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If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!

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The Forehead: Wait a second... something smells fishy here. I don't think you guys are villains!
The Tick: Oh no, we're ā€” we're bad!
Arthur: Oh yeah, the worst!
The Forehead: Okay. If you guys are so evil, why don't you just... eat this kitten!
[holds out an appealing kitten, which meows plaintively]
The Tick, "Armless but Not Harmless"

A villain challenges someone (usually a good character undercover or a suspected turncoat) to do something evil to verify his villainous credentials.

Whenever the Bad Guys test another person's willingness to do immoral deeds by ordering them to do one — either to demonstrate they aren't a Good Guy in disguise or just to prove that they won't shy away from dirty work — this trope is in play. While the trope name suggests cartoonish supervillainy, more serious versions are right at home in dramatic works: if you're really with us, take these drugs; strangle this prostitute; shoot this cop.

In almost all circumstances, the hero either Takes A Third Option or fails this particular test.

Note that in Real Life this very rarely happens, since even sincere recruits would likely be turned away by such a "test." If someone's only joining a gang to make a living and get some allies, as many criminals do, committing murder on the first day is probably a lot further than they're willing to go. However, it's not unheard of for those who want to rise up into the leadership of some organized crime groups, as a means to weed out possible undercover cops, who have some latitude to do some illegal acts to maintain their cover but are never allowed to commit murder or other serious offensesnote .

In anime and manga this is frequently called a fumi-e from the analogy with the historical practice of making people step on Christian religious symbols to prove they were not Christians.

Shoot Your Mate is a subtrope. Related to Allegiance Affirmation, which refers to declarations of allegiance in general, and Deadly Graduation, where the victorious 'kitten' is the one who eats the rest of the litter. Compare Prove I Am Not Bluffing. Contrast Secret Test of Character, God Test, Goodness Exam and Even Evil Has Standards. Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand is an inversion (Bob gives Alice a chance to kill him, hoping she'll realize that she's too good a person to do it). The Initiation Ceremony can be a far milder version of this trope, although certain subtropes, such as the Gang Initiation Fight, may not be so mild.

No relation to Eat The Dog, although both can overlap if a literal kitten is targeted as a food.

noreallife


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Attack on Titan, it's revealed that Reiner forced Annie to take Marco's gear and leave them for dead as a way to prove that Annie wasn't compromised. Ironically, this act ended up emotionally and mentally breaking both Reiner and Annie.
  • Inverted in Blade of the Immortal when Shira feeds Rin a dog she befriended (without her knowing) and tells her the equivalent of: "You ate the dog, you must be evil".
  • In the Zanpakutou Unknown Tales arc of Bleach, Senbonzakura is distrustful of Byakuya joining the zanpakutou side of the war, so he makes him a challenge to prove his loyalty. That challenge is to murder Sode no Shirayuki, Rukia's zanpakutou, and hand the broken remains to her afterward. Of course, Senbonzakura wasn't expecting Byakuya to actually pull it off. His reaction afterward is simply priceless.
  • Case Closed has Kir being under FBI surveillance in a hospital for a long time. When Kir manages to return to the organization, Gin demands proof that she hasn't gone soft or switched sides to the FBI. Gin wants Kir to call Akai Shuuichi, one of the FBI's best agents, former infiltrating spy in the organization, and personal thorn in Gin's side, and kill him. And insists that the meeting be done right now, no time to waste because he doesn't want to give anyone a chance to come up with a plan to stop Akai's death. Unfortunately for him, long before Kir even went back to the organization, Conan had already laid steps out to fake Akai's death and fool Gin.
  • Code Geass had "If you're so evil, shoot this Britannian!" and "If you're so evil, murder the innocents!" as tests for Suzaku. Not to mention "If you're so evil, execute your childhood mentor!" He disobeyed orders on the first (and was promptly shot as a response), then lucked out the rest of the time when someone interrupted.
  • Also used in Dangaioh, when Garimoth defies Pai Thunder aka Barius, his daughter to kill Roll in front of him. Miya and Lamda intervene, though, and Pai rejects her evil father.
  • At the beginning of Dragon Ball Z Raditz, on top of kidnapping his son, tells Goku to prove his loyalty to the Saiyans by killing a hundred humans and dumping their bodies on Master Roshi's island. Funny enough, Raditz is surprised that Goku gives him a big fat 'hell no' when he tracks him down and fights him instead.
  • In Gunsmith Cats, bounty hunter Rally Vincent is asked to shoot a hostage with a gun with one bullet to prove she's in with the bad guys. Using that one bullet she fires at such an angle to sever the ropes holding the hostage and also hit one of the hostage-takers in the leg. Originally, the gun wasn't loaded at all, and she's such a gun expert that she knew it from the weight and called the bad guys out on it, that's when they gave her one bullet. It helped that she was not on particularly good terms with the hostage.
  • Early in Kurau Phantom Memory, Kurau is asked to shoot her (incognito) friend to prove she's not with him. She pulls the trigger, but surreptitiously uses her powers to make the gun misfire.
  • Kinnikuman
    • During the American Tour arc, Kin goes Charlie Brown from Outta Town to infiltrate an organization of evil Choujin. When the World Choujin Federation suspect 'Chanelman' of being Kin, they put out a picture of Mayumi, as part of a Fumi-e. Kinnikuman gladly stomps on the photo, to which Meat silently remarks that this sort of test is easy for Kinnikuman, who has the least respect for his father.
    • Later, it's revealed that the WCF has something similar as their normal entrance test - to join them, you must bring in the severed head of a heroic Choujin. Two of the applicants try to fake it and are kicked out, while one passes by bringing the head of a rival company's former champion.
  • Early in the Mega Man X manga, a maverick attempts to convince X to kill a human girl to prove he's a not a "traitor" to the reploid race. X is not pleased.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Trowa infiltrates OZ by posing as a volunteer pilot from the colonies. When he demonstrates skill above and beyond the rest of the recruits, Lady Une instantly suspects that he's a Gundam Pilot trying to infiltrate OZ. To test him, she brings out the Gundam Deathscythe (captured and badly damaged but still intact) and orders him to finish the job. Trowa does so without hesitation, but is surprised to discover that doing so made him cry.
  • In My Hero Academia, Number 2 ranked pro hero Hawks naturally faces suspicion in his infiltration of the League of Villains despite the very real intel he's feeding them. Thus, he brings them the apparent corpse of Number 3 pro hero Best Jeanist, proving his loyalty in rather dramatic fashion. Except that Hawks is actually still entirely loyal to the heroes, and exposes all of the League's secrets. While it's implied that he killed the already critically wounded Best Jeanist for real in order to sell his infiltration, the latter hero eventually shows up just fine to pull a Big Damn Heroes; the body was Best Jeanist's, but induced to a death-like trance similar to the Nomu when they have no orders. Hawks does admit he was lucky they let him keep the body after all is said and done; however, and Jeanist complains his body still hurts like hell after his revival.
  • Subverted in Naruto: Sasuke tells Sakura to do this by killing his teammate Karin (who had outlived her usefulness as far as he was concerned), when she claims she wants to join him. She wasn't going to do either, it was just a ploy to kill him. Before she can do either, he tries to stab her in the back, as that was just a ploy to kill her.
  • One Piece:
    • An early story had Nami stabbing Usopp and pushing him into the water in order to prove her loyalty to Arlong. Of course, she was only pretending to do it, and stabbed her own hand to help with the ruse.
    • Even before that, Zoro did a non-verbal one on her to see if Nami is truly as cold-blooded as Arlong claims by throwing himself into the pool while tied up. Nami leaps after him without hesitation.
    • She was also told to shoot Luffy even earlier to prove her loyalty to Buggy. Short story shorter, she failed the test that time - lucky for the next 500 chapters or so.
    • Hordy Jones' men force the people of Fishman Island to step on a picture of their beloved, assassinated Queen Otohime to prove their acceptance of Jones over the old monarchy. Somewhat subverted, in that Hordy Jones plans to kill those who had signed Otohime's petition even if they did go through the Fumi-e.
  • YuYu Hakusho:

    Comic Books 
  • Batman:
    • An early story featured Bats and Green Lantern attempting to infiltrate an evil group of fascists, but getting caught almost immediately. Batman is put through brainwashing while Green Lantern watches helplessly (devoid of his ring), and afterward, the final "test" to see if Batman truly has been brainwashed, is to hand him a gun and ask him to shoot Green Lantern. Which he does — but the gun isn't loaded, fortunately. As soon as the villain relaxes his guard, however, the heroes turn the tables on him and escape. Batman hadn't been brainwashed after all; he just knew that the gun wouldn't be loaded, since the villain wouldn't want to risk having Batman shoot him instead.
    • People tend to forget that though Batman Does Not Like Guns, he knows near everything about them. In less effed-up situations, he always knows when the Mooks need to reload - and in that particular one, he would have instantly known the gun was empty due to its weight.
  • In The Batman Adventures comic, Batman goes undercover in Black Mask's organization, which then captures Batgirl. As Black Mask suspects a traitor in the group, he has each member step forward and turn a wheel, filling a tank containing Batgirl 1/7 full of water. There are seven mooks being tested, including Batman.
  • Captain America:
    • After his training was completed, Red Skull received his first order: kill a Nazi officer who had failed Hitler. He instead merely taunts the officer by shooting the buttons off his jacket, explaining that a dead officer is useless, but an officer who survives and knows what you'll do to him if he fails again is an asset.
    • The Death of Captain America: When Bucky Barnes pretends to be brainwashed under Doctor Faustus's control, Faustus tests his loyalty by ordering him to kill Sharon Carter. Bucky uses the chance to instead shoot Faustus, but to no avail since the gun is filled with blanks.
  • During one arc of Captain Britain and MI13, part vampire superhero Spitfire is being mentally controlled by Dracula. To test if she really is under his control or working as a mole for the good guys she is ordered to kill an innocent prisoner. She does. Even though she's not actually under Dracula's mental control.
  • In the first Deadshot miniseries, Deadshot is infiltrating a drug cartel for the Suicide Squad; he's asked to shoot a man they claim is an undercover FBI agent — and immediately does just that, to the dismay of his field commander Rick Flag. The FBI agent assigned to the case assures Flag that they didn't have an agent inside, but Flag points out that Deadshot didn't know that and in any case wouldn't have cared.
  • In G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel), Snake Eyes appears to be trying to rejoin his old ninja clan along side Storm Shadow. Storm Shadow orders Snake Eyes to kill the kidnapped Scarlet (whom Storm Shadow knows was in a relationship with Snake Eyes) before the incoming force of Joes could rescue her. Snake Eyes runs her through with his katana, without hesitation, and escapes with Storm Shadow just as the Joes bust in. Not only is Scarlet still alive when they find her, but when they get her to a hospital, they find that Snake Eyes' blow was somehow just a really deep flesh wound, missing every major organ and blood vessel in the blade's path. Lifeline notes that the odds of such a blow were near-impossible, even for a master swordsman like Snake Eyes. Cut to Scarlet, smiling with tears in her eyes: She knew there was no way Snake Eyes could strike such a non-lethal blow accidentally, so knew Snake Eyes was still on their side.
  • In Lanfeust, Thanos orders Cixi, who has the ability to manipulate water, to prove her loyalty by killing his brother by boiling his blood. Cixi reluctantly executes the order. She's later revealed to be a Fake Defector.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes storyline "Those Emerald Eyes Are Shining": After capturing several Legionnaires, Emerald Empress orders Ontiir to execute them to prove his loyalties lie with her instead of his previous masters, the Dark Circle.
  • The Mighty Thor: When reincarnated as his child self with no memory of his evil ways, Loki kept trying to convince the people whose help he needed to save Thor and Earth that he was still the evil manipulator who is totally on their level (and lampshades it to his companions)
    Loki: "More to fear than me"! Oh Tyr, how fun this villainous talk is! (issue 625)
    Loki: And the Tongue will give it to us, or else I'll tear it out at its bloody root. *turns to Ikol* That's the sort of thing I'm meant to say, yes? (issue 624)
  • Played with in one New Gods comic that shows the origin of Granny Goodness. She was trained alongside a dog, who she bonded with. To graduate, her trainer ordered her to kill it. Instead, she turns around and kills him. Darkseid demands an explanation, so Granny responds that the dog was more useful, since it would obey her first, but Darkseid foremost. Darkseid commands the dog to attack her, and she kills it in self-defense. Impressed, Darkseid promotes her to her current status.
  • The Powerpuff Girls: Issue #50 (DC run), "Deja View" puts the girls in Viletown, an alternate universe Townsville where their hero is the noble chimpanzee Jomo Momo (alternate Mojo Jojo). The girls are imprisoned by Jomo, who doubts their word that they are heroes in their world. Jomo tests them:
    Jomo: Pop quiz! There is a cuddly little kitten stranded in a tree. Do you A.) Rob a nearby bank? B.) Eat the kitten then rob a nearby bank? C.) Rescue the kitten?
    Girls: C!
    Jomo: (surprised) Holy Toledo! They are good!
  • The Punisher:
    • In an early issue, Frank Castle is attempting to infiltrate a drug cartel. He is given a gun with one bullet and told to shoot a narcotics agent the cartel had captured. He is also surrounded by several heavily armed thugs just in case he decides to use the bullet on someone else.
    • A later Punisher story had him infiltrating a white supremacist organization, and being told to prove his loyalty by killing a Latina reporter who'd been nosing around the group's hideout (who also happened to be his current tech guy's girlfriend). The twist is that the villain of the piece employs technology that enhances the aggression and anger of those exposed to it, which causes Frank to actually do it. Neither he nor the tech guy respond well, and the tech guy ends up as the new Jigsaw by the end of it.
  • In one of Alan Moore's Tharg's Future Shocks, a mild-mannered repairman who has fallen on hard times decides on a new career as a supervillain. At the villain training school, the applicants are required to demonstrate their evilness by taking candy from a baby.
  • The Transformers (Marvel) UK had an issue wherein the Decepticons had captured Hot Rod, Kup, and Blurr, but an infiltrator in their midst had helped the Autobots escape. Megatron suspected that the spy had to be one of four possible suspects: Octopunch, Stranglehold, Bludgeon, and Warmonger. To suss out said spy (and to perhaps also remove a possible rival for power) Megatron sent Octopunch, Stranglehold, and Warmonger to hunt down Bludgeon. Warmonger got the drop on a weakened Bludgeon but was too noble to kill an unarmed and defenseless enemy in cold blood. Having watched events from the sidelines, Megatron promptly blasted the scrap out of him, rightly guessing that only an Autobot would have that kind of moral objection. This was something of a Foregone Conclusion as the story was a flashback and would later require Octopunch, Stranglehold, and Bludgeon to be alive for their stories, and Warmonger was a Toyless Toyline Character in a franchise famous for its toys.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: In one issue, Shang-Chi is applying undercover for the job of the Kingpin's bodyguard. Unfortunately, he fails the 'randomly kill that guy' test.

