Shoot The Dog - Television Tropes & Idioms

Naruto's classmates plan with Sasuke. Planned to prevent another war from Sasuke going too far and to end Naruto's suffering over his promise.
Neon Genesis Evangelion has probably one of the most painful examples, for both the main character and the audience. Shinji is forced to kill Kaworu, the only person who truly understood him. Otherwise, humanity will be destroyed. What makes this even more painful is that Shinji spends an entire minute deciding whether or not to do it, while we see a long shot of EVA-01 holding Kaworu, accompanied only by Beethoven music - ironically, Kaworu's favorite. Needless to say, Shinji suffers yet another Heroic BSOD after that.
- Gendo himself does this when faced with the 13th Angel, Bardiel, who had just taken control of the Eva Unit 03 moments before the first test was supposed to start. When Shinji refused to destroy the Angel (and the Eva with it) due to the risk of injuring the Eva's pilot, Gendo takes control of the situation and takes Eva Unit 01 from Shinji's control, using a backup system to do the deed. Needless to say, Shinji isn't happy, and attempts a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge... before being stopped by Gendo himself.
  - Your Mileage May Vary. This troper saw it as a Moral Event Horizon moment; he deliberately had the dummy plug system crush the entry plug and utterly brutalize EVA-03, as a way of punishing Shinji for his inaction.
Almost anything that happens in Code Geass is this, at least from the point of view of whoever is pulling the trigger. What do you expect with a world where nearly everyone is a Magnificent Bastard (or a loyal minion of one) and Well Intentioned Extremist?
Trigun: When Zazie the Beast, a particularly cruel member of the Gung-Ho-Guns who happens to look like a pre-teen, was gunned down by Wolfwood before he could kill another person. This enraged Vash, who has an extremely strict code against not killing anyone no matter what.
In Gunslinger Girl, Rico gets enamored with a young hotel porter, only to shoot him later since he is witness to one of her missions. This is especially jarring as she doesn't have any regrets whatsoever and goes on about how happy she is with her new body and life, signifying her gradual loss of humanity.
Roy Mustang in Full Metal Alchemist does this quite often...indeed, it could be argued that this is his entire reason for being in the series.
- Scar has an almost literal shoot-the-dog moment. Or at least, a magically-rend-to-microscopic-pieces the alchemically created dog/human abomination when he executes a mercy killing upon what used to be Nina and Alexander.
In the finale of Episode 77 of Sonic X, Tails is forced to fire upon Cosmo, who has transformed into her adult form, and has bonded with the Metarex to form a weakpoint for Tails. Tails, having fallen in love with Cosmo, does with great sadness pull the trigger. The 4kids version of this is far less dramatic/sad, and actually makes Tails look like a bit of a heartless prick.
- This was not so much "shooting the dog" to this troper as it was "shooting the puppy".
In the body horror themed manga Parasyte, an ally of the hero kills the the creature that has killed and taken the form of the hero's mother.
In Yu Yu Hakusho, the Urameshi Team is stuck playing a video game come to life with a little boy named Amanuma. This means that everything in the game plays out exactly the same in real life. If Yusuke and the heroes lose, they can just start over until they win; if they win, the villain, Amanuma, dies. Kurama, realizing that this is a trap and that Sensui intends for them to be stuck because they can't kill a kid, beats him anyway. What's more, he tells Amanuma exactly how things will play out to mess with his head, so that he can win faster. Fortunately, Death Is Cheap and Koenma has a Reset Button handy... which drains his power and prevents from stopping Sensui on his own, which was Sensui's REAL goal in setting the heroes against Amanuma.
- Incidentally, this little stunt pisses off Kurama to the point enough so that when they confront the next of Sensui's super-powered henchmen, he simply takes a step forward and decapitates the guy in a blink. And that's just the start...
In Naru Taru, Shiina confronts her close friend Hiroko at her home following a number of gruesome murders committed by Oni, Hiroko's Mon. After failing to talk her out of her insanity, as well as the realisation that her own father is in danger of being killed by Oni too, Shiina tries strangling Hiroko to death in a rage, but finds that she can't bring herself to do it... so her own Mon Hoshimaru has to finish the job for her. She suffers an Heroic BSOD afterwards. In the anime, the dog ends up being shaggy because the epilogue follows almost immediately afterwards.
Rossiu's job in the second half of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which is to do the "most logical" thing, while the Hero does the Rule Of Cool thing. In a short time he orders the execution of Simon to put down the riots (which doesn't work) and gives in to the Anti-Spiral's ultimatum, thereby trying to leave hundreds of thousands to die so he can save a tiny minority... except not, since the Anti-Spirals plan to kill everyone anyway.
The main protagonists of Weiss Kreuz are formed into a team of assassins for the express purpose of shooting the dog whenever necessary, a point which his teammates make explicitly when Omi has a crisis of conscience.
