No-Harm Requirement

The things you gotta do for 100% Completion...

"Normally I wouldn't ask you to hold your fire — but one of the Vek is a Volatile, it'll explode if you kill it. Drive it off instead."

— CEO Kern, Into the Breach

A frequent Drama-Preserving Handicap, this trope is in play whenever a character has to undergo the task of beating, outwitting, capturing, or ensuring the safety of another character without causing them excessive harm, provided causing ANY harm is even an option.

Picture this scenario. Let's say that Carl has assigned Bob and Alice the task of capturing an experimental beast that has escaped from the facility. No problem, right? The two are a bonafide Action Duo capable of taking down massive troops of goons on their own. How hard can taking down and reclaiming one beast be? Well there's just one thing. Carl says that the monster cost the facility so much money that losing it would set the program back immensely. Thus two must retrieve it alive and unharmed. Oh boy howdy....

There are many ways this can be brought about. Perhaps a character must subdue a beast without hurting it as per requirement of a Hidden Purpose Test or the like. Perhaps a character finds out that a monstrosity is actually a loved one and they must find a way to restore them without killing them. Another case may be having a Badass Pacifist feel the need to set an example for others who feel that only force can get anything done.

Other conditions that can bring this about include:

• Old-School Chivalry which can invoke this trope by not allowing a male character to harm a female.
• Endangered Species which can invoke this trope by forbidding the characters from harming a creature on the brink of extinction.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child where a character can't throw a punch at a juvenile.
• Elder Abuse being taboo which keeps a character from hurting or even wanting to hurt a really old person.
• The target is crucial for some purpose so damaging or killing them is a big no-no.
• The target itself is a Hair-Trigger Explosive—their body is so unstable that excessive force could cause a disaster like an explosion.
• The foe is too pathetic or weak for the character to fight seriously so they go easy on them out of pity.
• The law means you'll cause a diplomatic incident.
• The enemy has assimilated or formed some kind of link to an ally or loved one which means that destroying the enemy would mean taking out their loved one too.
• An Escort Mission or Protection Mission makes it strictly clear that this character must not get a scratch on them.
• The characters can't use violent tactics without endangering Innocent Bystanders or risking Collateral Damage.

As you can expect, this trope is the ire of any Blood Knight (unless they're a Consummate Professional). After all, fighting is supposed to be a thrilling activity where one can cut loose and show how just how badass they are. Why does one have to restrain themselves against an enemy that's free to kill them if they wish? The Psycho for Hire also tends to get put on the spot a lot when it comes to this. Sure he may have the skill set, finesse, (and often Lack of Empathy), for easily dispatching of targets, but if he suddenly gets a request from a client to not kill, then it'll become one heck of a struggle for them to hold themselves back.

Of course just how hard this actually proves to be depends on the fighters' abilities and just what the target is. And a key thing to note overall is that the character doesn't have to be required by another to not inflict excessive harm. A self-applied No Harm Requirement is as much a case as one dealt by another character. The key requirement of this trope is that there's an explicit factor in play that's forcing or making the character not want to inflict or allow much if any harm rather than it just being assumed as such.

That said, things can definitely go wrong when trying to invoke this trope. If an attempt to adhere to this trope goes horribly wrong, you have Pacifism Backfire. And if the one restricting themselves gets killed, you have Suicidal Pacifism.

This trope tends to be invoked by warrior archetypes that are more averse to violence, which include the Actual Pacifist, Badass Pacifist, Technical Pacifist, Martial Pacifist, The Fettered, and Reluctant Warrior.

Archetypes that tend to have this forced upon them to their dismay include the Blood Knight, Psycho for Hire, Sociopathic Hero, Unscrupulous Hero, Token Evil Teammate, the Ax-Crazy, Destructive Savior and Bad Powers, Good People.

Compare Escort Mission where one is assigned the task of escorting a character safely (often with very explicit No Harm Requirements), Protection Mission where the thing that must be protected from harm remains stationary, and Product Delivery Ordeal when you're tasked to carry or transport an object or cargo while keeping an eye on its integrity. Also compare Hero Must Survive, a video game trope where the player must keep the hero alive lest they want a Game Over, and the even more extreme No-Damage Run where the player can't take any damage at all.