    Comic Strips 
  • One The Far Side strip, in which a jungle researcher's attempt to go undercover is met with: "So, you're a gorilla, huh? Well, then you wouldn't mind eating these grubs. In fact, we wanna to see you chug 'em."

    Fan Works 
  • Advice and Trust has a non-villainous (but otherwise very on-point) example when Misato is told about Shinji and Asuka's relationship, and assumes that they're pranking her.
    Misato: My my, Asuka. Who knew you'd be knocked head over heels for 'that baka Shinji'. It's so romantic! Let me see you plant a nice juicy kiss on your sweetie's lips. Go ahead.
  • All Alone: Hookwolf is angry about Animator disrupting the Empire's initiations, because having new members break ribs or crack skulls is a reliable way of filtering out undercover police.
  • Better Bones AU: This is part why Sol asks for sacrifices he doesn't actually need; it proves the cat working for him can be manipulated into doing anything for him. In Harry's case this involves killing literal kittens.
  • The Choices That Make Us: After Regulus captures one of Eliphias Doge's granddaughters during a mission, his fellow Death Eaters tell him to use the Imperius curse on the girl largely to observe if he has the resolve to. He makes an effort to, but her magic is too strong, and he doesnā€™t really want to anyway.
  • In DƦmorphing, Visser Three tries to out Visser One as a ā€˜host sympathizerā€™ by demanding she shoot one of the children of her previous host dead. Visser One wasnā€™t a sympathizer in general but was attached to that lifeā€¦ but by this point had been kill-and-replaced by Aftran, who decidedly is. Aftran does it anyway.
  • In the Death Note AU Fever Dreams Light does this as part of his Batman Gambit when he has Rem wipe the memories of all the police officers by tricking them into accepting and giving up ownership of the notebook. He does this in order to ensure that none of them will keep the notebook-if any of them try to keep it Rem is to tell them that they passed the test of bravery and that she had selected them to be the next Kira, and if they would just slaughter their families and fifty additional innocent people then they could have the power of Kira.
  • In No Gods, Only Guns, Roland is forced by his commanding officer to prove he is a Sociopathic Soldier who is loyal to the Crimson Lance by ordering him to execute unarmed Hyperion scientists, or be summarily executed himself by the majority of his squad.
  • In the Freedom City fic Olympus Delendam Est!, Original Character Overpower has a public brawl with the Freedom League and is taken into the Crime League HQ, where she's asked to kill a bound prisoner. She does this without any hesitation ... much to the annoyance of Gimmick, who has to teleport the prisoner away and an LMD into his place without anyone noticing, and would have appreciated a little more time to do it in.
  • The Power of Seven: Downplayed when Pansy Parkinson is ordered to stab Draco Malfoy in the heart for his role in the recent failed attempt to kill Dumbledore; Malfoy is protected by a ward that stops the blade actually penetrating his body, but the fact that Pansy was willing to do it is enough for Bellatrix.
  • Team SMASK (a Doctor Who macro fanfic), to test John to see if he wants to enter the league of evil characters, he is told to shag the Racnoss. He complies.

    Films — Animation 
  • In Pixar's film The Incredibles, Syndrome basically tells Mr. Incredible, to paraphrase, "If you've actually been driven over the edge, go right ahead and crush my subordinate Mirage to death!" This calls Mr. Incredible's bluff and Mr. Incredible can't bring himself to do it...but Mirage is justifiably pissed off that Syndrome was even willing to take that chance.
  • The LEGO Movie: President Business demonstrates his super-weapon, the Kragle, by forcing Bad Cop to use it upon his parents. He initially refuses, thanks to his good cop side, before President Business removes his Good Cop persona (with a Q-tip and nail polish remover). He is then perfectly willing to go through with the deed.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Asian School Girls, Charles forces the crooks who supply the girls for his rape ring to rape one of the girls they supply so that they are fully implicated in the crimes and cannot go to the police.
  • In the Russian WW2 film Ballada o Bombere (2011), Linko has to denounce, then shoot a fellow prisoner before he's allowed to join a collaborationist police unit. The German officer in charge says it's the first time he ever saw one of them not hesitate to kill a man for a bowl of soup (the unit gets better rations than the other Soviet POW's).
  • In The Battle of Algiers, when Ali-La-Pointe first joins the Algerian resistance, he's given a gun and assigned to shoot a policeman. He tries, but the gun is empty, and he has to run away to avoid arrest; later he's told that it was a test; if he had been a spy, the French might have let him kill an Algerian, but not a cop. Of course, whether this is a test of evil or good or something else isn't a question the movie really lets you answer. Amusingly, the test goes badly because he was too committed to the cause. He was ordered to sneak up behind a policeman and shoot him in the back. Instead, he angrily confronts the policeman and pulls the trigger of an empty gun.
  • In Birds of Prey, when Dinah Lance finds that Cassandra Cain has swallowed the Bertinelli Diamond that Roman Sionis is after, Sionis's right-hand man Victor Zsasz, who has already found evidence that Dinah may be planning to betray Sionis, orders Dinah to prove herself by literally cutting Cassandra open to retrieve the diamond. Rather than kill an innocent, Dinah turns on Sionis, which results in him being killed when the rest of the titular heroes show up.
  • Related to the Child Soldiers in Real Life, Blood Diamond has this done with Solomon's son, Dia, who was brainwashed to the point of hating his father and ratting him out when he was about to be rescued from the army. The reason was then made clear later on - that Dia believed that, after what he had done, he didn't deserve to lead a normal, happy life.
  • Blue Streak:
    • Played with when Miles is trying to prove himself to a gang. The man they want him to shoot had previously betrayed him, and was currently claiming he was a cop.
      Jean: Shoot this man.
      Miles: No problem. [shoots him in the arm]
      Jean: I meant kill him!
      Miles: Well, you didn't say that!
    • Miles is actually a former jewel thief, so he's not exactly a moral person. However, Deacon was part of the heist at the start of the film and killed Miles's protege. The strange part is that Jean is told that Miles is a Mook hired to help run drugs through customs. For some reason, Jean assumes that Miles would be willing to murder someone.
  • In The Bourne Ultimatum, Bourne is ordered to shoot a complete stranger at the end of his training. This is less to prove his evilness than to show that he's accepted absolute obedience to orders, no matter whether the target was known to be bad, or not, or totally innocent. But mostly the principle is the same. He accepts it, because he's tortured by waterboarding when he refuses.
  • The ending of Cthulhu. The protagonist is told to kill his male lover as a Human Sacrifice in order to become the leader of the cult of Dagon. The movie ends without showing us what happens next.
  • The Dark Knight Trilogy:
    • Downplayed in Batman Begins, when Henri Ducard and Ra's Al Ghul instructs Bruce Wayne to execute a criminal in order to complete his initiation into the League of Shadows (naturally, Bruce refuses). However, the League is not challenging him to prove that he's evilnote —they are asking him to prove his commitment to a cause they think is right.
    • Played straighter in The Dark Knight; after the Joker kills a mobster and takes over his operation, he forces the mobster's former mooks to duel each other to the death to see which of them he'll recruit into his own gang of thugs. Also a case of Deadly Graduation.
  • Deep Cover: Russell is a cop working undercover as a drug dealer. When it becomes necessary to take out a competing drug dealer, he actually goes ahead and kills him.
  • In a variant from Dog Soldiers, one of the troopers washes out of training as a commando because he refused to kill the tracker dog sent to pursue him in a field operation. Not an infiltration, but a similar moral quandary that his commander berates him for shying away from.
  • Donnie Brasco. Johnny Depp's character must prove his worth and trustworthiness to the bad guys by killing the son of an enemy mobster. The FBI instead decides to terminate the operation at the last hour and arrest the mobsters.
  • Eastern Promises; Nikolai is implied to have done a variety of nasty things to get where he is.
  • In Enter the Dragon, Han tests Roper's moral limits with a near-literal example of this by placing his own cat in a guillotine. Roper balks. It turns out the guillotine was fake.
  • The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery: On learning that the newcomer George Fowler hs no criminal record, he takes George with him and forces him to steal the licence plates the gang will require for the Bank Robbery to prove his criminal credentials.
  • In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, there happens to be a monster disguised as an old lady who Hellboy and Co are trying to get info out of by pretending to be non-good monsters. However, when Hellboy finds out her diet is kittens as she moves to start eating one, Hellboy immediately blows his cover by stopping her. By knocking her out cold and across the room.
  • In High School High, Jon Lovitz tries to infiltrate some heroin dealers. They notice that he has no needle marks on his arms, which he explains by saying that he usually takes his drugs "in the ass". They suspect his story and tell him to shoot up. He tries but doesn't know how, and ends up snapping the rubber hose in one of the thugs' face.
  • Played for Laughs in Hope and Glory where the hero proves his worthiness to join a boy's club by his knowledge of real swear words.
  • The Iceman. A Mafia underboss tells Kuklinski to kill a homeless bum he's picked at random to see if Kuklinski has what it takes to be a Professional Killer.
  • In Inside Man, the lead detective believes that the bank robbers are not murderers and therefore won't go through with any hostage executions. While inside the bank to check on the hostages, he insults the lead bank robber and attacks him specifically trying to provoke him into shooting him. When he leaves, he's convinced that he's proven his point... until they shoot a hostage in retaliation for his behavior. In the end he was right. They faked the whole thing just to make him believe they would eat kittens.
  • In the prologue to In the Line of Fire, Frank is meeting with his forger, Mendoza, who tells him that he had Frank's partner Al followed, and discovered that he was actually with the Secret Service. Mendoza asks him to shoot Al to prove he isn't also undercover, which Frank does - but the gun is empty. Frank immediately shoots Mendoza's two accomplices and arrests Mendoza himself: He was undercover. Later, Al asks how Frank knew the gun was empty, whether he could tell by the weight of the pistol that it was unloaded. Frank says yes, but when pressed, he admits "Well...there might have been one bullet."
  • Subverted in In Too Deep. When undercover cop Cole is asked to prove his loyalty (and uh, not a cop) by killing a rival drug dealer, he takes the gun, an Uzi, and promptly and determinedly begins to shoot like crazyeverywhere except at the drug dealer (or anyone else). His exuberance convinces the gang's henchmen that he's legit, and maybe even a little too hardcore, although a terrible shot.
  • Jojo Rabbit: To prove to the Nazis that he's tough enough, Jojo is asked to snap the neck of a rabbit. He ultimately chooses to let the rabbit go, earning him the nickname "Jojo Rabbit," at which point one of the Nazis grabs the rabbit and snaps its neck anyways.
  • Kingsman: The Secret Service: Eggsy is given a puppy to raise as part of his training upon joining the Kingsmen. Once his training is apparently over, he is asked by Arthur to prove his dedication to their cause by shooting the puppy. It is later revealed that the gun was loaded with blanks, and that the entire training program was created to give the illusion of risk without putting anybody in harm's way.
  • Other than it being positioned as a test of loyalty to a cult leader rather than evil, Martha Marcy May Marlene plays this almost literally. Patrick, the cult leader, challenges Martha to shoot a cat, heard just offscreen, telling her it has terminal cancer and is in excruciating pain. After she fails, another cult member does it almost without hesitation. The trope is then subverted into Even Evil Has Standards when another cult member shoots the other cat only to have Patrick criticize him.
  • In The Negotiator a hostage negotiator is framed for a crime, and knows most of his precinct is corrupt and probably in on it, so he takes hostages himself in order to attract the involvement of another precinct's negotiator, who he knows to be honest. In order to keep up the charade, he seems to execute an officer who came after him. Even the audience doesn't learn until much later that the man is still alive, merely bound and gagged out of sight.
  • In New Jack City, Nino Brown relates a tale from his youth: His gang initiation involved killing someone, but it couldn't be a rival gang member ("too easy"). He ends up shooting a schoolteacher on the street in broad daylight. Unfortunately for Nino, the person he relates this tale to is undercover cop Scotty, the schoolteacher's son.
  • In The Parallax View, Joe Frady—a reporter investigating a political assassination—notices all the witnesses are dying. After narrowly escaping an attempt on his life, he decides to allow people to assume he's dead (so he can go undercover). He finds a clue to the shadowy conspiracy in documents from The Parallax Corporation, some of which are a psychological test. With expert assistance Frady answers all the questions the way a sociopath would, and voila he's recruited as an assassin himself. From there, things only get murkier and more frightening...
  • The Revolutionary War film The Patriot (2000) has Captain Wilkins, a Loyalist who joins the British Green Dragoons. The Dragoons' commander, Colonel Tavington, asks Wilkins why he should trust a man who would sell out his own neighbors, and Wilkins replies "Those neighbors of mine who stand against England deserve to die a traitor's death". Tavington throws these words back at Wilkins later in the film, ordering him to burn down a church with the aforementioned neighbors inside.
  • In Phil The Alien, in a flashback, we see CIA agent Jones' early training, which involves being order to kill a box of puppies — with a cheese grater.
  • Parodied in Popeye; when Popeye meets Poopdeck Pappy and notes the resemblance between them, Poopdeck decides to see if it's really Popeye by having him eat the spinach straight from the can. As soon as he starts whining and muttering that he doesn't want to eat his spinach, Pappy knows that only Popeye could be so disobedient about eating spinach, just like when he was two years old.
  • In Queen of the Damned, when the other Ancients rejects Akasha's plans to subject the world again, she demands that Lestat kill Jesse to prove his loyalty to her. He does feed on Jesse, but fails to kill her, and then attacks Akasha.
  • In Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren takes Rey to Supreme Leader Snoke, who tortures her. Then, Snoke orders Kylo to kill her to prove his loyalty to the Dark Side of the Force. Instead, he kills Snoke and makes himself the new Supreme Leader. That said, Expanded Universe materials make the example a different case of this: Snoke was created for the sole purpose of seeing if Kylo Ren would ultimately kill him to seize power. Which he did, passing that test with flying colors.
  • In Trade, Kevin Kline's character infiltrates an auction where a 13-year-old girl is being sold as a sex slave. When he wins the auction and goes to pick her up, her captors won't allow him to leave with her until he's taken her virginity. But since they don't insist on watching, he simply has the girl break her own hymen, so that when the captors check the bedroom and see the blood on the bed, they'll assume he had sex with her.
  • Traffic (2000): A drug dealer is asked to take a hit of the cocaine she's selling to prove it's real. She refuses on the grounds that she's eight months pregnant, and walks out—the guy she's selling stops her, and takes the cocaine himself, as he thinks her refusal was quite reasonable.
  • Training Day: Throughout the film, Alonzo is constantly asking new recruit Jake to do things contrary to his morality and the law, arguing that to survive in the real world as an undercover cop, you need to be hard enough to do such things. Whenever Jake tries to beg off, Alonzo lectures Jake from a position of authority that refusal will prove that Jake is is too soft for the job, causing him to go against his better judgment and conform to peer pressure. It turns out that Alonzo is manipulating Jake the whole time to incriminate himself.
  • Vilaine ("Mean"): Downplayed hilariously when the protagonist wants to become mean to take revenge on all of those who constantly abuse her. One step of her self-training is trying to convince herself not to buy a kitten in a pet shop, even knowing that if no one buys them they will eventually be sent to euthanasia. She buys the last one, but later completes her Faceā€“Heel Turn by tossing it in the trashcan. Don't worry, he's alive...
  • xXx: The main character shoots a cop to get into Anarchy 99. He uses a fake bullet that's essentially a tranquilizer and red dye, and the cop is his fellow agent. Unfortunately this both influences that agent's Faceā€“Heel Turn and delays the girl's Heelā€“Face Turn.
  • The Warrior's Way have one of these turning up in Yang's flashback, when his mentor, Saddest Flute, made him the "Greatest Swordsman of the East". Part of Yang's training have him raising a puppy, and in order to complete his traning into becoming a full-fledged assassin, Yang must then kill said puppy.