In Baccano! Drugs and Dominoes, Luck Gandor kills Gustavo himself after preventing Eve from shooting him, which given the circumstances is probably this trope in action, although Luck has a bout of Post Dramatic Stress Disorder before he can explain his reasons.
Kinos Journey. A young woman whose love was killed by a gunfighter travels the world with a male admirer, preaching nonviolence. Kino mentions that it's strange they've never run into trouble. It turns out the man is a highly-skilled gunfighter who is secretly killing anyone who would threaten her.
In the Legend of Galactic Heroes Gaiden Disgrace, sweet innocent old lady Johanna tells Kircheis he'll have to shoot her to stop her destroying critical evidence against her husband (guilty of causing the deaths of any number of people). Kircheis just can't bring himself to do it; luckily (and tragically) Keyserling, who was in love with Johanna and previously orchestrated the coverup to protect her husband, arrives to do it for him. Kircheis later thinks that Reinhard would have fired had he been in the same situation, and that's why it's important for them to stick together. Perhaps a reversed example as it's the sidekick, Kircheis, who needs the main character, Reinhard, to shoot his dogs for him.
In Elfen Lied, during the finale Kouta is forced to fulfill a childhood promise to Lucy and kill her when she poses a danger to the world. She is also literally falling apart so it could be a doubled-up example. Though both of her good personas urge him to this while they have control he at first lacks the will to do it. The third persona, said to be the voice of her murderously-programmed DNA, then asserts control, but is ultimately in so much pain, she too urges him to do it, and this time he does.
Occurs towards the end of Gundam 00. Anew Returner has apparently managed to break the Mind Control of Big Bad Ribbons Almark and is about to surrender to Lockon. However, Ribbons takes control again as soon as Lockon lowers his guard, forcing teammate Setsuna to kill Anew. Lockon takes it badly but recovers in a surprisingly short time.
In Episode 5 of the 1968 Cyborg 009 series, Joe does this literally.
- And he also does it halfway the 2001 series. To his own puppy, Kubikuro, which had Psychic Powers and had been killing the people that ran his parents and original owner down. It's just as sad as it sounds
Reiha from the Vampire Princess Miyu TV series views her killings of humans when she teams up with Miyu like this. Specifically seen with Kayo's Knight Templar Big Brother, who goes all Knife Nut on Miyu when under a Shinma's More Than Mind Control; Reiha freezes him to death and even reprehends Miyu when she questions her.
Literally what the Anti Hero Ogami does in Code: Breaker right in the first chapter, though replace "Shoot" with "Break the Neck of." The aforementioned dog got mortally wounded trying to protect Sakura from a bunch of gang members, and Ogami, before burning and killing all of the bad guys, goes up to the dog and commends it for its efforts to save Sakura. And then promptly snaps its neck to "help the pain."
In Nabari no Ou, Aizawa kills a mission target when Kumohira's moral code makes him hesitate.
Noir: It turns out that this is the entire purpose of the assassin duo named Noir, by becoming a scapegoat of sorts for humanity, killing people so that others don't have to.

Referencing the "Old Yeller" Mercy Kill example ("Part of the point of the story is taking responsibility and having the courage to do something that must be done, no matter how much it hurts." see above), Wolverine is forced to do this when his intended Mariko is poisoned by blowfish toxin on their wedding day. To spare her a horrific death by suffocation, he ends her life with honor instead. Reference also many, many of Wolverine's "cleanup" jobs, etc.
In Alan Moore's Miracleman, the titular character executes the innocent Johnny Bates to permanently prevent his evil alter-ego Kid Miracleman from resurfacing. Subverted in that Miracleman had already thrown a bus full of people at Bates/Miracleman without a second thought. The caption implies he did so while with at least partial awareness of the innocent deaths that would cause. And, of course, it didn't hurt Bates anyway. Which Miracleman may have known.
Once upon a time Captain Britain had a nemesis called the Slaymaster. What's that you say? You've never heard of him? Well, you see, one day the Slaymaster got into a fight with Captain Britain's sister, Psylocke (who was filling in for him). It didn't go her way. Slaymaster beat her half to death and ripped out her eyes. Then Captain Britain attacked him. Slaymaster's last words, appropriately enough, were: "Fool, you have not the strength to kill." Oh, really?
In Earth X, Captain America kills the Skull (a young boy) by snapping his neck, breaking the latter's hold on his mind-controlled superhuman army. Of everyone on Earth.
In the "Born Again" storyline of Daredevil, the titular character takes the villains' missile launcher and uses it to blow up their gunship (and consequently, kills its pilot) to stop the indiscriminate killing in Hell's Kitchen
Ozymandias's plan in Watchmen is a nuke the dog. This might even go into Moral Event Horizon territory.