In video games, if the player invokes this on themselves as a Self-Imposed Challenge, you have a Pacifist Run.

Naturally, this trope often leads to the need To Win Without Fighting. A funny tactic sometimes used to get around this is Stop Hitting Yourself where the character keeps their hands clean by getting the target to pound themselves. Defeat by Modesty, Paralysis, Forced Sleep, Talking the Monster to Death, Victory Through Intimidation, and Mind Control are other common means of pulling this off. Alternatively, the character can opt for Taking the Fight Outside. Once the person or thing they have to protect from harm is out of the line of fire, they can finally cut loose.

Super-Trope to Bring It Back Alive which concerns retrieving a beast or some other thing alive, I Want Them Alive! which is an often villainous variation where the villain demands that the heroes or some other party be brought back alive, Can't Kill You, Still Need You where a character really wants to kill another but can't out of a need to keep them alive, Thou Shall Not Kill which is a whole philosophy around not killing (Although non lethal violence tends to be permissible), and Sheathe Your Sword where this is actually the only way to win.

Contrast Violence Really Is the Answer and Violence is the Only Option

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk: A particularly depraved aristocrat (who'd slept with Griffith once in exchange for funding the Band of the Hawk) finds himself on opposing sides. When they meet, he tells Griffith his men were ordered not to harm him, and thinks it'll be enough for Griffith to submit then and there. Astoundingly enough, Griffith didn't feel the same for him, and kills him on the spot.
• Bounties in Cowboy Bebop are only awarded for capturing suspects alive, no matter how extreme their crimes are. One reason for the Bebop crew's Perpetual Poverty is that they're either forced to kill their most valuable targets or they otherwise end up dead anyway. Whatever governing body handles bounties seems to be run by a bunch of cheapskates, to point they pay nothing even for in-tact culprit that turned out to be an Artificial Intelligence, and thus "not alive".
• The Fable: Extremely skilled assassin Akira Satou (a cover name) is ordered by his boss to live in Osaka for a year and not kill anyone for the duration, in the hope he can be rehabilitated. This proves difficult as he is quickly wrapped up in local criminal matters.
• Fairy Tail: Defied by Gajeel during the Phantom Lord arc. Jose, the Big Bad of the arc, leaves Gajeel to watch over Lucy who they kidnapped as requested by her father. Given that her father wanted her back to seal a wedding proposal with a rival company's son and that she's well, his DAUGHTER he must certainly have made it clear to Jose that he wanted her back in one piece, despite being an Abusive Parent. But despite that and Jose's orders, Gajeel takes sick pleasure in giving Lucy a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown just to get her to scream for his amusement. Had Natsu not arrived in the nick of time, he may have killed her.
• Dragon Ball
  • In the final tournament arc of Dragon Ball, Goku is seeded off against Chi-chi, who is angry at him for not recognizing her, though in his defense in the years since they last saw each other she had grown up quite a bit, and entered anonymously. She only agrees to reveal her identity if he beats her, but he refuses to hurt her. Thankfully, following his intense training with Kami, he doesn't have to; he blows her out of the ring with the shockwave from a punch.
  • Dragon Ball GT: During the Shadow Dragon arc, Pan ends up getting assimilated by Naturon Shenron. This puts Goku in a bind as he can't kill Naturon and retrieve the dragon ball without killing Pan in the process; the fact Naturon is then able to use Pan's powers against him only exacerbates the issue. Eventually Goku decides to pull a Batman Gambit and pretends to run out of power and look defeated. Naturon gloats greatly over beating Goku and decides, before finishing him off, to give him the chance to see Pan one more time. But this gives Goku the chance to yank Pan out and blow the monster away.
• Naruto: The Akatsuki were tasked with catching the Jinjurki to extract their Tailed Beasts. However, the ritual to extract the beast only works if the host is still alive. Kisame remarked how not killing them was the hardest part of the job.
• One Piece:
  • At one point Sanji's "Wanted!" Poster says "Only Alive" instead of the usual "Dead or Alive" on other posters, causing much confusion. It's because his long-lost father, Vinsmoke Judge, suddenly needed him for an Arranged Marriage and used his criminal connections with the Marines to change the requirement of Sanji's capture.