    Jokes 
  • A common secret organization joke uses this trope, with another variation shown on Deadly Graduation:
    Two men and a woman are candidates as assassins for the CIA. They are given a gun, and told that for their final test, they are to enter a room and kill the person they find there. The first man enters and sees his wife tied to a chair; he gives up on the spot. The second man enters his room; several minutes pass before he exits the room in tears, refusing to kill his wife. The woman then enters her room; several shots are immediately heard, followed by several minutes of crashing, banging, and screaming. The woman exits the room and says, "You could have told me there were blanks in the gun. I had to beat him to death with the chair!"

    Literature 
  • In Alara Unbroken, the tie-in novel for Magic: The Gathering's Shards of Alara block, Rakka Mar offers to lead Ajani Goldmane to Nicol Bolas... if he'll slaughter all the friends he brought to help him search.
  • Animorphs: In "Visser", Visser One is ordered to shoot one of "her" children (the biological children of a previous host, but she and her mate were in control when they decided to have them, so they consider them theirs) who's been infested. She stalls for time, both because she doesn't want to kill him... and to give the Animorphs, who snuck into the room while everyone is looking at the Vissers, time to finish going into battle morphs. Subverted in that apart from caring about Darwin and Madra, which is why she advocates a slow invasion instead of an open one in which there'd be a higher chance of her children getting killed, Visser One is very evil.
  • In Arc of a Scythe, the final test to be a scythe is to basically kill a family member, although they do it so the worst thing you will ever have to do is behind you.
  • In the Andrew Vachss Batman novel The Ultimate Evil, a paedophile organization requires new members to have sex with a child before being shown any of the group's operations, in order to weed out undercover cops.
  • In J. R. R. Tolkien's Beren and LĆŗthien: When Sauron is interrogating a group of suspicious-looking orcs, guessing they are disguised Elves, he demands they prove their allegiance by swearing loyalty to Morgoth and cursing "Light, law, love" and anything good.
  • In Wen Spencer's Bitter Waters one of the characters is captured by a cult who think they are fighting a holy war against demons. They lock him in a room with a kitten. Their rationale is that if he eats the kitten he's evil, if he starves to death he's okay. They named the kitten Schrodinger 4.
  • The Vorkosigan Saga: In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance it turns out that the hired killers sent after Tej and Rish had been contracted by a Barrayaran deep cover agent to protect his op. The same agent recruited Ivan to invite Tej on a date to make sure that the assassin and Tej didn't cross paths.
  • In the CHERUB Series, recruits are asked to kill a rabbit as part of the entrance exam, though it's really a Secret Test of Character and they're not supposed to. In the second series, Ning (an orphan from rural China) calmly and professionally does kill her rabbit, then asks for a knife to gut it while discussing curing the pelt to make a hat.
  • In The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, Torak takes the place of an apprentice Soul Eater, in order to infiltrate them and save Wolf. He has to help them with a ceremony that involves killing one of each of hunting animals: A bear, a lynx, an eagle, a wolverine, a wolf, an otter, an owl, a fox and a human. The Soul Eaters are planning on Torak being the human. In the book's society, killing a hunter is seen as extremely dishonorable and evil. He's asked to kill the owl, and for Wolf's sake, he does.
  • Creepers: In a non-evil variant, an investigator poses as a destitute New York City tunnel-dweller. To prove his identity and grit to the head of an underground homeless enclave, he has to eat a fire-roasted rat, guts and all.
  • Subverted in the Cthulhu Mythos short story The Disciple by David Karr Kirtley. Those wanting to join an exclusive study program run by a Dark Messiah professor have to drown a mouse as their 'application'. It turns out to be a sting operation by Miskatonic University to get rid of potentially dangerous people, and the mouse-drowning test is just to assuage the professor's conscience, so he can tell himself the applicants are evil and deserve their fate.
  • The final test to become an assassin in the Discworld, very appropriately given the nature of the business, is to travel to a certain location and kill the person you find there. The person you kill is not a real person, just a dummy, but it's to make sure you aren't squeamish about killing another person.
  • In Dragon Bones the villain has the heroes watch while he feeds a man to a monster. Alive. Ward hides his shock, and casually asks what happens to the chains with which the man was bound. The villain replies that the monster will spit them out, and Ward says that's "just like owls". The villain is pleased with this display of indifference, and offers Ward a deal without asking him to kill a kitten first. However, Ward does insult the man whose brother was just fed to the monster, and claims the brother deserved it. Just to make sure no one will suspect him when the prisoners mysteriously vanish from their cells...
  • According to Encyclopedia Brown himself, this is how Bugs Meany decides who's fit to be a Tiger and who's not. A test of dishonesty, if you will.
  • The Executioner:
    • In "American Nightmare", Colonel Gaddafi hires an American mercenary for a terrorist operation in the United States. However the Libyan despot has doubts an American will kill other Americans, so orders him at gunpoint to kill an American hostage he's had brought from Lebanon. The American refuses — being forced to kill will prove nothing, and he only kills for money. So Gaddafi offers him $25000. The mercenary refuses the pistol he's offered, takes out a knife and castrates, then eviscerates, the hostage. Gaddafi is entirely satisfied.
    • In one of the Able Team novels, Carl Lyons pretends he's defected to the Unomondo organization. To test him they use Carl for the assassination of a US senator. A junkie is to rob, then shoot the senator, whereupon Carl will fire a second bullet into the senator's head to ensure his death. Carl works himself up to kill the senator, only to have the junkie (who's wired up and bouncing around) jump into the line of fire and get shot instead.
  • In the book version of The Godfather, former cop Al Neri is not fully accepted into the Mafia until after he has "made his bones"; in other words, committed a murder for the organization. A similar demand is made of rising mobster Rocco Lampone. Unlike many examples of this trope, Neri and Lampone don't seem to feel too much angst about this.
  • Gulliver's Travels: Weary of his disappointing time in Luggnagg, Gulliver is finally able to secure passage on a boat bound for Japan, and he arrived at the port of Xamoschi on 21 March 1710. His stay in the island country is brief, however, as he finds himself in trouble once again. It seems the custom for Dutchmen in Japan is to trample the crucifix, in order to demonstrate that they are not Christians, and none have ever refused to do so. The Japanese Emperor excuses Gulliver from this tradition, but later, a Dutchman again tries to force Gulliver into trampling the cross, a sacrilegious act in his eyes.
  • Harry Potter:
    • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, this gets subverted, played straight, then subverted again when it comes to the murder of Albus Dumbledore. Draco Malfoy was sent to do the deed, but "his soul was not yet so damaged" as to accomplish it, and so he failed. In the end, Severus Snape ended up doing it, thus "proving his loyalty" to the Big Bad. This appears to be played straight, until the end of the 7th Book, when it was revealed that Snape had killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore's orders, since he was dying anyway.
    • There's a slight example of this in Deathly Hallows. Right at the beginning, Voldemort and the Death Eaters are sitting at a table with a teacher floating above it, magically restrained. Voldemort doesn't command anyone to kill her, since he's the one who does it, but she begs Snape to help her, and he does nothing to stop the murder, even scoffing when Voldy asks him if he remembers her. He clearly doesn't want her dead, but he can't do anything to stop it without blowing his cover. The internal struggle the character is suffering at the moment is masterfully represented in the film adaptation by actor Alan Rickman, with just a gaze.
  • The Laundry Files (by Charles Stross): The Fuller Memorandum has the Nyar lath-Hotep cultists, believing Bob to be the monster that they're attempting to summon (It Makes Sense in Context), bring out the sacrificial infant intended for the monster. Painfully aware of what would happen (both to him personally and to the world in general) if the cult found out that they don't have the real monster, Bob gives non-specific background exposition as to the perceived roles of infants in the rituals of othered cults before informing the reader that Evil Tastes Good.
  • Lensman:
    • Not as evil as some of these, but in First Lensman Virgil Samms is infiltrating one of Boskone's drug rings and is required to take thionite as a test.
    • Later in Gray Lensman, Kimball Kinnisson needs to create a cover story so he can roam seedy mining colonies unnoticed. To that end, he decides, though it disgusts him, to start drinking and taking drugs. However, he approaches this very scientifically, studying his tolerances and behaviors as he prepares himself so that he never completely loses his mental capacity (which in the Lensman universe is your best weapon). He also avoids thionite as too dangerous and instead chooses a more-common and less-dangerous drug (a chewing tobacco-like substance called bentlam) as his apparent vice. His over-the-top violent reaction when offered thionite (it's fake, but "Wild Bill" shouldn't have known that) actually helps convince them he's NOT a patrolman, since they were expecting someone under cover to try to make plausible-sounding excuses, not deck a debutante.
  • Used in Maria Watches Over Us (of all things). Noriko denies that a string of Buddhist prayer beads belongs to her, so the other girls counter with "Then you should have no problem if they're destroyed then." Noriko balks, which makes Shimako (who lent them to her) confess that they're hers. It's all a big act to make Shimako realize her 'secret' of belonging to a Buddhist family while attending a Catholic school is really not an issue.
  • In the Modesty Blaise novel The Night of Morningstar, a CIA agent is trying to infiltrate a terrorist organization that has a murder-the-helpless-teenage-girl type Kitten Eating Test. After some internal struggle, he goes through with it to preserve his cover long enough to get out a warning about the imminent atrocity they're planning — and then they tell him that they already knew he was CIA, and made him do the test anyway just to mess with him.
  • In Phoenix Rising: A Ministry Of Peculiar Occurrences Novel by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris, the heroes, undercover as would-be members of a secret society, are asked to join the society in Hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
  • Played completely straight in one of Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld novels—taken prisoner by a group run by a Nazi, the heroes have the Sadistic Choice of being enslaved or killing another prisoner. Surprisingly, one of the heroes actually does it. (Two ameliorating factors: the hero in question was a caveman, and Death is Cheap in Riverworld.)
  • In The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, there is an example concerning killing an actual kitten: Noboru is asked to kill the kitten to prove he is not affected by nonsensical societal rules, and he does so.
  • In Shadow of her Sins Bloody Margo tells Alinadar to gouge out Lady Sallivera's natural eye to prove that she's sincere about wanting to come back to her crew. Instead Ali stalls long enough for her brother to line up a shot at Margo.
  • In Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe and Lawford are infiltrating the enemy by pretending to be deserters. To prove they're truly deserters, Sharpe's ordered to fire on a captured British prisoner (the same one they are supposed to be rescuing). He does so without hesitation because he knew the gun had no powder. Although he later assures him that he still would have done it without hesitation even if the gun had been loaded.
  • Most of the plot of Shusaku Endo's novel Silence and many of his other works centers around the treading of the fumie.
  • There is a scene in Someone Else's War where Lieutenant Panga, who has infiltrated the Lord's Resistance Army, has to "discipline" one of the child soldiers in front of a commanding officer because not doing so would look suspicious. He breaks the poor boy's ribs.
  • George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Toward the end of the second book, Jon Snow must do this at the orders of his Night's Watch superior officer Qhorin Halfhand, who orders Jon to do whatever is asked of him. Qhorin's first order to Jon is to kill him in a battle Qhorin and him have to fight. As a result, he is forced to kill Qhorin as Qhorin has ordered him to do so he can infiltrate the wildlings, after which Jon feels incredibly guilty, but the plan works and Jon takes on the role as spy for the Night's Watch. However, in book three, the wildling leaders eventually (correctly) suspect Jon is still loyal to the Night's Watch so they order him to kill an old man to prove otherwise — but Jon can't bring himself to kill him. At which point, a battle between Jon and the wildling leaders ensues and Jon (though he loves Ygritte and he has compassion for ordinary wildling people, who he learns only want to survive) escapes with a few arrows in his leg and returns to the Night's Watch, the order he has remained loyal to.
    • In the same series, the Unsullied, at the end of their Training from Hell, are required to kill a baby. At an earlier point in their training, they also have to strangle a dog they received as a puppy. It's explicitly noted that more trainees fail the "kill your dog" test than the "kill a baby" test. (Those who fail to kill the dog are killed themselves... and then fed to the surviving dogs as an example to the surviving Unsullied.)
  • The Specialist by Gayle Rivers. Rivers is training Iraqi special forces during the first Gulf War, and notes that their commander had a technique for weeding out anyone he didn't think had what it took to be in the unit. He'd hand a gun to a candidate and invite them to fire it out the doorway, while at the same time inviting another dubious candidate to walk down the corridor and take the random chance of being shot. If either person refused to walk or fire, he was thrown out of the unit.
  • In the Star Trek: The Fall novel The Crimson Shadow, a working-class Cardassian who's got mixed up with an anti-Federation group is asked to come along as muscle when they teach some "collaborators" a lesson, and realises this is at least partly a test of how far he would go for the cause. He's actually a Cardassian military officer, seconded to the Enterprise, officially on leave and working undercover for Garak. He does go along with it, since the alternative is breaking cover, although he's deeply disturbed by what he was part of.
  • From the Star Wars Expanded Universe:
    • In Iron Fist, the second Wraith Squadron novel, Face, Kell and Dia, impersonating pirates to gain the trust of Warlord Zsinj, are invited aboard the titular Star Destroyer to meet with him. In the middle of the meeting, Castin Donn, a fellow Wraith that had snuck aboard and been captured without the other Wraiths knowing anything about it, is brought into the room and Zsinj, suspecting that Castin is one of theirs, orders them to execute him as a proof of loyalty. Face tries to talk his way out of it (claiming to have a twisted moral code that does not allow him to kill anyone unless he will make money from it) and Kell prepares himself for action in case Face's bluff fails, but Dia promptly takes the blaster offered by the Warlord and explains that she has no such moral code. Face thinks this means that she has some sort of plan and prepares for a dramatic escape, only to be shocked and horrified when Dia shoots Castin in the throat. It is revealed afterward that he was probably already dead, but it is left somewhat ambiguous even to the reader and Dia was still pretty shaken up about it.
    • Darth Bane had this as his first test of Zannah's dedication to the dark side in the second novel of the Darth Bane Trilogy. She slowly gained the confidence of a local creature, coming to think of it almost as a pet. She then gets it to follow her back to camp, where Bane snaps its neck and tells her to throw it in the pot, it's now dinner.
  • In Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series; the final stage of Mord Sith training requires them to torture their own parents to death. Those who are unable to do so don't survive long.
  • That Hideous Strength, the final part of C. S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy features, near the climax, one of the heroes, Mark Studdock, being tested to see whether he truly considers himself part of the evil anti-Christian organization N.I.C.E. How? By ordering him to deface an ancient crucifix. He finally refuses; fortunately, his interrogator is distracted by the sudden invasion of the institute by Merlin (yes, that one). He even pointed out that to rational men like themselves such a symbolic act is completely pointless. This example is interesting because Mark isn't really an undercover "hero" so much as an Everyman who's been ingratiating himself with NICE because it's been good for his career. He's nominally Christian, but regards it as more of a country club than something to actually believe in (he's actually embarrassed about the fact that his wife has recently begun taking it seriously). Also, as he's just pointed out, from a "rationalist" viewpoint the requested act is both meaningless and considerably less "evil" than some things he's already done.
  • John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novel The Green Ripper. Travis tries to join the Church of the Apocrypha, a terrorist religious cult. As part of his Kitten Eating Test he is ordered to shoot someone.
  • In Valhalla, Violet and all Valkyries are required to kill someone to prove their willingness to carry out assassinations. In a subversion of the trope, it's the good guys who make her, and she does so efficiently and without remorse.
  • In the back-story of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear, the narrator describes being inducted into a Molly Maguires-type gang, including going along with them on criminal activities, including one raid in which a man is killed. At the end, he is revealed to have been a Pinkerton detective who infiltrated the gang.
  • In Warrior Cats, Ivypaw goes undercover in the Dark Forest after finding out they're using her., only to find out that she's up to her final loyal Dark warrior test- murder Flametail. Made funny by the fact that Flametail is an actual CAT, albeit not a kitten.
  • In Jonathan Coe's What A Carve Up a journalist infiltrates an arms-dealing organization looking to do an expose; he's with some of them in a bar in a Middle Eastern country where they force the waitresses to take part in a "William Tell" game. They expect him to do it too, his target being a waitress he's made friends with. He does.