- What do you mean MIGHT?
Wonder Woman. Max Lord. Need I say more? Yes, it was also a CrowningMomentofAwesome, but very very dog-shooty nonetheless.
Just about everything Nick Fury does in the Marvel Universe falls into this category.
In Ultimate Marvel, dog-shooting is a national sport. Except for Ultimate Spider-Man, of course, he's still Just A Kid.
Invincible once killed future Immortal, who turned into dictator and was begging him to do it.
Jason Todd thought he was doing this for Batman and Nightwing back when he was more Hero than Anti. Then DC forgot what the hell they were doing.

In the original version of Insomnia, a dog is literally shot to provide key evidence. In the remake, Al Pacino shoots a dead dog.
The Operative in Serenity, the Firefly movie, describes this as his raison d'etre - his purpose in life, he says, is to create a world where monsters like himself will not be allowed to exist.
In one of the more heartbreaking scenes of the I Am Legend flick, Neville hauls his dog (and only living/sane companion) Sam, who had been mauled fending off the infected to his secret base, injected her with the only experimental cure that had even begun to show results, and hugged her. Then, as the hair loss and aggression became undeniable, he snapped the dogs neck. Cue Heroic BSOD.
- Pretty much the same thing happens in the original novel. And the Vincent Price version.
The Trope Namer incident in Old Yeller was a Mercy Kill for the eponymous beloved dog who had turned rabid.
Full Metal Jacket, at the very end, when Joker is forced by his surviving comrades to deliver the Coup De Grace to a downed Vietcong sniper - who happened to be a teenage girl.
- That was more of a mercy kill, whereas in the book, he was doing that to his best friend.
At the end of Road to Perdition, Tom Hanks shoots Jude Law so that his son will be able to go through life having never killed anyone.
- More like Shoot the Psychotic Crocodile, seeing as how Jude was trying to kill them both at the time.
- Even more pronounced in the original graphic novel, where his son is the one who pulls the trigger.
In Quarantine, the cameraman's willingness to do this is foreshadowed by him stomping on a rat. Later, he beats one of the infected to death with his camera in probably the best use of that particular conceit ever. And, of course, the film is quite willing to shoot at least one kind of dog itself.
Pretty much the entire premise behind The Wind That Shakes The Barley. The Irish Revolution Is Not Vilified, but it doesn't look like fun, either.
This was essentially the philosophical heart of the Jet Li wuxia movie Hero (Ying Xiong for Mandarin speakers). While most of the protagonists oppose the King of Qin, who intends to conquer and unify all the neighboring kingdoms, one of them realizes that the peace and prosperity of unification will far outweigh the short-term suffering of the war. It's a weird loop, in that Character A is urging Character B to let Character C Shoot The Dog, but there it is.
Sunshine (2007). After a fight with a fellow crewmember and an Important Haircut, Mace becomes determined to focus entirely on completing the mission (which, to be fair, involves saving the entire human race). He wants to ignore the Distress Call from Icarus II, and volunteers to murder Trey so as to preserve their oxygen supply. Trey, as it turns out, has already killed himself.
Mad Max 2 has a rather tragic literal example.
Done with somewhat Narmful offhandedness in the Starship Troopers film; once when Rasczak shoots his sergeant after she's caught by the Bugs ("I'd expect any of you to do the same for me!"), and then when Rico, of course, shoots a Bug-bitten Rasczak, despite the fact that he only seems to have lost his legs, and functional cybernetic limbs had already been shown earlier in the film, and if FOOTBALLS and VIOLINS can be airdropped right to the troopers so can medical supplies, and why exactly did he have to die again? Idiot Plot you say? Oh, yeah, forgot.
In X-Men 3, when Jean Grey has completely lost control of her alternate personality "The Phoenix", Wolverine is the only one with the fortitude (both moral and physical) to put her down in the end, despite being in love with her (it helps that she regains enough control to request he kills her).
- Which is interesting, because he didn't have this fortitude in the original Dark Phoenix saga.
- Also interesting as it seems Wolverine is too dumb to realize that instead of gutting Jean, he could probably have saved her by stabbing her with a dozen of those mutant cure darts.
Happens literally at the beginning of Dog Soldiers.
Done in The Sand Pebbles by Jake Holman (Steve Mc Queen). After Po-han is captured and is being tortured, the San Pablo is leaving the dock where Po-han is being tortured. Holman is ordered not to fire at the Chinese who are torturing Po-han, so Holman shoots Po-han to put him out of his misery.

In One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Bromden suffocates Mc Murphy with a pillow after he received a lobotomy. This was done in order to prevent Nurse Ratched from using him as an example for the other patients and so Mc Murphy can die with dignity.