  • The Celestial Dragons (also known as World Nobles) are the descendants of the 19 kings that founded the The World Government, and World Law states that any harm to them requires Disproportionate Retribution against the aggressor. This is very much abused by the Celestial Dragons, and they will murder, abuse, and steal whatever they want at any time, while the locals bend over backwards to not offend them. Luffy found out the hard way when he actually punched one in anger, having an entire Marine Fleet scrambled to capture him and suffering the biggest defeat of his career.
  • A similar situation happens at the Reverie, a diplomatic summit. Saint Charloss, a Celestial Dragon, decides to enslave the mermaid princess Shirahoshi in the middle of the party and no one lifts a finger to protest. King Neptune has to decide between saving her, destroying relations between merpeople and humans, or sacrificing her to keep the peace. He's about to choose the first when a much friendlier Celestial Dragon intervenes.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • During the Johto saga in the episode Once In A Blue Moon, a Quagsire steals the GS Ball. When Ash gets it back by battling it with Squirtle, the gang almost get arrested by Officer Jenny because the Quagsire in Cherrygrove City are a protected species. So when the Quagsire steals the ball again, they have to follow it to waterfall where it conducts its waterfall ritual and wait for it to finish with the ball.
  • In the Hoenn episode, You Can Never Taillow, Ash and Pikachu find themselves having to square off against the leader of a fierce Taillow flock. However, is a determined Blood Knight and keeps battling despite taking numerous powerful Electric attacks from Pikachu. Fearing that he may cause it too much damage, Ash ends up capturing Tailow to end the battle quickly.
  • In Sinnoh, the gang has to deal with Hunter J who is an Evil Poacher who poaches Pokemon, whether they are owned or rare, and sell them to clients via a black market. To ensure maximum pay for her quarry, she zaps the Pokemon with a petrification ray and seals them in clear pods.
  • In the Unova episode, A Home for Dwebble, the gang help a Dwebble get its home back from a bigger, bully Dwebble that attached its shell to its bigger one. Eventually, Dwebble gets to fight it mono-et-mono, but it has to restrain itself out of risk of damaging its own shell. Eventually it's able to use Shell Smash to destroy the rival Dwebble's shell and send it packing while leaving its own shell unharmed.
• At one point in Rave Master, the Etherion sealed within Elie reaches an unstable point and threatens to destroy the world. Seighart had been trying to destroy her because of this power, but Haru is able to use Rune Save to seal the power without killing her.
• YuYu Hakusho: The first enemies the gang encounters after the brutal bloodsport that was the Dark Tournament are human psychics with the power to create a "territory" around themselves in which the laws of physics are different. One of them being a nerd, he doesn't like violence, and his territory reflects that; violent acts are impossible, and any attacks hit an impenetrable force field regardless of power. It turns out that every member of the main cast besides Kurama is completely useless when punching people stops being a viable strategy.
• Zatch Bell!: Zatch Bell and his cohorts, generally being Reluctant Warriors, will often try to resolve conflict without resorting to too much violence if posssible. The best example being when Zatch found out the pink beast terrorizing the town was actually his new friend Kolulu. As soon as he realizes it, he demands that Kio not launch anymore spells and resolves to get through to her with pleas.

Comic Books

• Batman: Being a Technical Pacifist, Batman usually does everything he can to avoid excessively harming his foes. A lot of his crime fighting gadgets are even explicitly designed to incapacitate foes without killing them or causing excessive harm. Though Darker and Edgier versions tend to drop this.
• Superman: Superman being the all powerful, yet restrained Flying Brick he is, has an eternal desire to save the day while causing as a little harm as possible. Not just to innocent and property, but his enemies too. Given the nature of a lot of his foes, this often doesn't go well for the man of steel.

Fairy Tales

• In an old fable, a woman is having a hard time getting along with her husband ever since he came back from a war. He always seems to be in a bad mood and she thinks he is angry with her for some reason. She goes to see the village wise man who sets her the task of bringing him the whisker from a tiger. She must remove the whisker without killing or otherwise harming the tiger. Once she does this, the wise man takes the whisker and throws it in the fire. When the woman starts to chew him out, he calmly tells her to use the methods she used to tame the tiger on her husband.