    Live-Action TV 
  • On 24, Jack Bauer is frequently subjected to kitten-eating tests:
    • Season 3: To further validate his deep-cover identity in a drug cartel, Jack gets a gang tattoo and a heroin addiction. The heroin was really a bonus for Jack, who had already earned the cartel's trust by that point.
    • Season 3 (again): The Salazars order Jack to kill his partner, Chase (who has no idea what's going on). Jack pulls the trigger, but the gun is empty.
    • Another Season 3 example, Nina decides to see if Jack has gone rogue or if he's still a government agent (and plotting her death), ... by making out with him? This is the test he actually fails, he returns the kiss, but she can tell he's faking it. Which is a nice bit of Conviction by Counterfactual Clue, since all that proved is that he still (justifiably) loathed her.
    • Season 4: Marwan gives the test to Dina Araz, ordering her to shoot Jack. She fails and tries to shoot Marwan instead. The gun is empty. Oops. Possibly an homage to The Battle of Algiers.
    • In short: Jack Bauer's real superpower is that half the time, he'll eat that kitten.
  • In 30 Rock, Jack insists that anyone he mentors be truly ambitious, not just trying to get closer to him out of love and admiration. Thus, "if you're so ambitious, cut off my pinkie." Jonathan refuses, horrified, because then Jack wouldn't be perfect anymore.
  • Alias featured a story arc in which Sydney Bristow undergoes brainwashing and takes on the identity of an assassin named Julia Thorne. As a test of her skill, she is ordered to stab a bound prisoner who is tied to a chair. She does so. Later, after regaining her personality, Sydney is disturbed by her actions, especially when she realizes that, due to conditioning, she was never fully brainwashed and therefore killed the man of her own volition.
  • Angel:
    • This happens in "Power Play" in a rare example where the hero passes the test by actually eating "the kitten", or rather, the warrior of good. He isn't turning evil again, nor is he going Knight Templar like his team assumed. He had no idea this would happen going in and refusing would mean that the Circle would kill both of them anyway. Also, the goal of this infiltration was to stop the Apocalypse.
    • In "Darla", Angel had been given a similar ultimatum by his girlfriend, Darla. She noticed that after getting his soul back, he would only prey on murderers, rapists, and other lowlifes and evildoers, so she challenged him to kill a baby. He refused and decided to run away and bring the baby to safety instead.
    • In "Hero", in order to infiltrate a group of racist 'pure' demons (who look down on humans and hybrids, like vampire and werewolves) Angel snaps Doyle's neck. However, it's revealed that Doyle, who is half demon, comes from a species that can actually survive this.
    • An accidental (and fairly inoffensive) version occurs in "Guise Will Be Guise", where Wesley, pretending to be Angel, is handed a glass of blood. He tries to explain he doesn't usually drink blood in front of people but his host insists that he not mind them, and he reluctantly drinks it down.
  • A variant in season 4 of Arrested Development when the military gives Buster a kitten to test if he really can't control his robotic hand.
  • Arrowverse:
    • Arrow:
      • In "Vertigo", The Mafiya boss will only introduce Oliver Queen to the Count if he kills an underling who has displeased him. Oliver appears to strangle him, but actually just renders him unconscious and temporarily stops his heart. Oliver carries the 'corpse' outside, then tells Diggle to get him out of town and set him up in a new identity.
      • In "Promises Kept", Slade Wilson and Oliver Queen track down Slade's missing son Joe, only to find he's become an amoral mercenary killer in emulation of his father when he was Deathstroke. Joe tells his father to kill Oliver as proof that he's sincere about joining him. Slade draws his sword and cuts Oliver bonds instead so they can escape, but admits afterwards that he was tempted to kill Oliver if that was what it took to reconcile with Joe.
      • In Crisis on Earth-X, Oliver Queen infiltrates the Earth-X Nazis by impersonating his Nazi counterpart. Eventually, he is handed a gun and urged to execute the counterpart of his love interest Felicity Smoak. Enraged, he turns around and tries to shoot them, but it clicks empty as they gloat that they now know who he really is. Oliver then proves he doesn't need it to kill them all and rescue her.
      • In "Lost Canary", Felicity dares Black Siren to kill her if she really is irredeemable. Dinah and Sara also follow suit. This is a variation because, rather than genuinely wanting to see if she is evil, Felicity wants to prove that there is still some good in her that can be saved. It works and Siren undergoes a full Heelā€“Face Turn.
    • In The Flash (2014) episode "Killer Frost", there's a rare heroic inversion. Barry lets Killer Frost, his friend Caitlin under the influence of her Superpowered Evil Side out of her cell and says she's free to go... all she has to do is murder him first, to prove she's really Killer Frost at heart, not Caitlin Snow. She can't kill him in cold blood and Caitlin takes back control.
    • In an episode of Legends of Tomorrow, the team go undercover as Nazis in a German nightclub in 1942. However, a general challenges Ray to give the Nazi salute. He can't do it, and punches the general instead, starting a Bar Brawl.
    • In the Supergirl (2015) episode "Medusa", in order to prove her loyalty to Cadmus, Lilian tells Lena she has to release the Medusa-carrying missile to wipe out all the aliens on Earth. Despite Kara's pleas, Lena launches the missile...but none of the aliens were affected, as Lena had already destroyed the virus beforehand and has been double-crossing her mother all along.
  • Babylon 5:
    • In a first season episode "Legacies", Sinclair is put in this situation, having infiltrated a fanatical pro-Earth group, and is asked to prove his sincerity by killing an alien (and one he met previously at that). Defiedā€”Sinclair and Ivanova start a firefight instead; Garibaldi and security soon locate them and secure the scene.
    • Later, in the episode "Darkness Ascending" G'Kar tells Lyta Alexander that the Narn will provide money, support, and ships in exchange for telepath DNA. He also tells her that the government is insisting she scan the other ambassadors for intelligence. Lyta refuses as she feels it would be wrong of her to do so and prepares to leave. G'Kar stops her and explains that he had made that up about scanning the other ambassadors, that he wanted to be sure there were still some lines she would not cross, and that if she had agreed to scan others he would have called off the deal as it would have showed she couldn't be trusted.
  • In an episode of the delightfully campy live action Batman (1966), when Robin is offered a cigarette when he tries to blend in with some rough types.
  • In the Grand Finale of Blade: The Series, Blade's sidekick/Voice with an Internet Connection Shen is captured by Marcus van Sciver. Van Sciver tells Krista to torture Shen for information, given her past as a soldier in Iraq. Krista replies that she never tortured anyone, and Marcus simply says that she must have seen torture or the results of it. Shen secretly nods her to go ahead, and Krista mouths "I'm sorry" before she starts pulling out his fingernails. When even that is not enough to make Shen talk, she pretends to break his finger, except she breaks her own finger, knowing it'll heal, and Shen makes a pained sound.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • A great (funny) example comes from "Doppelgangland": When Willow is impersonating her vampire self and is asked to "prove it" she says, "I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!" Later, when challenged again, she comes up with a way to signal her friends.
      Willow: Oh yeah? Could a human do this [screams her head off]
      Anya: Sure.
      Head Vampire: Yeah, I think, yeah.
      Anya: Humans do that.
      [the Scooby Gang storms in]
    • An earlier scene plays the trope seriously, though also averts it. Faith has told the Mayor that Willow is trying to hack into his computer files, so the Mayor decides that Willow must be killed. When Faith looks upset, the Mayor assures Faith that it's too early in her Faceā€“Heel Turn to expect that of her, and says he'll send a couple of vampires to do the job instead.
    • A meta example occurs in "Innocence", where Angelus (Angel turned evil) commits murder before the opening credits. In the DVD Commentary, Joss Whedon says that he didn't want anyone in the audience thinking it was a fake-out.
    • The trope gets a tongue-in-cheek nod when it's revealed in Season 6 that the demon world uses kittens as currency in poker games, and they're delicious too.
  • Burn Notice:
    • Used preemptively in an episode. Sam, in his cover as a crooked cop, pulls the bad guy of the week over, hops into his passenger seat, and snorts a pinch of white powder before introducing himself. One of the show's signature voice-overs informs the audience that snorting a crushed-up lactase tablet isn't comfortable, but goes a long way toward establishing criminal credibility.
    • Not just Sam, but the whole crew use this trope frequently to maintain their cover identities with the bad guys. During the course of the show, they've yelled at, threatened, punched, and even shot at each other to prove whatever various identity they were under at the moment. Michael even mentions over voice-over how much skill/training it requires to shoot and deliberately miss but make it look like you're trying to hit.
  • Caprica: Daniel Graystone's order to the U-87 to shoot his dog. He wasn't testing for evil so much as total amorality (or, more accurately, he hoped to see otherwise, indicating Zoe was inside). Zoe later says that she could feel the gun was unloaded. If it hadn't been, she might have instead shot Daniel Graystone himself (her father).
  • A season 6 episode of Castle has Beckett forced to pretend to be a woman who she discovers is a hired assassin. Her "boss" requires her to prove she's the woman she's claiming to be, in the obvious way, and she appears to do just that. (Several minutes into the episode later, it's revealed that she improvised some prop blood in the victim's kitchen, then told him to play dead. Beckett is awesome.)
  • On Charmed, the episode "Wrestling With Demons" is about a demonic academy whose graduation ritual is killing an innocent. Though in this case, the act serves the purpose of stripping them of their humanity. It's not a test to see whether they're evil, it's the act that's going to make them evil.
    • Borderline example: In another episode, Piper and Leo are infiltrating a group of demons who are after the innocent of the week. The pair of demons guarding the hideout asks for a password, and Piper — having no idea what it could be — blows one of them up. The other responds that that actually was the password and lets them in. It works on the same principle of ensuring anyone who enters is evil enough to kill, even if it wasn't an initiation test per say.
  • This happens a couple of times on Chuck.
    • While posing as a mafia hitman, Chuck has to torture Casey. Casey takes this rather well, commenting that Chuck did him a favor by ripping out a tooth that had a cavity and saving him a trip to the dentist.
    • While posing as an arms dealer, Morgan invokes this on himself by pulling out his cell phone and orders someone to murder a puppy.
      Morgan: I told you, murder the puppy! [hangs up] It's so hard to find good henchmen these days.
  • An episode of The Cleaner (2008) had Arnie infiltrating a biker gang. Unfortunately for him, they force him to smoke meth, his drug of choice before he got clean, to prove he's not a cop. Things... don't end well.
  • Discussed in Cloak & Dagger (2018). Detective O'Reilly is trying to get close to vice squad Detective Connors, whom she suspects is corrupt, so she snorts a line of coke in a back room as he walks in. The two of them commiserate over how counterproductive the department's drug policy is, with O'Reilly mentioning that back in Harlem she worked a club where they wouldn't let you in the back room unless you'd used a little.
  • Cobra Kai: In "Nature vs. Nurture," Kreese introduces his Cobra Kai students to a mouse, and lets Bert hold it and name it "Clarence". Kreese then produces a tank containing a large cobra, which he instructs Bert to feed Clarence to. When Bert objects to this, Kreese asks the students to raise their hands if they also object. Several do, and Kreese expels all of the objectors from the class (including Bert).
  • The Colbert Report:
    • An episode literally invokes this trope when Colbert asks Kentucky representative John Yarmuth his opinion on the topic of putting kittens in woodchippers...and Yarmuth plays straight-man in advocating the use of woodchippers in reducing the kitten overpopulation problem.
    • Made even more hilarious by the fact that at the time, John Yarmuth himself was showing commercials (parodying some very negative advertising by the Other Team) that had such statements as "John Yarmuth goes golfing with Saddam Hussein! John Yarmuth kicks puppies! This is what happens when you get the main editor-slash-humour-columnist for the major "alternative" newspaper in Louisville running for public office.
  • Criminal Minds:
    • In the episode "The Internet Is Forever" (5x22), in order to get accepted to the UnSub's online club, which provides access to live footage of him killing people, prospective members have to download child porn onto their computers. There's a subtle difference in this example in that the child porn is not specifically a morality test. The new members are not required to like or to watch child porn. The reasoning is that the mere presence of child porn saved on your computer is a serious felony, so the leaders will have a threat to hold over everyone's head.
    • The child porn version is mentioned in another episode, "P911", where the head of the Crimes Against Children unit explains that pedophile rings routinely trade content for that very reason (weeding out undercover cops). It isn't used as a test within the episode, just an explanation for why finding the source of a particular video is difficult (since it's been passed multiple times).
    • Mentioned again in "Supply and Demand", wherein they work with another team tracking a human trafficking setup. The BAU asks how they can have undercover agents on the case, since they'd obviously have to commit a crime to be accepted into the club, and the team leader explains that they set their undercover agents up as potential targets instead. Though they're later able to track the criminals with the logic that white collar crime like real estate fraud would be enough to qualify them, and it seems like that would be easy enough for them to set up a fake.
  • In CSI: Miami, a woman working with an undercover agent ends up murdered because 1) she refuses to take her dealer's heroin (she was pregnant) and 2) her handler refuses to step in when she gives him the code phrase for "I want out".
  • The Doctor Who episode "The Husbands of River Song" features "The Harmony and Redemption", a space pleasure cruiser exclusively for use by the galaxy's worst dictators and criminals. The provable murder of multiple innocent lives is one of the minimum requirements of boarding, and even the staff are required to have "a verifiable history of indiscriminate slaughter" in order to work there.
  • Galavant parodies this when Madalena goes to gain the powers of D'DEW (Dark, dark, evil way) and proves unnervingly overeager to eat the kitten unasked. Chester Wormwood turns around holding a knife and a baby and she refuses, reconsiders, and tells him to hand it over before he even has a chance to explain he's just babysitting and she only needs to sign a contract. Handing her the knife he goes to find it, then turns around at her squeak of pain to explain she doesn't need to sign in blood either.
    Chester: Now step away from the baby. You really freaked me out before.
  • Game of Thrones: The wildlings demand that Jon Snow kill the horse trader they've captured in "The Rains of Castamere." He can't do it, thus proving he's a Fake Defector.
  • A Get Smart episode had Max infiltrating KAOS by pretending to go bad and getting fired from CONTROL so they'd hire him. Once in, they give him his first assignment - to kill 99, who they'd just captured. It turns out, however, that this nest of KAOS agents was made entirely of good-guy agents from different agencies who'd infiltrated.
  • Halo (2022). In "Homecoming", Silver Team reveal that Dr. Halsey did a variation on the puppy-killing test. During a survival exercise each trainee was given a pet animal—Kai had a puppy, Riz had a cat, while Vannak had a pig—and were formed into teams to compete against each other. The losing side had to kill their own pets to learn that every failure had consequences. Vannak never lost, but Halsey killed his pet anyway as she only wanted the SPARTANs to bond with each other.