A particularly notable instance occurs in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. In his later "Witches" books, it is revealed that Granny Weatherwax, a major character of Pratchett's, has had to Shoot The Dog more than a few times in her witching career, with few regrets. In fact, Granny considers part of a witch's job description to be making tough life-or-death decisions so other people don't have to.
- In The Fifth Elephant. Angua (the werewolf) asks if Carrot (her boyfriend) would "put her down" if she became as crazy as her brother. Carrot answers yes. Angua smiles and asks "Promise?"
- Oh no no no. The biggest example of Shoot The Dog in the series was in Night Watch.
"Just in case, and without any feeling of guilt, Vimes removed his knife, and... gave what help he could."
In The Gunslinger, Roland is forced to choose between finally catching the Man in Black (the only one who can tell him how to reach the Dark Tower) and saving young Jake from falling to his death. As a clue to which he decided on, let's just say he found out how to get to the Tower.
- To be fair, in Roland's mind, anything is permitted because the entirety of all existence (and, indeed, non-existance) is at stake. And Jake gets better.
In John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice And Men, protagonist George is forced to pick up a revolver and mercy kill his mentally handicapped best friend Lennie after Lennie inadvertently kills Curly's wife by breaking her neck. George's reasoning for this is to spare Lennie from a horrible death at the hands of the inevitable lynch mob. This trope is also shown in a lesser extent earlier in the novel (with an actual dog, and with the same gun too!).
The man who later becomes John Clark in Tom Clancy's novels, tortures a guy he captured for vital information - using a pressure chamber to induce the bends. He also does other things like assassinating people, and a cat-and-mouse game with some Big Bads near the end. But you can't say you weren't warned: the book's title is Without Remorse.
In A Song Of Ice And Fire, Eddard Stark takes it upon himself to kill his daughter's pet direwolf at the queen's order rather than allowing the prince's creepy bodyguard to do it, because if he does it himself his daughter can at least feel that her pet died well.
Enders Game features pretty much every protagonist shooting dog after dog after dog.
Old Yeller. 'nuff said.
The Yearling. Does a very good job of illustrating the consequences of not shooting the ~~dog~~ faun.
The Guns of Navarone. Captain Mallory has discovered that Anna is a traitor and is forced by the circumstances to execute her. As he prepares to do so, Anna's friend Maria shoots her instead so Mallory doesn't have to.
To Kill A Mockingbird. Atticus shoots a rabid dog advancing on a group of people. His children are impressed, having not previously known of his shooting skill.
Watch on the Rhine from the Posleen War Series contains a group example, when Hans Brasche order "only old SS will engage. New men are not to fire except in point self-defense." The situation is that a resurrected Waffen SS is being attacked by a horde of Posleen using massive number of human shields. The new men can't bring themselves to fire on their own species, but the old SS have done it before, so... Actually, there's probably at least one instance of Shoot the Dog in every novel in that series.
Although it's built up like this to a degree, the mass murder of Zalasta's cronies in David Eddings' Tamuli trilogy is kind of an aversion. Not only were the dogs in question rabid, but some of the deaths and corpse disposals were just so damn funny.
Harry Potter: Dumbledore arranges for Snape to kill him in the sixth book for two reasons — to protect Snape's Reverse Mole position with the Death Eaters, and because he knew Voldemort had already ordered Draco Malfoy to kill him and he wanted to spare the boy the fate of being a murderer. Although the act of Snape killing Dumbledore is initially viewed by Harry, the readers, and even Snape himself as a villainous act, Dumbledore had previously asserted to Snape that it would be treated as a mercy killing and wouldn't carry the same moral repercussions that cold-blooded murder would — due to the fact Snape knew that Dumbledore was already weakened and irreparably doomed to die from the curse on Gaunt's ring.
In The Lymond Chronicles, Lymond frequently has to take these kinds of actions. The worst is when he saves his friends and defeats the Big Bad by ordering the death of his own two-year-old son. Later, he whips one of his men nearly to death as punishment for a minor error in order to prevent the tsar from killing the man for sure.
This is why Commander Thrawn shoots the Vagaari ships covered in living shields in Outbound Flight; the captives were going to be killed anyway, there was nothing they could do to help them, and the Vagaari had to be stopped.
In Star Trek New Frontier, the much talked-about Grissom incident came down to a war tribunal started by Calhoun's captain. Calhoun, charged with mutiny by said captain, stepped in to stop him from killing the leader that led him to this madness (by killing the captain's brother and daughter). He comes to the conclusion that he must kill the leader. However, he does it in a way that could be construed as self-defense because the leader hand picked a phaser off of the captain. Calhoun resigns anyway because even after Shooting The Dog, he failed to keep his captain from committing suicide.
In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000 Gaunts Ghosts novel, The Mole, revealed at the end, snears that Gaunt has no proof and won't shoot him without it — he's read his file. Rawne retorts that The Mole hasn't read his file and shoots him.