Fanfiction

• The Night Unfurls: Kyril, along with the Black Dogs, is given a request to bring Olga Discordia back alive, all the way from the Black Fortress in Grim Up North to the capital of Eostia in the South. Just the very fact that Kyril alone is successful in not only nabbing Olga, but also her servant as well, showcases that overwhelming strength is not the only quality he has. He is definitely a brutal killer, but he also accomplishes his task with a code of conduct. The Black Dogs, on the other hand, have no intention in completing this task. This Army of Thieves and Whores are more than willing to dismiss the "no harm" part, intending to ravish every prisoner for as long as they want, Olga included.

Films — Animated

• Lilo & Stitch:
  • Doctor Jumba Jookiba is sent to Earth to covertly retrieve his escaped prototype, who is masquerading as Lilo's dog. Though he wields a plasma gun, Jookiba advises Stitch to come quietly: "Don't make me shoot you; you were expensive." The covert part goes out the window in short order.
  • Earlier, the Grand Councilwoman considers gassing the planet Experiment 626 landed on, until Agent Pleakley reminds her that Earth has been designated a wildlife reserve for an endangered species—the mosquito. When 626 is adopted by Lilo, Pleakley stops Jumba from shooting at him because the girl is "a part of the mosquito food chain." Jumba realizes that 626 is using Lilo as a Human Shield, declaring that "this is low even for you!" Later, it's revealed that the whole "mosquitoes are endangered" bit was a ploy by Cobra Bubbles to save Earth from alien invasion.
• In The Incredibles, Mirage and Syndrome hire Mr. Incredible to recover a giant robot that has gone rogue on an island. Because of the large expense that went into the robot, he is supposed to shut it down without destroying it. He ends up tricking the robot into taking itself down by getting inside it and getting it to stab itself out of commission. But unbeknownst to Mr. Incredible, the real purpose of the mission was for the robot to kill Mr. Incredible.
• Mayor Lionheart of Disney's Zootopia has a cadre of timberwolves serving as Elite Mooks that capture the various predators that have been going savage without harming them in order to transport them to a secure location where they can be contained while attempting to find a cure.

Films — Live-Action

• In Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, while the White Witches are perfectly permitted to use magic against the evil Black Witches, they not allowed to hurt humans even when they're being burned to death. Made all the more problematic by the fact that most humans in that world despise all witches.
• Thirteen Days: During the Cuban Missile Crisis as the Naval Blockade around Cuba goes into effect, the destroyer USS Pierce is suddenly confronted by a Soviet submarine sent to escort the freighters past the blockade. The Pierce can't intercept the freighters without exposing itself to the sub. President Kennedy contacts the destroyer's skipper personally and asks if he can force the sub to the surface without damaging it, since they're trying to keep a war from starting. He responds they can get it to the surface, but whether it's damaged is up to the sub. Kennedy then orders him to force it up. But then the Soviets ships start stopping, and Kennedy cancels the order.
• The Empire Strikes Back has Darth Vader convene a cadre of bounty hunters to capture The Heroes. "There will be a substantial reward for the one who finds the Millennium Falcon. You are free to use any methods necessary, but I want them alive. No disintegrations."