  • In season three of Heroes, Hiro Nakamura attempts to infiltrate a group of villains. When he confronts them one of them gives him a sword, and demands he kill his best friend Ando, who was trying to infiltrate their group as well, to prove he's as bad as he says. Much to their surprise Hiro actually goes through with it! Well, not actually. Since he can stop time and teleport, he was able to switch the sword with a fake and hide a packet of fake blood in Ando's shirt, who then pretended to die after Hiro "stabbed" him.
    • An instance is implied in the Bad Future in season 1: President Sylar!Nathan gets his scientific adviser Mohinder to agree to his plan to eradicate all superhumans. But first, he's captured Hiro and intends to have him executed, so after a moment's thought he decides to have Mohinder carry out the execution, apparently to test whether he's all right with getting his hands dirty. But instead, Mohinder lets Hiro go so he can fix the past.
  • A variant occurs in an episode of Human Target: the head villain of the episode doesn't know Chance snatched the actual hitman and is now pretending to be him. Still, this otherwise plays out fairly straight: Chance, undercover, is given the order to kill a prisoner... which he does. Then, when the boss leaves the room, he improvises a defibrillator and resuscitates the guy.
  • In Informer, Gabe discusses this as an unavoidable part of being The Informant, and it happens when Raza beats up a fast food shop employee rather than blow his cover.
  • Not done as a test, but in The Movie of Kamen Rider Fourze, the catsuit-wearing Action Girl Inga Blink is revealed to be a good guy when she refuses to shoot Tomoko in the back. This is the point where Ryusei actually stops to listen to her and discovers that the real villains were manipulating the Kamen Rider Club the whole time.
  • A variation in one episode of Knight Rider, in which Michael is suspended from FLAG on trumped-up charges and joins up with the villain du jour. He then has to break into Foundation HQ to retrieve a MacGuffin; but Devon catches him in the act and Michael shoots him. He wasn't specifically told to kill Devon, and it wasn't really a test of Michael's loyalty either, but he knew the villain was tapped into FLAG's video surveillance and wanted to give the guy a good show. Also, it turns out Devon was in on the whole charade, including the fake firing.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
    • Stabler faces this when he goes undercover as a suburban drug dealer. The drug syndicate he's "contracting" with to be his new suppliers tries to get him to sample some of his own product. Stabler hotly refuses, saying that his day job runs random drug tests. It works.
    • In another episode, Stabler, having gone undercover to gain the trust of a serial rapist, has to rape a woman that the real rapist kidnapped. Fortunately, he's able to worm his way out of it by telling the rapist that he doesn't like doing it in front of another guy, so the rapist obliges and leaves the room. Stabler then tells the victim that he's a cop, and she needs to scream convincingly. It works.
  • Frequently invoked in The Lone Ranger more or less every time the Lone Ranger pretends to join a gang of bad guys. Usually the Lone Ranger can brazen his way out of it with some variation of "would a good guy wear a mask?" However, in one episode, the gang challenges him to shoot an Native American character, and so the Lone Ranger simply tells the boy in a Native language to play along and then pretends to shoot him. The boy agrees and pretends to be shot and the gang—not having understood what was said—is convinced.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In "Partings", Waldreg leads the group of villagers who've decided to surrender into the Orcs' camp and vows to serve them. Adar, the Orcs' leader, hands Waldreg a knife and orders him to prove his loyalty by killing Rowan, one of the teenagers that came from the village. The scene cuts away before we see Waldreg make his decision but by the next episode Waldreg is a key part of Adar's plan for the region, and Rowan is never seen again.
  • On Lost, Benjamin Linus has to participate in the Purge perpetrated by the group later known as the Others, so as to become one of them for good (or, should we say, for evil) ; which means helping to murder the entirety of the DHARMA Initiative people with gas poison, including his own father (whom Ben kills himself inside a van in a remote area ā€“ he later brags about killing all the people in the pit but he didn't do it all alone, and he didn't even give the order, which probably came from the leader, advised by Richard Alpert).
  • When MacGyver tries to join a pack of terrorists as a mole, he is given a gun and asked to kill another terrorist to prove his loyalty. Being a Technical Pacifist, he doesn't, saying that he despises leaders who are so eager to lose their men. It works.
  • In the fourth finale of The Mentalist, Jane is asked to bring Lisbon's dead body to Red John as proof of his change of heart and willingness to join him.
  • In an episode of Miami Vice, Detective Gina Calabrese is attempting to infiltrate a crime lord's organization by going undercover as a prostitute. The crime lord insists she has sex with him. To protect her cover, Gina agrees.
  • NCIS: Los Angeles: Sam infiltrates an al-Shabaab cell trying to rescue a kidnapped Saudi prince. As they arrive, the hostage, who is about nine, makes a break for it, and the cell leader hands Sam a gun and tells him to kill the prince. Sam just hands the gun back, cracking that he should trust him and give him a gun that's loaded. The cell leader smiles, then loads the gun and executes the guy who had been guarding the prince.
  • In Season 4 of Once Upon a Time, Regina has to prove she's still evil to Cruella and Ursula, in order to find out their plans. The first thing we see them doing is playing chicken with Cruella's car on the railway tracks ("It's called 'Don't Be A Hero'. First one to save us loses.") which she understandably thinks is ridiculous. From what she reported to Emma later, the rest of the "test" consisted of getting drunk and smashing up property. If You're So Evil Poke This Poodle.
  • The Orville: Happens in the episode Identity, Part 2. After taking over the Orville, Kaylon Prime orders Isaac to kill Ty as a test of his loyalty. The plan backfires as it causes Isaac to turn against the Kaylon and aid the humans in retaking the ship.
  • In the one-season '80s show Outlaws, the heroic time-traveling wild west outlaws with hearts of gold who are super rich from antique pocket money attempt to infiltrate an Evil Construction Company and are "invited" essentially to rape two serving girls to seal the deal. Upon their righteous refusal the Big Bad of the episode says something like "Betrayed by their own morals, here you have them, folks, the Good Guys!" (This is a bit weird because the only villainy they were attempting to impersonate was the Corporate Evil kind, and they could at least have tried to fake squeamishness about violent assault.)
  • Oz. Undercover cop Desmond Mobay uses various tricks to appear to be a user, such as palming or only partially snorting the drug. Unfortunately the inmates are wise to these tricks and force him to snort several lines of cocaine while they surround him. They insist on witnessing one of his drug deals; Mobray gets round this by selling to another undercover cop, so no law is being broken. Later they tell Mobay that to join their gang he must kill someone. Mobay, who now has a serious drug habit, murders a corrupt cop who's threatened to expose him. He eventually confesses to the crime when it sinks in how far he's strayed.
  • Jarod on The Pretender would face this kind of challenge when he went undercover as a shady occupation like hitman or bank robber. He'd always find a way to finesse the issue until he could bring the actual criminals to justice.
  • Raised by Wolves (2020): Marcus apparently used to force his son Paul to kill animals to prove his Mithraic resolve. When Caleb, in the guise of Marcus, presents him with a pet mouse, Paul assumes he wants him to kill it.
  • An unusual example occurs in the last two episodes of Robin of Sherwood. Guy of Gisborne, captured by the murderous wolf cultists, accepts their invitation to join them because he's finally fed up with being the Sheriff's flunky (the last straw was when the Sheriff tried to blame Gisborne for a failure of his own, which would get him executed). Later they capture the Sheriff as well, and eventually tell Gisborne to kill him. What's unusual is that he fails the test not because he's unwilling to kill the Sheriff but because he insists on doing it cleanly with a sword rather than butchering him with an axe. In the end they both escape and are reconciled.
  • Scarecrow and Mrs. King: In one episode Lee infiltrates a group recruiting burned-out agents to do their dirty work, who lure Amanda to their base and tell him to shoot her to prove he's genuine. He seemingly goes through with it; however it turns out that he'd purposefully missed and she'd had the foresight to fling herself into the ditch and play dead (allowing her to wait until they'd left and fetch help). The scene is used to highlight the trust and unspoken communication that has developed between the pair by this point in the series.
  • In an episode of Seinfeld, to avoid harassment by a street gang George claims to be a former member. They don't believe him so to "prove it" he has to mug somebody on the street. Jerry's parents walk by and George tries to get them to pretend he's robbing them but they dismiss him.
    George: Shhh! Listen, you gotta do me a favor. Give me your wallet. I'll give it back to you later.
    Morty Seinfeld: How're your folks?
    George: Eh, they're trying to pick out a new couch — you don't want to know. [remembering watching the Van Buren Boys] Give me your wallet, or I'll spill your guts right here on the street!
    Morty: What did you say?
    George: Come on, hurry up, old man! I'm an animal!
    Helen: You're being very rude. Come on, Morty.
    George: Please, please, they're gonna hit me! [attempts to grab Helen's purse, she starts hitting George defensively, he backs off]
    Morty: Tell your parents we said 'Hi!'
  • The Shield
    • One of these tests is given (off screen) to a Federal mole in the Salvadorian mafia. We are later shown the carved up remains of the guy he was ordered to kill, showing that he "passed."
    • On another episode, Tina and Julian go undercover as an aspiring porn star and her boyfriend. When the director/drug dealer they were meeting with demands a blow job right there in his office, Tina manages to stall him until he implicates himself.
  • In Spartacus: War Of The Damned, Julius Caesar infiltrates the rebels by pretending to be an escaped slave who wants to join them. Nemetes tests him by presenting a captured Roman woman named Fabia whom Nemetes had raped several times and orders Caesar to rape her. Instead, Caesar gives her a Mercy Kill. Nemetes is impressed, thinking he did it because he really hates the Romans.
  • The Spy: While touring a Syrian fortification under the guise of being a Zionist-hating zealot, Israeli secret agent Eli Cohen is invited by a Syrian general to open fire on Israeli civilians with a machinegun. Cohen makes several attempts to beg off, but must ultimately either go along with it or break his cover identity.
  • In the Starsky & Hutch episode "The Committee", Starsky is a Fake Defector trying to infiltrate a group of murderous vigilante cops. As his initiation ritual they tell him to kill a slimy defense lawyer; Starsky just grabs the guy and runs. (He gets away with it mainly because his partner picks that moment to show up with backup.)
  • A slightly tamer, yet still unnerving example in Star Trek: The Next Generation during the episode "Conspiracy". Several Starfleet officers are taken over by an alien symbiotic species at Starfleet Command. When this is revealed, Riker is given a fake "tail" of the creatures to disguise himself as a possessed member of the Enterprise-D when he goes to help Picard. As the other possessed officers are eating bowls of worms, they offer Riker one as well. Riker gets a handful up to his mouth to make good on his disguise before phaser ass-whupping commences.
  • Also in one episode of Star Trek: Voyager, where the former Maquis crew members were forced to begin rebelling again by hypnotic suggestion, with the only one unaffected being Tuvok. He's handed a phaser and told to kill Captain Janeway. Tuvok presses the trigger and nothing happens. When Janeway asks him about this later, he answers, "They would not have given a person they were suspicious of an active weapon." Janeway finds this bit of logic to be... less than ironclad.
  • In season 9 of Supernatural, Castiel is asked by fellow angel Hannah to kill his human friend Dean to prove that he's still loyal to Heaven. In this case, Dean also killed one of them under the influence of the Mark of Cain. Cas can't bring himself to hurt Dean even if it means to have his brothers and sisters turned against him. Metatron who assisted to the scene comments: "His true weakness is revealed. He's in love... (Beat)... with humanity."
  • Done in Season 2 of A Touch of Cloth, after Macratty begins to suspect Jack is an undercover cop. He gives him a gun and orders him to shoot Twitch. Jack duly pulls the trigger (it helps that this is the man who killed Todd Carty), but the gun isn't loaded. Convinced Jack isn't a cop, Macratty kills Twitch himself for good measure.
  • Subverted amusingly in one episode of Veronica Mars. Veronica actually tries to do this when she thinks she has found an Animal Wrongs Group by advocating outright terroristic tactics, but it doesn't work out because the activists are the sensible, law-abiding sort who don't believe in extreme methods.
  • Walker, Texas Ranger: Season 9's "Unsafe Speed" had a version where to get into a group, a pair of undercover cops (Gage and Sydney) have to go with the gang to town to commit a crime. They're able to avoid causing real trouble by having a cop stop them and pretending to kill him, which is good enough.
  • Averted in White Collar when an undercover-as-a-hooker Diana has to pick up a client to prove her worth and Neal steps in to play the part of her john:
    Neal: What were you going to do if I hadn't come in?
    Diana: Well, I'd have put this strawberry in that guy's mouth, taken him up to my room, put a gun between his ribs and told him to shut up and sit tight, or I'd arrest him for solicitation.
  • The Wire plays the trope straight to its logical conclusion.
    • Stringer Bell tasks young Bodie to kill Wallace for snitching, and he does so. Afterwards, Bodie is shown to be a key member of the Barksdale crew.
    • Marlo Stanfield needs Michael to kill someone to become a full fledged trusted underling, but also won't send him after Bodie, because they know eachother, rather demanding he shoot another dealer he doesn't know, with the instructions to walk up and look him in the eye first.
    • Namond price fails the test, after he has to get his stash back from Kenard, but freezes up after Michael beats the much smaller kid.
  • Wiseguy:
    • In season one, deep cover agent Vincent Terranova is instructed to murder a federal agent to gain mobster Sonny Steelgrave's trust. He compliantly goes to the agent's house and shoots him ... or rather, shoots the bulletproof vest Vinny covertly warned his fellow fed to don.
    • Vinnie has another test later in the first season when he's infiltrating a different organization. Mel Profitt gets annoyed with one of the guests on his yacht and orders Vinnie to throw her overboard. Vinnie refuses. But it works out because Mel respects Vinnie for standing up to him.
  • Wonder Woman: In "Light-fingered Lady", Diana must steal plans for Caribe to prove her worthiness and standing as a criminal. She does so as Wonder Woman, but unbeknownst to her, Caribe sends someone else to check on Diana. Diana's plans go awry when she runs into him as Wonder Woman and is forced to lock him in a closet. As Diana, she rescues the Mook and gets bonus points for pulling off the job right under Wonder Woman's nose!
  • The X-Files: In "The Pine Bluff Variant", Mulder is forced to participate in a bank robbery when undercover with a terrorist group and is ordered to kill one of the hostages. He aims his gun but hesitates until one of the other members of the group sends him away and kills the hostage himself.
  • Zero Zero Zero: An interesting variation has one of the Leyra brothers tell Manuel that, before they'll let him and his commandos join The Cartel, Manuel has to execute the least-skilled member of his squad to prove his loyalty and ruthlessness. Manuel refuses and produces a hidden gun, so the test instantly devolves into a Mexican Standoff. The other Leyra brother quickly vetoes the test and admits the commandos into the cartel.