In the fourth book of the Codex Alera, Complete Monster Lord Kalarus has bound one of the Great Furies, the animating spirit of a volcano, to him, so that when he dies it will break free and rampage around Alera, probably destroying most of the country. First Lord Gaius Sextus does not approve, and with the help of Amara and Bernard goes through a rather grueling ordeal to sneak in close enough to prevent this. What he didn't tell them was that he couldn't prevent the release of the Fury; instead, he takes control of it and causes the volcano to erupt, destroying the entire province of Kalare. His reasoning is that had he left it alone, it would have destroyed much more of the countryside, and had he waited to wrench control away from Kalarus, far more people would have been in the city when it went off.
In The Handmaids Tale, the main character and a fellow handmaid are forced to witness a supposed rapist being murdered via an angry mob of women egged on by government officials. Her companion, however, knows that the man is actually a member of the resistance who has been caught, and the only thing she can do in order to avoid giving herself away as a traitor is to kick the man violently several times in the head until he falls unconscious (or dead), sparing him torture at the hands of the mob before he dies.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Giles prevents the hellgoddess Glory from ever returning by suffocating her human vessel Ben. He specifies that he's doing this because... or so that... Buffy never would. (The page quote comes from earlier in that episode, where he foresees having to do such a thing with Dawn.)
- This does create some Moral Dissonance because only two episodes previously, Buffy's fight with the Knights of Byzantium explicitly resulted in nearly a dozen deaths, including one knight killed when Buffy threw an axe into his chest. This, however, happened in battle with well-armed and armored warriors, not to a currently-helpless, badly-injured person.
  - There is also that as far as Buffy and Giles knew Ben was an innocent victim, possessed against his will by the spirit of an evil Hellgoddess. Ironically, at the moment Giles killed him Ben was not innocent — he'd made the decision earlier in the episode to willingly collaborate with Glory — so this was actually a case of Karmic Death, even if the heroes never knew that it wasn't actually them Shooting The Dog.
- Buffy herself has had to shoot the dog. In "Becoming, Part II", seconds after Angel has his soul restored, the ritual he performed as Angelus kicks off and threatens to drag all of Earth into Hell. The only way Buffy can save the world is by killing Angel and consigning him to Hell instead... which she does.
- Wesley tries to get the group to do this when the Big Bad of Season 3 tries to bargin with them using a hostage, arguing that the potential death of tens of thousands if they accept the deal far outweighs the certain death of one person if they refuse. The Scoobies go through with the deal anyways, and decide to simply ignore Wesley from that point on.
Section 31 in Star Trek Deep Space Nine is a secret group in Starfleet, which performs rather shady actions while giving Starfleet plausible deniability. Suspicious fans wondered if this was Lampshade Hanging to explain how the on-screen portrayal of the Federation became less idealistic over time.
In the 'Star Trek Deep Space Nine'' episode "In the Pale Moonlight" Garak and Sisko hatch a morally ambiguous plot to frame the Dominion for plotting an attack on the Romulan Empire. Later, this plot was seen as a fake by a Romulan Senator who was promptly murdered by Garak, and though angry at first, Sisko even came to grudgingly accept that it was a necessity.
- This is, arguably, one of the best episodes in the entire series.
- Another DS 9 episode "Body Parts" features Quark hiring Garak to commit murder.
  Rom: You're hiring Garak to kill Brunt?
  Quark: No, I'm hiring him to kill me.
- Garak pretty much spends the whole series carrying a fully loaded dog-rifle, just waiting for the right moment to use it.
Star Trek Enterprise also has an episode in the third season where Archer tosses a man into an airlock and then drains the air to torture him for information. Another episode had them commit an act of piracy in desperation later in the season.
Ironic reversal: Xena Warrior Princess had Gabrielle saving her potentially-future-demonic-minion infant daughter Hope by not killing her in secret. Later events strongly indicate she probably should have.
- Later events also give the impression that it might not have worked (she came back from being poisoned and the body burned, after all) and that Gabrielle might have been correct all along: Hope clearly cared for her mother and was hurt about being abandoned. Perhaps being brought up by a loving parent to teach her right from wrong might have done some good. Or perhaps not. Regardless, secretly not-killing her clearly didn't help.