Literature

• Black Hawk Down details an effort by Army Rangers and Airborne Ops to capture alive two Elite Mooks of a Somali warlord. The good news: they bag the two objectives intact. The bad news: Airborne unit Six-One goes down, and a simple extraction mission goes From Bad to Worse.
• The Exorcist has a desperate mother plead for help from two Catholic priests to remove an evil spirit that has turned her daughter into an Enfant Terrible. The trick, of course, is to extract the evil spirit while leaving the daughter mostly intact.
• Krum gets penalized for defying this in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The first task in the Triwizard Tournament is to retrieve a golden egg that's been placed among a nesting dragon's clutch. Krum manages to get his egg, but loses points because his curse hit the dragon in the eye and caused it to stomp on its real eggs.
• Following the discovery of how to create real food in the game world of Log Horizon, the protagonists begin collecting wildlife for use as ingredients. However, only someone with the chef subclass can get the most out of any one kill, which necessitates having to capture the beasts alive and bringing them to the chefs, which is considerably more difficult than killing them outright.
• The Sleeping Beauty: One of the challenges for Rosamund's suitors is to add a (cursed) item to a dragon's hoard without harming the dragon in any way. It weeds out a lot of suitors who can't come up with any methods that don't involve violence.
• The Kingdom and the Crown: In the second book, Simeon is tasked by the Romans to track down and capture a renegade who's been causing them problems. Since he's started following Jesus, he's having trouble reconciling his old life of fighting with his new life as a Christian, and opts for a campaign of psychological warfare and gaslighting to play on the bandit's superstition and make him paranoid before provoking him into chasing him into a small canyon where the Romans are waiting, delivering the legionaries their outlaw without causing anyone physical harm.

Live-Action TV

• British television's The Prisoner (1967), an unnamed British secret agent is kept in a kind of freestyle sanitarium called The Village, which is located on an unnamed island. There, the staff and residents play bizarre mind games with him to compel him to reveal why he suddenly resigned from the intelligence service. Though The Hero gets brainwashed routinely, he's rarely hurt and never injured.
• Blake's 7. Attempts to track down and kill Blake and his rebels are hampered by the Federation's desire to capture the Liberator (and later Orac) intact, the former being a starship with highly-advanced alien technology, and the latter being a Magical Computer that can access any computer system.

Mythology & Religion

• Six of the twelve Labors of Hercules in Classical Mythology involved bringing back The Ceryneian Hind, The Erymanthian Boar, The Cretan Bull, The Mares of Diomedes, The Cattle of Geryon, Cerberus all alive.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons module UK1 Beyond the Crystal Cave. The PCs are sent by the governor of Sybarate Island on a mission to Porpherio's Garden to retrieve the governor's daughter and her lover. They are prohibited from harming anyone or anything within the garden on pain of losing the 10,000 gold piece reward. This will be a neat trick since both the daughter and her lover are under a charm effect and will resist being removed from the Garden.
• Judges Guild's setting City State of the Invincible Overlord, Revised Guide to the City-State. The PCs hear a rumor that a sabre-tooth tiger has escaped from the Overlord's zoo and is headed their way. It is treason to harm zoo animals, so the PCs have to somehow disable the tiger without hurting it or they'll all be executed. If they can capture it they can return it to the zoo, hopefully for a reward.
• Traveller product Supplement 6: 76 Patrons. One of the adventure seeds involves the PCs being hired to kidnap a businessman and keep him hidden for a period of time so their patron can profit from his absence. Once the patron's business is completed, the PCs are to release the businessman unharmed.