    Music 
  • In DJ Kintaro's "FREE", the Culture Police make people step on a vinyl record (vinyl being outlawed). The one who can't do it is hauled away.
  • The Dr. Dre song "187 (Deep Cover)" opens with Snoop Dogg forcing a guy to hit off a crack pipe to prove he isn't a cop.
  • Dance With The Devil by Immortal Technique. In order to join a gang, as an initiation, a guy jumps way over the Moral Event Horizon. He rapes and kills his mum

    Myths & Religion 

    Radio 
  • Dead Ringers: In the contest for leadership of the Tory Party, Jeremy Hunt goes around the various hard-core Brexiters, trying to curry their loyalty by proclaiming all the horrifically evil things he'd do, such as killing kittens or stabbing people to death with blunt scissors. He's rejected for not being psychotically evil enough.

    Roleplay 
  • A dramatic example in Equestria Chronicles: Icarus, established as a kind and loving pony, is told to execute a prisoner in front of the entire city. On penalty of death. While his Dad looks on. He's given five minutes to prepare.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Chronicles of Darkness: A common theme in demonic pacts (as seen in Inferno) is that the one making the Deal with the Devil must commit an evil act appropriate to the sins involved. Someone wanting great strength and durability might have to kill a man in a fair fight, while someone who wants to be able to steal the powers and skills of others might have to tear out a man's eye.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The final test to join the Chaotic Evil Ravagers is to sacrifice an innocent to Erythnul, the god of slaughter. This serves as a means of weeding out good-aligned infiltrators seeking to destroy the Ravagers from within.
    • One default prerequisite for a character to take up the Assassin prestige class is that they must commit a murder for no other reason than to be accepted into the class.

    Theatre 
  • A rare heroine-to-villain example in Handel's Rodelinda. Rodelinda tells Grimoaldo (who had usurped the throne and banished her husband) she'll agree to marry him, but in that case he must go the whole way and kill her little son in front of her eyes. Grimoaldo can't bring himself to do it ā€“ which was the point of Rodelinda's plan all along.