Jack Bauer on 24 has been called upon to do this sort of thing numerous times during the series run, often to create plausible deniability for higher-ups during times when he's not officially on CTU's payroll. Examples include executing and beheading a witness in a criminal prosecution (to get undercover with the man he was to rat out); staging the execution of a captured terrorist's children (to get him to talk); breaking the ringleader of a drug cartel out of a maximum security prison (to intercept a bio-weapon his cartel was about to buy); threatening to expose a terrorist's innocent daughter to a fatal virus (to make him talk); threatening to kill a suspect whose lawyer had exempted him from questioning (again, to make him talk); invading the Chinese consulate and kidnapping a Chinese national, and sacrificing his lover's estranged husband (who took a bullet for Jack early in the day) to save said national, ultimately ending up in a Chinese prison for it (to insulate the US government from reprisal); and hijacking Marine One and holding the President hostage (to get a confession of the crimes he'd commited). He also does shoot a dog, but that was in self defence.
- His shooting dead of Nina Myers in Season 3, on the other hand, was plain revenge-fuelled murder.
Law And Order Special Victims Unit: In the episode "Rage," Olivia shoots the perp engaged in a personal battle of wills and wits with Elliot because she knew he wanted Elliot to shoot him since If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him.
Battlestar Galactica has made this an almost weekly theme. Laura Roslin and Saul Tigh are the show's unquestioned champions - the former going so far as to kidnap and fake the death of a newborn unbeknownst to her parents and the latter going so far as to poison his own wife in order to give her a peaceful death after she was caught collaborating with the Cylons. (Probably the kindest thing he could have done, seeing what happens to other collaborators in the very next episode.)
- Mind you, reports of her death might have been exaggerated.
In Doctor Who, the Doctor has often found himself taking this role; it's especially become a character trait in his ninth and tenth incarnations. Instances include, in "Dalek" sealing his companion in a bunker with a Dalek in order to prevent the Dalek from escaping, and drowning the children of a Giant Spider Empress in "The Runaway Bride" rather than letting them devour the Earth. Arguably the worst so far is in "The Fire of Pompeii", causing the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and the destruction of Pompeii, in order to save the rest of humanity from being turned into Pyroviles.
- In the New Adventures novels set during his seventh incarnation, he would commit such morally questionable acts so often that he quickly turned into a Knight Templar, and remained so for most of the series.
Jack Harkness on Torchwood has taken up this role quite a few times, starting with giving a child to evil fairies to keep them from murdering innocents in "Small Worlds" and going up to sacrificing his own grandson in order to save millions of other children in "Children of Earth".
Happens at least twice in Stargate SG-1. Both times, it's a member of SG-1 killing someone dear to Daniel and explaining "I Did What I Had To Do".
- In the first episode of Stargate Atlantis, Shepherd has to kill his CO after the latter has the life sucked out of him by a Wraith.
Babylon 5 is full of this crap. Then again, every race and every individual in Babspace is a Magnificent Bastard, even the heroes are like this at times.
More like "Shoot the Werewolf" in Supernatural's Heart. Madison is a sweet, engaging Girl of the Week but also a danger to herself and everyone around her. She asks Sam (who's slightly in love) to do it as he's the only one she trusts. Dean offers to do it but instead we hear a shot offscreen and end on Dean looking miserable and flinching.
- This trope is pretty much Sam's character arc for season 4. Even with how badly it turned out, his intentions were good.
Lost: Eko shoots a man to keep his little brother from having to do so.
- Later, a flashback shows Sayid killing a chicken on his father's order after his older brother refuses to do so.
- And let's not forget the time Sayid shot 12-year-old Ben Linus to try and avert all kinds of bad stuff in the future.
Played with in the Bones episode "The Man in the Cell". Bad guy Epps goes over the balcony rail, Booth lunges and catches his wrist, there's a long moment (and some really creepy dialogue from Epps)... and then Epps is street pizza. Did Booth let go or not? This turns into a sub-arc over the next few episodes.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles finds a new dog to shoot in virtually every episode (as could be expected, given the consequences of failure and the presence of an emotionless android and a paranoid future soldier in the regular cast). For instance, in an early episode, the benign terminator Cameron prevents John from saving a suicidal girl, reasoning that he could draw attention to himself and risk getting exposed and drawing the attention of other terminators. The biggest example is Andy Good, an innocent computer engineer who will one day invent SkyNet, who literally gets shot (though Sarah's pretty upset about it).
- In the episode "The Brothers of Nablus," Cameron guns down three thieves who stole from their house, simply because they knew where the Connors lived. Sarah spares the last robber, who was hiding in the bathroom. Cromartie eventually comes along and susses the location of the Connor's house from him.
In one Blake's 7 episode, Vila orders a pro-Federation surgeon to operate on a fellow rebel at gunpoint, then says that Blake isn't the sort of person to do this. Then a few minutes later, Blake subverts this trope by threatening to cripple the surgeon's hands if he delays any longer.
There's an episode of Pie in the Sky where WPC Cambridge arrests an old police friend of Crabbe who's guilty of taking a bribe, to spare Crabbe from having to do so.
