kill him myself, but you know... whatever."
- In Exterminatus Now, this is used to justify Lothar being barred from a mission. Lothar protests by saying he got his last suspect alive...
Commander Schaefer: Yes. And the doctors say that if he ever wakes up, he might just have enough of his brain left to answer our questions.
Western Animation
Real Life
- Police forces prefer to capture rather than kill suspects and fugitives, generally only resorting to killing to prevent other people from dying.
- The fact is that police forces in countries with Rule of Law have no authority to use deadly force except in situations where bystanders would have that same right.
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