    Video Games 
  • While not really a test of evilness, in 7.62 High Caliber, the first thing the rebels demand of you is to kill a captured government official. If you refuse, they will kill you (as you're heavily outnumbered and outgunned). The problem arises when you have a mission to save that same official. The solution is to find out about the conveniently delivered blanks and blood packs, and use them to stage the death of the official, thus causing both sides to like you more.
  • Justified in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, evil-aligned characters may ally themselves with the Dark Elves late in the game. To prove your worth to them, the first quest they give you requires you to kill the entire population of Stillwater Village. However, if you ask about the reasons, the quest-giver points out that the Dark Elves are inherently magical and their culture places a strong emphasis on magic. Stillwater, meanwhile, was primarily occupied by humans and dwarves, and adopting technology at a rapid rate. Since technology and magic in this setting disrupt each other, and Stillwater was on the border of Dark Elf lands, it was quite literally becoming a threat to the Dark Elf way of life.
  • Baldur's Gate II:
    • You can try to complete one quest nonviolently. However, the people you're trying to get an artifact back from will want to know you're loyal to their cause, and ask you to praise Talos, the Chaotic Evil Forgotten Realms god of storms. If you do, you're struck by lightning (though it doesn't necessarily kill you) and the battle begins. (The meeting takes place indoors incidentally.) Unless your main character actually is a priest of Talos. Hilariously, if you're wearing the cloak that reflects lightning, the ostensibly god-sent bolt bounces back and incinerates the guy you're talking to, ending the conversation prematurely and stopping the normally ensuing fight scene.
    • And of course there are the Ust'Natha quests where you have to pretend to be Drow. Though, it is possible to cheat in the one quest where you actually have to kill some innocent people.
    • Amusingly, during the drow kitten-eating quest, the guy they send with you in order to make sure you kill them is himself an undercover follower of Ellistrae. He would probably have cheated if you weren't around, as he thinks you're "proper" drow, and you can't cheat while he's around because you think he's a "proper" drow.
  • In Batman: Arkham Asylum, you can overhear one of Joker's goons telling his buddies that Joker once ordered him to kill his sister to prove his loyalty. He did so with zero hesitation, claiming he never liked her anyway. Another mook one-ups him, saying that Joker made the same request of him even though he had no sister, but Joker kept asking him anyway. So he got in his car and ran over the first woman he saw.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops II puts YOU in this position. Menendez and his men have captured Harper, and is telling you to prove your loyalty by shooting him in the head. There's a catch to this, though: Farid, the character you're playing as, has killed his allies to maintain his cover, and Harper is one of his closest friends. You can choose to shoot Menendez, but it doesn't work out well for you. Notably, to get the Golden Ending, you must eat the kitten, as this gets Menendez to trust Farid enough to put him in a position to majorly screw up his plans further down the road.
  • The Chzo Mythos has the Order of the Blessed Agonies' Agony of the Soul, where someone must prove their loyalty to the cult of pain by killing someone they love and rely upon.
  • Near the end of Driver, the Mafia tasks Tanner with assassinating the President as part of his rite of passage. Tanner refuses and flees with the Pres, resulting in the corrupt NYPD and FBI relentlessly pursuing him in the final mission.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Oblivion:
      • In order to join the Dark Brotherhood, you have to murder an innocent (ie, not in self defense) person. The next time you sleep, you'll be offered membership. (For some bizarre reason, though, killing the Grey Prince in a match at the end of the Arena gladiator storyline counts for this.)
      • At one point in the main quest, you go undercover as one of the evil cultists you've been searching for. Turns out their initiation rite is sacrificing some poor sap to their god. It's very hard to save the guy as a statue falls on him if you just ignore him. Killing him when they ask you to makes the quest a little easier as it causes the audience watching you to leave. On the other hand, if you deliberately free him, or simply hack-and-slash your way in, you can save the victim and he will reward you later.
    • Skyrim:
      • The initiation to join the Dark Brotherhood this time involves killing one of three individuals tied-up with bags over their heads. However, each are possible contracts (one is a mercenary, one is an unrepentant criminal, and one is simply an annoying nag). You can also Take a Third Option and kill Astrid, which changes the questline to hunting down the Dark Brotherhood instead. Killing all three of them gets you compliments on your ruthlessness.
      • The quest for the Daedric Prince Boethiah (whose sphere includes betrayal, deceit, and murder) requires you to prove that you're treacherous enough to work for her. To do that, you need to find someone who trusts you enough to follow you, take them to Boethiah's altar, and sacrifice that person.
      • Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of Domination and Corruption, requires that you murder a friendly Vigilant of Stendarr before he'll give you his quest proper.
    • Elder Scrolls Online
      • The Dark Brotherhood's initiation goes the same as in Oblivion, only this time in the Gold Coast. This time, however, some of the justice system NPCs have rather abrasive personalities, so some possible targets may make you feel a bit less guilty this time around.
  • In 'The Shadow Odyssey' expansion pack for EverQuest II, one quest to infiltrate a group of troll pirates involves getting ordered to kill an arena full of kittens. If you choose not to do it, you can stuff them into a sack and hide them, instead. The dialog for not killing the kittens has your player telling the troll that you ate them.
  • Fable:
    • Fable: One Demon Door won't open unless you "perform an act of great evil" in front of him or you're already at the bottom of the Karma Meter. You can betray and murder an ally... or just eat ten Crunchy Chicks from your inventory.
      Demon Door: That was wicked! Literally.
    • Fable II:
      • The entrance exam of the Temple of Shadows used to be something easy like kicking the crutches out from under a lame man. Nowadays, you have to eat five whole live baby chicks, raw, while the sort-of evil guy comments on how horrible it is.
      • In the Spire, you have to infiltrate the Big Bad's headquarters. You go through progressively eviler and eviler acts, starting with obeying/disobeying the Commandant, proceeding to either keep food away from or feed starving prisoners, and finally choosing to kill/not kill a fellow guard who has been quite friendly. Taking the good choices doesn't expose you as a spy or anything, but it does cost you some of your precious, precious experience points.
  • Fallout has an example of this; to befriend some Raiders, you must execute two girls they have taken as prisoners.
    • Fallout 3:
      • One way to gain entrance to Paradise Falls to rescue the Little Lamplighters is to hypnotize and enslave the four people on gatekeeper Grouse's "VIP List".
      • To get the nice suite in Tenpenny Tower, you have to nuke Megaton for Mr. Burke.
    • To rescue your dad from the Tranquility Lane VR simulation, you must first assist Dr. Stanislaus Braun in torturing the residents of the simulation. Or you can Take a Third Option and put them out of their misery with the Failsafe.
    • In Fallout 4, you can witness the leader of The Forged telling Jake, their newest "recruit", to kill a prisoner. Jake can't bring himself to Kick the Dog, showing that he isn't as lost as his father believed; he is just too innocent to understand that Raiders are a bunch of Ax-Crazy psychopaths who won't stop at merely robbing people.
      Slag: Prove to me that you can kill, it's him or you.
  • Far Cry 3:
    • After Jason steals a uniform and ID from a mercenary in order to infiltrate Hoyt's drug-smuggling and people-trafficking ring, he's told to torture one of the captives in order to gain Hoyt's favor. Jason, who's been pretty thoroughly desensitised to violence by his experiences, goes through with it, although he angsts about it afterwards, especially because the captive turned out to be his younger brother, Riley.
      • And then, at a high-stakes poker game between Hoyt and Jason, the crime kingpin tells Jason that he knew who he was along. So Jason torturing his brother was All for Nothing except Hoyt's sick entertainment.
    • The final storyline mission of the game ends with Citra trying to get Jason to kill the friends he's spent the game trying to rescue in order to prove his commitment to the Rakyat's warrior philosophy. If you follow through with this, she invokes You Have Outlived Your Usefulness and kills Jason after using him to impregnate herself.
  • Final Fantasy VII: In a variation, during the initial mako reactor attack, Barret tells Cloud he doesn't fully trust him, and orders him to set up the bomb himself to prove he's not some undercover Shinra agent. The same happens in the Remake, but in the Remake, an undercover Shinra agent would have blown up the reactor all the same.
  • In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Tibarn calls out Sephiran on this during a boss dialogue against him in Chapter 4-Endgame-4
    Sephiran: Hello, King Tibarn. I thought I might see you. Only the strongest reach the top. Itā€™s only natural that you would be among them.
    Tibarn: You know what? I donā€™t believe youā€™re the big, bad, evil guy you want us all to think you are.
    Sephiran: What could you be talking about?
    Tibarn: Ah, I was right! I see it in your eyes. Iā€™ve been around for a while, and learned a bit about spotting fakes. So now that your secretā€™s out, maybe youā€™d like to open up and tell me: Who are you really?
    Sephiran: ā€¦
  • In the Conquest path of Fire Emblem Fates, the Player Character's loyalty to the evil King Garon is repeatedly questioned. For the Avatar, it's a constant struggle between appearing to meet Garon's very high standard of ruthlessness, and preserving moral integrity. Especially when the time comes to kill the Avatar's Hoshidan family...
  • In FreeSpace 2, in order to prove your loyalty when working as a spy amongst the Neo Terran Front rebel faction, they dare you to gun down a civilian transport. If you refuse (by waiting), they brand you a traitor and a spy and try to kill you. If you accept and destroy the ship, they call you heartless but say they knew you were a spy and try to kill you. Due to a mission scripting oversight it doesn't actually matter in the end what you do here. If you destroy the civilian ship you get a severe reprimand from your superiors, are told that you're to be tried for treason, and generally implying the end of your career as a pilot. However the game still considers the mission a success and allows you to continue through the campaign as if nothing happened - possibly because of the Shivans.
  • Knights of the Old Republic:
    • Either subverted or played absolutely dead straight, depending on your Karma Meter position. In order to gain full access to the Sith school on Korriban (and therefore the Star Map in a tomb there), you have to demonstrate yourself to be a hard-ass bastard in the true Sith style by destroying assassin droids, executing runaway students, and betraying pretty much every other student. The subversion is that while you can behave like a murderous bastard by betraying and murdering your rivals, you can also do what any good undercover Jedi would do: cheat like crazy. You can fake the deaths of the renegade students, calm the assassin droid with a conscience down, and even redeem the ghost of a Sith Lord from centuries ago and still get in. Heck, there's a Hoist by His Own Petard moment when a Sith student thinks he's backstabbing you by demanding what he thinks is the right sword and letting him have it. You can even get the Star Map and then lecture the leaders of the Academy about how their backstabbing ways let you accomplish it all.
    • In probably the best example of subversion you stumble into a Sith mentor testing some students. They suck so he ponders on a proper punishment for them: death or torture- and turns to you for an advice. You can approve violent choices OR you can tell him to simply let them go. Just because that's what you want. If you manage to push it across hard enough the Sith is impressed with your badassitude and vehement adherence to Sith MO and indeed lets them go.
  • If you try to join up with the Big Bad in Long Live the Queen, his first command is for you to kill your father. Depending on how you've been building your character through the game, you may or may not be able to go through with it.
  • Mass Effect 2: In Samara's recruitment mission, Pitne For tells you that the Eclipse mercenaries on Illium have to commit murder to earn their uniforms. You can later find an audio file left by one of the mercs boasting about who she killed to join them.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, The Boss is suspected of being a traitor due to the Cobras' deaths (and covering for a spy, as well). She is told to stab out Naked Snake's eyes. She is about to do it when she is stopped by EVA/Tanya. This is especially tense since we know That Big Boss lost an eye at some point in his life. He loses the eye soon after in a somewhat unrelated incident.
  • In the Might and Magic games where you have to choose between the Light and Dark paths, some Promotion Quests on the Dark Path require doing something simply to prove you're Dark enough. For example, in VI, the Assassin quest requires killing a young noblewoman in Celeste (she's defenseless, and simply sneaking up on her while invisible will finish her in one hit) while the Villain quest requires kidnapping a young girl. (Even easier. The hardest part of both quests is simply escaping the town or city in question, but a Town Portal can do that.) Oddly enough, completing both will lower your Reputation Score even in Deja, a place allied with the Dark Path; it seems Even Evil Has Standards regarding this sort of thing.
  • Modern Warfare:
    • This is what comprises the entire mission "No Russian" in Modern Warfare 2, in which you're undercover in a group of Russian terrorists as they massacre an airport full of defenseless civilians. You're not actually required to actively participate in the civilian massacre, but eventually the riot police show up and you inevitably have to fight through them to complete the mission. Trying to kill the terrorist leader results in a Hopeless Boss Fight of sorts, where the terrorist members become invincible and start shooting at you instead. From Bad to Worse: It turns out the terrorist leader already knew your character was undercover and kills him at the end of the level. He deliberately let your character join so he could leave your body behind at the scene, thus pinning the whole incident on an American and pushing Russia to invade the U.S.. In other words, everything your character did only played right into his hands. And even then, there's an even bigger reveal towards the end of the campaign.
    • Also, Modern Warfare 3 reveals that a member of Makarov's inner circle defected to the Loyalists rather than participate in the mission. There's a flashback where you get to play as him after he gets shot for being a traitor, then staggers through the airport futilely trying to stop the massacre before he passes out. That's right, one of Makarov's own men wouldn't eat the kitten — and suffers for it.
  • In the Evil Ending of Neverwinter Nights 2, you must prove you have no allegiance to your former party members by killing them all singlehandedly.
  • Played with in Portal. Most players will remember Test Chamber 17: the home of the famed Companion Cube. GLaDOS coaxes Chell to use the cube in various ways to get through the test, then, in typical GLaDOS fashion, springs the trope on her by indicating that in order to complete the test, she has to "euthanize" the Cube by dumping it into the incinerator. Barring Cargo Ship, most players just get it over with since the Cube isn't alive (it's exactly like all the other Cubes you use for tests, except it has hearts on the sides instead of the Aperture logo), but GLaDOS keeps on implying your "evil" nature once you finish: "You euthanized your faithful Companion Cube more quickly than any other test subject on record. Congratulations."
  • In Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, after Roland supposedly betrays Evermore and Evan for King Mausinger (Evan's deposer) in Ding Dong Dell, Mausinger orders him to the dungeons where he wants him to kill Batu's colleague, Khunbish, who was caught trying to sneak in after Roland. He fakes it by shooting Khunbish with a trick bullet that only knocks Khunbish out and makes it seem like he's dead. Mausinger is seemingly satisfied, though it later transpired that he wasn't entirely convinced.
  • Quest for Glory II has this in the form of a test to join the Eternal Order of Fighters, by having you kill a man after defeating him in a trial by combat. If you kill him, you get a higher rank in the EOF, which has absolutely no in-game benefit; if you spare him, you get a lower rank, but the in-game Karma Meter gets points and he speaks on your behalf in the finale, which can earn your character the title of Paladin. Of course, whether you decide to or not, the man stands up alive and well after the fight is over.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne if you want to side with the Yosuga (the Might Makes Right faction and the most explicitly evil of the three Reasons), you must assist in their massacres of the Manakins (who are, for the most part, defenceless) and kill the manakin leader Futomimi.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV, the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado eventually gets torn apart by the Black Samurai's Literature and its effects on the social order. So the Four Archangels decide to have the remaining loyal Samurai randomly ask the remaining Casualries to perform the E-fumi test. No points for guessing how everyone reacts.
  • In Sleeping Dogs (2012), protagonist Wei Shen is quickly singled out by the Water Street Boys' Conroy Wu as a possible undercover cop or rat for not being as immediately bloodthirsty as Conroy, and because the last guy they had like that turned out to be a copnote . When their leader orders an assault against a rival gang's drug warehouse and Wei amends it to at least taking the warehouse leader alive, Conroy coerces Wei to get some blood on his hands to prove that he's not a cop. Wei does go through with this though, so afterwards Conroy apologizes to Wei, admitting that "you showed your true colors tonight", and fully accepts him as a member of the Water Street Boys... unaware that while Wei's handler may not like it, his superior Superintendant Pendrew doesn't mind Wei killing criminals to maintain his cover, and indeed Wei's personal body count skyrockets after this.
  • Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Sam Fisher is infiltrating the terrorist group John Brown's Army. He faces a Kitten Eating Test several times, including being ordered to kill three people (the helicopter pilot who helped him escape from prison, a CIA agent and his boss Colonel Lambert), and blowing up a cruise ship. The order to shoot Colonel Lambert is also Shoot Your Mate. The sequel reveals that the canon choice was to maintain your cover.
  • Tyranny: The Scarlet Chorus recruit their ranks from the survivors of their onslaught by pitting them against each other, usually by pairing up friends and family. If they can kill the other guy first, they're in. If not, then they're dead and that's that.
  • In a meta example, if you want to take the Genocide route in Undertale, you'll have to murder several prominent, lovable characters in cold blood, despite the fact that they're not trying to fight you at all. First Papyrus, then the Glad Dummy, then almost the Monster Kid (though they're saved by Undyne Taking the Bullet, you're still required to try). Not to mention that you can One-Hit Kill several bosses before they get off a single attack. This strongly contrasts a Neutral run; while killing monsters can still earn you a What the Hell, Hero? or two, everything you can kill was trying to kill you first.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Some quest lines have you undermine evil guys. Not all of them make you do really evil stuff, but a particular quest line in Zul'Drak definitely qualifies; slaughtering an entire village of trolls and subjecting their chieftains to cruel experiments. One may argue that the trolls are evil anyway but they are definitely less of a threat than the Scourge.
    • Death Knight starting zone. You are called upon to kill a member of your own race from the Argent Dawn to prove your ruthlessness. When you go inside, you find out that your quarry is a friend from your old life, who recognises you as soon as they stand. At first they remind you who you were before undeath and then try to pull "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight on you. A cry of "What's taking so long?" from the Scourge commander outside is enough to put a stop to that possibility and you have no option but to Shoot the Dog, as your friend is dying from their injuries anyway and if you don't, they'll kill both of you.
    • Being a Blood Elf embodies this Trope. One early meme was that a usual quest was "Kill this kitten. FOR FUN!"
    • There's a questline in Stranglethorn Vale that involves joining the Bloodsail Buccaneers(temporarily, you won't lose your Booty Bay reputation). To prove that you're on their side you must kill the fleet master in Booty Bay and bring them his head. Because the Fleet Master is a Tauren, a humanoid bull, you get away with handing them a cow's head wearing a pirate hat, and they're so stupid they can't tell the difference.
    • Arthas, after revealing he was a Death Knight publicly, ordered Thassarian to kill his own mother to prove his loyalty. So he did.
    • During the Mount Hyjal questline, you are tasked with infiltrating the Twilight's Hammer cult. One quest to prove your loyalty to the cult involves killing unarmed unworthy initiates cowering in fear. Unlike some other examples, there is no way to fake it; whatever your feelings on the matter, you have to kill them to continue.
  • XCOM: Chimera Squad: Inverted. Aliens that were formerly serving ADVENT can be integrated into human society only after proving they have "capacity for compassion", and a typical method of doing so is taking care of a government-issued cat. Note that the alien members of Chimera Squad bypassed this test; Verge defected to humanity by inadvertently taking empathy lessons from the politician he was brainwashing (and for some reason cats naturally hate him), Axiom broke free from his detainment during a bug apocalypse only to save his captors and march back to the prison van, and Torque got by on nepotism (her stepmother is in XCOM high command).
    • Of note, one of the gang leaders failed this test multiple times but was allowed to leave because they showed constant guilt at accidentally getting their cats killed. It turns out, this was a bad call; someone who accidentally eats the kittens and then breaks down in genuine remorse is still someone who needs to be watched for more kitten eating.