Star Trek Voyager: In "Prime Factors" Voyager's crew come across a race of aliens who have the technology to get them home, but who refuse to help them. A faction within their society agrees to covertly give them the technology in exchange for Voyager's library (stories being used as currency). However the transaction is illegal and Janeway refuses on principle. Some of the more militant crewmembers decide otherwise, only to be busted by Security Chief Tuvok…who then proceeds to make the exchange himself.
JANEWAY: I don’t even know where to start. I want you to explain to me how you, of all people, could be involved in this.
TUVOK: It is quite simple, Captain. You have made it clear on many occasions that your highest goal for the crew is to get them home. But in this instance, your standards would not allow you to violate Sikaran law. Someone had to spare you the ethical dilemma. I was the logical choice, and so I chose to act.
Lionel and Lex Luthor have both done this at some point during Smallville although in the most iconic cases of both, they were protecting someone else.
- Lana Lang, Pete Ross and Oliver Queen also used this ideology as justification for attacking Lex with lethal intent while under the influence of mind-altering substances. It seemed like this was the case for Kara Kent as well, but that was simply Brainiac in disguise.
In Burn Notice, Michael has to kill Victor in the second season finale. It's partly a Mercy Kill, since Victor says that the people who're after them will take him apart if they get him, but it's mostly just an expedient move for Michael in order to get closer to the people who burned him. Considering Victor was trying to kill Michael up until about halfway through this episode, it's one hell of a Tear Jerker. Especially since the good guys have gone out of their way to avoid directly killing anyone after ten minutes into the first episode.
- And in the third season episode "The Long Way Back", Michael shoots his "partner" Strickler, upon finding out that he had arranged for Fiona to be kidnapped and handed over to any one of the various people who wanted her dead, simply because she was a potential red flag in Michael's file. Of course, Strickler had already pulled a gun on him at that point, and was not particularly inclined to let Michael do anything to prevent the plan from going through.
Gibbs shooting through Agent Michelle Lee to take out the Weatherman in NCIS.
- And she asked him to do it! Complete Tear Jerker, right there.
Season 2 of Ashes To Ashes sees Gene Hunt literally shoot the dog.
- And New Tricks, which is basically the same concept in reverse, has the female lead stuck in her desk job because she once accidentally shot a dog in a police operation.
Mal of Firefly is the rare lead character who never needs a side character to shoot the dog for him. He's more than willing to kill someone to protect his crew, and he does it on multiple occasions, even when killing them isn't strictly necessary.
- In the pilot, he shoots Dobson (a federal agent) in the face without hesitation because Dobson was threatening River.
- In The Train Job, he kicks the King Mook into Serenity's engines— literally shredding the man into a mist of blood— because he threatened to hunt them down over a deal gone bad.
- In The Message, he shoots Tracy for trying to take Kaylee hostage, when a simple explanation of the situation would have solved everything.
House MD had its doctors treat an Idi Amin-analogue called Dbala. Cameron says repeatedly that she hopes he dies, and even makes moves toward convincing his second-in-command to seize power by killing him, but still treats him as best she can. Then her husband Chase fakes a test result, deliberately causing his death, which eventually causes Cameron to leave him and PPTH.
Farscape has Crais offering to execute Aeryn's mother (who was sent to hunt them down and kill them) after they capture her so Aeryn doesn't have to witness it. He doesn't actually 'shoot the dog', he fakes it and offers a proposal to Aeryn's mom where she returns to the Peacekeepers and says the job is done in exchange for her life. Technically averted...
The West Wing ends season 3 with Bartlet reluctantly ordering the assassination of terrorist leader and foreign diplomat Abdul Shareef. Bartlet sees this as an absolute wrong, but flawed evidence gathering prevents them from putting him on trial, and Leo convinces him that it's the only way to prevent future terrorist attacks.

Very recently, professional wrestler Batista confronted Shawn Michaels for doing this to Ric Flair and ending his career. Old Yeller was referenced leading up to the friendly match at Wrestle Mania 24, but - as was referenced in the color commentary for the match itself - it was rabies, not age, that forced the main character to kill the dog. Still, the match was presented as Shawn knowing full well that Flair was too old to wrestle any more and that he was going to lose to someone soon - all Michaels could do was fufill his friend's wishes and be the one to end his career.
- It's implied that Batista was jealous, because Flair asked Michaels and not him.

Some argue that Commissars from Warhammer 40000 are justified in shooting their men as maintaining unit cohesiveness for the cost of a few men is preferable to having many more die in the chaos of a general rout.
- And, of course, the Imperium regularly Blows Up The Planet The Dog Was Living On in response to the worst outbreaks of heresy, daemon invasions, or alien threats. Billions are killed, but the alternative is generally much, much worse.
- The number of times preventative measures such as Exterminatus are justified are balanced by the equal number of times in which they are not, but are used anyway because the people in power are deranged lunatics like the Monodominants. It is a rather grim setting after all.