Video Games

• In Arcanum, you are tasked with driving away some lumberjacks that are planning to cut down trees in an Elven sacred grove, but are warned that the site is protected by a spirit of vengeance that will awaken and destroy you if shed the lumberjack's blood. However, if you can't convince them to leave peacefully, you can goad them into attacking and let the spirit kill them for you.
• A series of sidequests in Borderlands 2 culminates in a boss fight with the sheriff of Lynchwood, with an optional objective to not shoot the deputy.
• In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the only way to access the second half of the game is to defeat the green orb controlling Richter Belmont without doing too much harm to Richter Belmont himself.
• Death Stranding features gameplay largely built around exploration and delivering precious cargo across complex landscapes, and aside from mandatory Boss Battles, the player is strongly discouraged from engaging with hostile forces, and in the situations where combat does go down, do not kill them. The setting of the world is highly infested with ghostly "BTs", and not only do dead bodies quickly create more of them, if a preexisting BT touches one, it will create an explosion with the force of a nuke and wipe out a lot. If you accidentally do end up killing someone, you're going to need to take the extra step of carrying the corpse all the way to an incinerator before it necrotizes.
• In Dishonored, in order for the player to get the "Clean Hands" achievement/trophy, they must go through the entire game without killing anyone, including their assassination targets. Downplayed by the requirement for the good ending: they can kill up to 141 enemies before the Chaos level gets high enough to lock them out of the good ending. Killing rats, river krusts, and wolfhounds don't count for either, and the number of kills in the final mission doesn't affect Chaos.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online:
  • One mission has you being framed for a Bank Robbery, and needing to turn off the alarm to escape. The optional objective is "Do not kill any city guard". Parodied Trope, as if you get spotted but turn off the alarm anyways without killing the guards, the guards react by claiming that they are paid to kill thieves in the bank when the alarm is active, and thus letting you go on these grounds.
  • The mission Stealthy Repossession requires you to not kill more than 5 kobold prophets before completing the mission. It's possible to sneak through the whole mission, but the prophets are so weak that you can also just ignore them as they ineffectively punch you.
  • The mission Let Sleeping Dust Lie has you mainly fighting ogres, rakshasas, and giant spiders. You discover midway through that the spiders are friendly but Brainwashed and Crazy, and you are thereafter not allowed to kill more than 4. Killing none throughout the whole quest will net you some bonus loot.
• The Thieves' Guild in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion enforces a strict Thou Shalt Not Kill policy on its members; Killing anyone related to a mission for them will result in you being expelled from the guild and forced to pay a fine to one of their leaders if you want to be allowed to rejoin.
• Empire Earth: During the Trojan War mission, Ulysses demands that the Trojan temples be spared. Attacking them gets a Non-Standard Game Over where the gods turn against you and ensure Ulysses' trip home takes decades.
• In Grand Theft Auto V online, the first and the last heist require half of the crew to keep the people in a bank foyer down without killing them, while the other half gets the money. Failing to do so, or killing one of them will fail the mission in the first heist and spawn N.O.O.S.E. teams in the last heist. You will however need to kill armed guards in the last mission.
• In FTL: Faster Than Light, you may be greeted by a station who will ask you to "convince" their friends to drop their career as Space Pirates by damaging their ship's hull enough to make them surrender. There are also plenty of missions where you're supposed to kill the ship's crew without destroying the ship itself.
• Into the Breach: Some missions have a bright yellow, glowing Volatile Vek spawn. In these missions, keeping the Volatile Vek alive until it retreats gives you a reputation point, whereas killing it causes it to explode, making the region uninhabitable.
• James Bond:
  • Agent Under Fire: "Bad Diplomacy"—Bond has to non-lethally dispatch the guards at the Belgrade embassy.
  • NightFire—"Enemies Vanquished" and "Night Shift"—Bond must first use his smoke-screens against the police cars and secondly must not kill the night-shift guards at the Phoenix building
  • Everything or Nothing—"A Simple Exchange"—Bond cannot kill the guards at the hotel. Uniquely, this game makes the non-lethal gun an option throughout the game as soon as it's introduced. It's only a requirement in this particular level. (Never mind that he can shoot the cameras just fine.)
• In The Lord of the Rings Online, Radagast wants you to collect moss from the nests of bog monsters to find out why they've turned vicious, and he wants you to do it without hurting them because it isn't really their fault.
• Downplayed In Hitman: Absolution. An early mission requires you as 47 to hunt down Lenny Dexter, the son of the CEO of Dexter Industries. After you take down his gang, 47 has to pacify the son to interrogate him. However, after Lenny spills the beans, the player has the choice of killing him directly or leaving him at the mercy of the desert and vultures.
• In the Feors section of Mass Effect, taking the Paragon path means you have to disable infected colonists with special grenades or melee attacks. If you go Renegade you can just kill them, which is much easier.
• Some quests in Monster Hunter require you to weaken and capture a monster instead of killing it. This can make things tricky, since you not only need to know how to fight it, but also how much hits it can take before dieing. And by the time you can catch them, the fight may be almost over anyway.