    Web Animation 
  • In the Strong Bad Email "rated", Strong Bad claims that all his favorite movies have been banned in Transylvania, "where you're required by law to eat puppies for breakfast."

    Web Comics 
  • Axe Cop: In comic #137, Axe Cop and Dinosaur Soldier try to enter the villains' secret lair, which is guarded by a giant evil head. They decide to go undercover as bad guys to get in, but the head demands that they kill a good guy to prove their badness. Luckily for them, Mr. Stocker, the useless superhero with no powers, shows up... and Axe Cop, being written by a young child, isn't one for moral dilemmas. (They can always have Uni-Man bring Mr. Stocker back to life if they need him again.)
  • In Ever Blue it's more like "if you're so loyal to the city, kill your best friend who is terribly dangerous, and I won't tell you why". Seta goes and does it not. He pretends to, because he thinks if he just told Luna what's going on, she'd want to stay and help, and he has to do this by himself.
  • Fluble parodies this in a scene where Mack The tells Fluble that women will only date scum. When Fluble insists that he can be scum, Mack The challenges him to eat a puppy. Fluble falters, Mack The eats the puppy and is immediately surrounded by women.
  • In The Handbook of Heroes, Anti-Paladin's introduction sees him being asked to kick a puppy to prove how evil he is. Anti-Paladin refuses on the grounds that it's not only cruel but also pointless; he's evil, not Snidely Whiplash.
  • In The Legend Of Anne Bunny, which is very loosely based on real history, Anne is told she can't join the pirates until she kills someone. She claims to have already done it, and at least one pirate believes her. Later she confesses otherwise, but they decide she's cool off to have around anyway. Heck, they elect her captain after the mutiny.
  • In The Order of the Stick, Belkar's test to multi-class as a barbarian is to choose from one of three other barbarians to fight. Belkar chooses to kill all three. Subverted when the recruiter informs him that the fights weren't supposed to be to the death.
  • One Ozy and Millie strip has Millie give up on trying to be evil after she can't bring herself to kill a spider.
  • This is how Xaneth vets Sebastian as a potential evil henchman in True Villains: "If you're so evil, annihilate this peaceful village." Given that Xaneth is The Chessmaster and a demon of the God of Knowledge, there is almost certainly an ulterior motive, but Sebastian sees it as this trope and does it anyway.

    Web Original 
  • The Cracked article 5 Insane Things I Learned About Drugs As An Undercover Agent discusses this trope. As it turns out most criminals, real or not, aren't very interested in getting a murder rap just to test someone's loyalty. The article even links to this very page.
  • An article by The Onion on new regulations of the stock market mentions requiring brokers to pass a "Kitten-and-Hammer Ethics Test", presumably to reveal those who are evil.

    Web Videos 
  • Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog:
    • "He rides across the nation, the thoroughbred of sin. He got the application that you just sent in. It needs evaluation, so let the games begin. A heinous crime, a show of force, a murder would be nice of course..."
    • And more so later: "So now assassination is just the only way. There will be blood, it might be yours, so go kill someone. Signed Bad Horse."
    • There's a discussion between Moist and Horrible where Moist mentions someone named "Hourglass" (presumably with some kind of time-based powers) knows a kid who's going to grow up to be President, and suggests that Horrible could kill the kid. Or that he could smother an old lady.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time has the episode "Web Weirdos", where Finn and Jake get caught in a spider's web along with two insects. When the spider couple comes back, Finn tries to convince the male that he's not in cahoots with the other food just trying to escape, to which the spider says "Well okay then, eat your friend here." to which Finn then pretends to eat one of the insects.
    • "We Fixed a Truck" has BMO expose "Princess Bubblegum" as an imposter by ordering "her" to eat a bug it offers her. The imposter immediately grabs the bug with their lizard tongue.
  • In an episode of American Dragon: Jake Long, when The Huntsman was (correctly) suspicious that his protĆ©gĆ© Huntsgirl had switched sides and was acting as a spy for the dragons, he orders her to bring him the pelt of the dragon she had previously claimed to have slain. Luckily, Jake was about to shed his skin...
  • In Beast Machines, Jetstorm challenged Thrust to prove his loyalty to Megatron by extracting Blackarachnia's spark. Thrust almost did it, but was interrupted by Nightscream, forcing Jetstorm to do the deed himself. This becomes rather disturbing when later information is revealed.
  • There's a literal example in Catscratch, when one of the cats is pretending to be a dog, and has to prove it by eating a cat.
  • The trope is parodied in its fullest in Duck Dodgers when the Cadet is made into the lord of a race of Klingon-like aliens. When the dethroned leader brings him dessert, it turns out to be... a live kitten. And this is not a deliberate test, their race really considers kittens a delicacy!
  • In one episode of DuckTales (2017), Mrs. Beakley ends up pinned under a train car, with only Lena around to see what happened to her. Her aunt Magica, in order to make sure she's fully dedicated to her plan, tells her to leave Beakley there to die. Lena instead chooses to save her. (She justifies this later by claiming that she's "playing the long game", but Magica is skeptical.)
  • In the last episode of the Ever After High "Dragon Games" arc, Raven Queen is given this ultimatum by the Wicked Queen while pretending to be Mommy's Little Villain to buy time for her friends: throw the Ever After High faculty and Snow White into a portal to the void. Raven declines.
  • This happens in the second Futurama movie, when Bender wants to make a deal with the robot devil to get an army of robots to attack Yivo's dimension. The Devil tells him that a deal such as that will require a very evil act from Bender - giving him his first born son! Bender does it. The Robot Devil is impressed.
    Robot Devil: Wow! That was brutal, even by my standards!
    Bender: No backsies!
  • When Dusty on G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero was sent to infiltrate COBRA as The Mole, Cobra Commander has him fight a Mook in gladiatorial combat. He's told the battle is to the death, but wriggles out of having to kill the man in cold blood by humiliating the Mook instead. He even has an answer when he's called on it:
    Cobra Commander: Why did you save him? Do I detect a vestige of mercy?
    Dusty: We can always use extra help on K.P.
  • In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), Kobra Khan had been separated from other Snake Men all his life, and was thus reluctant to feed on sentient beings, something they had no problem with. When he succeeded in freeing the others, they saw this reluctance as "soft", and some of them tried to urge him to do so when the opportunity presented itself. (He never got the courage to do it, at least not before one or more of the heroes arrived to interrupt him.)
  • Justice League Unlimited:
    • A heroic variant comes up in a character's back story. Shining Knight, a knight in modern times, relates that he was tasked to raze a village to the ground by his lord King Arthur. Knowing Arthur couldn't have been so evil as to ask that, so he let them live. In return, he is rewarded for thinking rather than obeying blindly. He uses this as a metaphor for why the Shaggy Man/General Eiling is using flawed logic when he considers all super humans a threat, and only blindly obeying "duty", regardless of harmed Innocent Bystanders, mattered.
    • Inverted (or perhaps done preemptively) by The Flash when he's body swapped into Lex Luthor and he's with villains who don't know it yet.
      Polaris: You gonna wash your hands?
      The Flash: No. 'Cause I'm evil.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "Dragon Quest": Spike tags along with a dragon migration, and falls in with a pack of rowdy teenage dragons. They force Spike to prove that he's a real dragon by making him undergo a series of challenges that are easy for them but naturally difficult for Spike. Once they finally accept him, they demand he breaks open a phoenix egg he found just for fun and that's where Spike draws the line.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Bubble Boy", after kidnapping Boomer, Bubbles dresses up as him to spy on the Rowdyruff Boys. In order to maintain her cover she has to prove that she's evil which involves taking a beating, shooting a snot rocket and graffiti. Brick does eventually get suspicious at one point and forces "Boomer" to eat a cockroach to prove it's really him. Bubbles actually complies leading Butch to comment on how even he found that disgusting.
  • In Samurai Jack, Jack once had to blow up a house to enter a criminal gang. He did it, but sneakily evacuated the inhabitants first. The house was inhabitted by a kindly old man and his many cute kittens and puppies. As soon as he opens the door, Jack looks despondent.
  • The Simpsons:
    • When Bart is undercover in Shelbyville, the local kids ask him to write the graffiti "Springfield sucks" to prove himself. He seems to obey at first but really paints "Springfield rules, suckers!" instead, effectively blowing his cover with style.
    • Another episode had Burns adopting Bart and tested him to fire Homer (and drop him in a trap door). Burns ends up getting dropped instead.
    • One that doesn't involve Bart, in "Separate Vocations" where Lisa makes a temporary Faceā€“Heel Turn, she tries to fit in with a group of tough girls at school, but she hasn't gone quite so far that she's willing to smoke when then give her a cigarette. However, they're really impressed when she says she'll save it to smoke in class.
  • Inverted in South Park's retelling of Great Expectations. Pip wants to prove that Estella isn't evil and gives her a bunny and insists there's no way she could kill it. She does. Pip gives her another bunny and she kills that one. This continues for a while, and only stops because she gets bored. Which is lucky, because he'd just run out of bunnies.
  • Steven Universe: In "Full Disclosure", after dangerous battle against Homeworld Gems, Steven starts avoiding Connie, until he finally texts her saying that he doesn't wanna be friends anymore. Connie gets fed up and demands that if Steven is really that serious about breaking up with her, he should do it face-to-face. He ultimately relents and still wants to be friends with her.
  • In the SWAT Kats half-episode "Cry Turmoil", T-bone feigns allegiance to the eponymous villainess, Turmoil, until Razor is found running around Turmoil's airship. Turmoil is suspicious, until T-bone volunteers to show his loyalty by personally tossing Razor off the ship. Ultimately subverted when T-bone undoes Razor's shackles just before kicking him out of the airlock, allowing Razor to jetpack to safety.
  • The Tick is the Trope Namer, in which the eponymous hero and his sidekick are attempting to blend in with a bunch of Obviously Evil villains to pump them for information on the location of The Enemy Awards. The Forehead gets suspicious of their villain credentials and tests them with this line. The Tick fails the test immediately, as seen here.
  • Totally Spies! featured this as a brainwashing test. Unable to step on a randomly (and illogically) present mouse, Alex kicks the lone instructor in the face.
  • In the Season 4 episode of The Venture Brothers, "Bright Lights, Dean City," Baron Underbheit thinks he needs to do something along these lines to join the Revenge Society. So he, without hesitation, snaps his manservant's neck. Turns out they just wanted him to sign some forms.
  • Used in Young Justice (2010). Kaldur kills (not really) Artemis in line with this trope, but what really convinces his father to trust him is that he didn't take credit for something he didn't do. Unfortunately, the rest of the Light still don't think that's enough and give an "eat this kitten" ultimatum in capturing Blue Beetle. He goes above and beyond, capturing Blue Beetle, Impulse and Beast Boy, and blowing up Mount Justice. It's still all a ruse, but it's a pretty darn convincing one.

 
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I'm not a Christian

Tommy denies being a Christian, but the evil communists demand that he prove it.

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