• There's a quest in Neverwinter Nights where the quest giver asks you to steal several pieces of art from various nobles in the city. She wants the current owners left scared but alive, so she'll dock your pay if you opt to kill any of them.
• In Path of Exile, the Master Assassin's missions will usually impose these sorts of restrictions on you - such as killing a boss enemy while keeping at least one of their guards alive, or wiping out the boss's guards without killing the boss themselves. Note the "killing" part - you can bring them down to the very brink of Critical Existence Failure without failing the mission.
• In Persona 5 Royal, traitor, ex-enemy and ex-supernatural hitman Goro Akechi gets saddled with one of these in the game's last arc, as the Phantom Thieves refuse to let him solve their problem with murder. Not that he doesn't try.
• In the Pokémon games, the best way to ensure the capture of a Pokemon is by weakening them to improve their catch rate. However, for some reason, Pokemon can't be caught if they're outright K.O.'d, even though they don't die if their health is reduced to zero. Therefore it's most effective for players to use more reserved tactics like set damage moves and moves that induce Forced Sleep or Temporary Paralysis to catch the Pokemon without risk of fully defeating them. One Pokemon move, False Swipe, was even made specifically for this purpose. No matter how strong the user is or the foe's current condition, it'll never cause a Pokemon to faint which makes it useful for getting a wild Pokemon's health as low as possible without defeating it.
• Red Alert: One Soviet mission has Stalin demand that you capture an Allied Chronosphere so he can use it against the Allies. Too bad the Allies rigged it to blow if that happened.
• Red Alert 3: After the Allies team up against the Soviets against the Empire, President Ackerman decides to destroy the Soviets via Weaponized Landmark (that also fires if his heart stops). The intended method is to use Cryocopters to freeze his limo in place, but this also causes jet fighters to spawn with a suspicious tendency to crash right on top of the limo. Once the superweapon is neutralized, you're free to shoot the limo... or would be if it didn't get teleported to an airfield. You're free to shoot the helicopter picking it up, however.
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves has a quest wherein the objective is to put a massive feral wolf to sleep - non-lethally - by shooting it with multiple darts. Unfortunately, you'll have to sneak up and shoot the wolf at close range, because the darts are so heavy. Without getting upwind of the wolf, because it can smell the sleeping potion in the darts. The player character for this mission? A sentient turtle in a wheelchair. (Possibly subverted by the fact that the goal of the mission is to psychically possess the wolf after it falls asleep and use it to massacre a dozen or so of the level's mooks.)
• In Star Control: Origins, getting the squid-like Mu'Kay to ally with you requires getting the warlike Drenkend to stop attacking one of their colonies. But the Mu'Kay warn you not to actually fight them in order to prove your willingness to engage in "peaceful cooperation."
• In higher difficulties in SWAT4, or if you just plain want a perfect score, no one has to get hurt, and everyone who doesn't start the mission incapacitated/dead has to be arrested (just in case a suspect has the bright idea to disguise himself as an hostage, which never happens in game but could happen in real life). Not you, not your SWAT Team, not the civilians, not the suspects. This is easier than it sounds as unlike in real life where they are Less Lethal Weapons, beanbag shotguns, tasers, rifles that fire tear gas pellets, flashbangs, stingers, tear gas grenades and, in the Expansion Pack, your fists are entirely non lethal and you can shoot first with these. In fact, some civilians will require to get hit by one of those before they surrender.
• Undertale gives players the option to do this on nearly every encounter in the game. It's considerably more difficult, since it turns even a random encounter into a puzzle boss and you don't gain more health since you don't get the necessary EXP from killing enemies. Following through to the end, however, unlocks the game's Golden Ending.
• In Wario Land: Shake It!, in order to achieve 100% Completion, many levels will have missions where you're required to not defeat a specific enemy or any enemies at all.
• In Watch_Dogs, several side missions - particularly the Gang Hideout ones - require a non-fatal takeout on the boss. The 1-vs-1 multiplayer matches also do not allow the invading player to kill their target: if the target is hurt, they invader is warned that they're not supposed to kill their opponent, and if they do kill them, they lose the match and their target wins.
• In World of Warcraft, Keeper Karithus needs bear fur, doe hair, and sabretoothed cat whiskers to use in a ritual. He asks you to retrieve these materials from the live animals without harming them, but you don't fail the quest if you happened to kill an animal in the process.
• In XCOM 2 the Spokesman will give you special guerrilla missions from time to time. Half of them require you to rescue a scientist or engineer. The other half require you to decisively deal with an ADVENT civilian VIP (as opposed to a military target). It's possible and easy to kill the target, as civilians only have 2 hit points and the weakest weapon in the game does at least 2 damage. However, if you're able to get close enough to the target to subdue them (melee range), you can pick them up and carry them to the extraction point (which is difficult as the soldier carrying the VIP will be prevented from fighting back easily). Completing the mission will always provide supplies, regardless of whether or not the VIP is alive, but capturing the target instead will also give intel, which is a much more difficult-to-obtain resource. Killing the target does not count as mission failure, but the Spokesman will be disappointed at the outcome regardless.

Western Animation

• Hero: 108: In the episode Cheetah Castle II, the Cocky Aliens are able to take over the minds of Lin Chung's squad. Not wanted to hurt his friends, Lin Chung instead uses his hat to fake getting blasted by them. The appropriately named Cocky Aliens then exit his friends and body and jump on his "carcass" thinking they've won, only to get caught by Lin Chung, kicked 100 times by him and his cheetah comrades, and turned into fruit.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: In the episode Bad News Bear, after an in-school accident, Principal Pixiefrog punishes Adam, charging him with protecting a Chinese exchange student, a panda named "Ding Bang", from any harm. Unfortunately, Ding Bang causes trouble all over the place, and near the end, Adam is forced to bend the rules in a dodgeball match, by continuing to play despite being tagged out with a ball. Ding Bang turns out to be a particularly ill-behaved student in disguise named Larry Raccoon, the only student to ever be expelled from Charles Darwin Middle School. His cover is blown after a similar accident from before spills water all over him.
• In the My Life as a Teenage Robot episode Shell Game Jenny lets all the harmless reptiles in a reptile exhibition loose in an attempt to draw out Silver Shell, who's stolen her robotic heart. But in the chaos, a giant deadly python gets loose and begins putting the squeeze on Sheldon. Jenny tries to hold out for Silver but unbeknownst to her, Silver Shell is actually Sheldon in a robot disguise. Fortunately she comes to her senses and engages the reptile. But after she gets Sheldon free and tries to empty her arsenal on the serpent, Sheldon stops her because while he's dangerous, he's a protected species. So instead, Jenny gets the long reptile to chase her around, causing it to tie itself in a knot.
• Played with in the Secret Squirrel episode One-Ton. Secret is given orders to stop a criminal panda from destroying China Town. However, the Chief gives him orders to not harm the panda because pandas are Endangered Species—which makes things rough as he's a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk. Eventually Secret stops him by getting him to beat himself up. Since he harmed a panda while being a panda, the fiend gets put into protective custody.
• Tigtone: This is a feature of the Demon Maze, where killing a demon (or yourself) sends you back to the center of the maze with all creatures revived. This becomes extremely difficult for Comedic Sociopath Tigtone, since many encounters are designed to make killing easy.
• Tom and Jerry:
  • The cartoon "The Missing Mouse", has Tom hear on the radio that a white mouse has escaped from a laboratory after ingesting an experimental Hair-Trigger Explosive. Jerry also hears this news flash and exploits this by painting himself white and making Tom bust his back to protect from the mouse from self-created harm.
  • "The Millionaire Cat" has Tom inherit a fortune, with the caveat that he will lose it all if he harms another living thing, "EVEN A MOUSE". Jerry, again, uses this to his advantage and live off Tom's fortune, producing the telegram with the "EVEN A MOUSE" warning in bold letters to remind Tom not to hurt him. Tom eventually decides money can't buy happiness.

Real Life

• This trope is the reason sedatives were developed. Depending on the type of sedative, a well-administered sedative can either relax a person or animal or render them unconscious, allowing them to be safely caught or treated without risk of harm.
• Wildlife rangers and animal control officers are often tasked with capturing and/or relocating animals without harming them, even ones that can pose a direct danger to them. People of such professions will use tranquilizers, nets, grabbing hooks, etc. to incapacitate animals without harming them.
• This is how French bullfighting, or course camargaise, works - unarmed athletes have to pull rosettes off bulls' horns without harming the bull or getting gutted themselves.

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