  - All instances of Exterminatus are put under Inquisitorial review. If insufficient justification is found, the person who ordered it is sentenced to immediate execution, or to be killed on sight if they have already fled.
- This is of course based on the real life way old fashioned armies operated. When a millitary unit (UK anyway) forms up to do drill, the NCOs are at the back of the formation and march behind the unit. They were originally there to shoot soldiers who ran from the enemy, as formation drill was originally about standing up with no cover in massed ranks and shooting at each other. The idea was that if you stand there and take the fire, there's a pretty good chance you'll be shot, but if you run the Sergeant will definitely get you.
In Legend Of The Five Rings, the Scorpion clan's 'hat' is that they exist solely to shoot the necessary dogs. The Scorpion, despite being traitorous bastards, are extremely loyal to the Emperor, and people who are worthy friends. Make sure you are one of those two, and preferably both.
- A story explaining them: An author asks, in jest, each clan what the most important virtue is. Each clan picks one, and the Scorpions pick loyalty, while the Lions pick honor. The other clans laugh at the Scorpion talking of Loyalty, since they are traitorous bastards. The Scorpion proposes that each Daimyo will call his greatest warrior in, and give him a task. The one whose warrior does not hesitate, loses. The others are suspicious, but he talks them into it, offering to demonstrate the task first. He calls his warrior in, stares at the author, and gives her a look that says, "You know what I am about to do." He then says his command. "Kill me." Without hesitation, the Scorpion Warrior kills his Daimyo, then draws a knife and commits seppuku. Everyone else can only stare in awe.
The titular Nobles of Nobilis, who have transcended human morality anyway, do some bad, bad things in their Forever War against the Omnicidal Maniac Excrucians.

Attempted in Devil May Cry 4. Dante's dropping into a meeting of the Order of the Sword and putting a round through the head of their leader Sanctus was meant to prevent the Big Bad from carrying out his nefarious plan. Unfortunately, that wasn't good enough, as Sanctus got better.
In Net Hack, completing the game with the "pacifist" conduct practically requires having a pet that's willing to do what you, the protagonist, are not.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion loves this trope. For the Dark Brotherhood, there's the player killing everyone in the Cheydinhal base because a traitor might be there. He isn't. Then in the expansion pack, this is how One of the two dukes (so the player can replace them) and Sheogorath (due to an involuntary Face Heel Turn) die.
In the infamous "Mind of Steel" 'bad' end (#30) in the Fate Stay Night visual novel, with his love interest Sakura becoming possessed by the embodiment of evil and devouring increasing numbers of people, Shirou decides to follow his father's footsteps by freezing his emotions in order to kill Sakura and (once he learns the true nature of the Grail) coldly win the Grail War—whatever it takes—for the sake of the greater good. As Kotomine says, now that he has turned his mind to steel, he is his father, and his success is guaranteed.
In Jade Empire, towards the end of the game, you learn the secret of how the Emperor created Death's Hand and that you can use the same technique to bind him to you instead. After learning this, you're lectured on how this is pretty much the worse thing you can do to a person. You can still choose to do it, of course, and given how powerful a warrior Death's Hand is, it's pretty tempting. It really stops having the "justifiable" credentials when you then have to bind your fellow party members if you want to keep him over their objections. From the character's point of view, it's easy to see how this might look like the only way to win, but really...
In Halo 3, Sgt Johnson says Keyes must shoot him and herself to prevent themselves from being used to activate the Halos. However, it turns into a Kick The Dog when Truth intervenes and kills Keyes himself. Why Dont Ya Just Shoot Him? Truth that is. He didn't appear to have a shield ala Regret.
Georg Prime in Suikoden V does this to Queen Arshtat and becomes a Hero With Bad Publicity as a result.
In Splinter Cell: Double Agent, one of your earlier "karma choices" is to decide whether to shoot the pilot of the helicopter that the terrorist organization hijacked, as an act of loyalty to the terrorists. If Sam decides to instead hesitate and stay loyal to the government, Sam's only friend in the organization does it instead in a last-minute decision to save Sam's face.
In Fallout 3, there are many different times this can happen. For instance, putting the Modified FEV in Project Purity to kill anyone or anything that is mutated. Another is in The Pitt, to kidnap (and probably doom) the baby so that the slaves can be free and find a cure faster to the Trog condition.
In Starcraft, Tassadar is forced to burn and sterilize the Terran planets that have been infested with Zerg, because it is the most effective way to kill the Zerg. After a while, Tassadar refuses to shoot any more dogs and disobeys his orders.
Emerl. That is all.
Solar Boy Django, the protagonist of Boktai has been forced to kill off, or very nearly do so, a member of his immediate family during each of his series three games after they are enslaved by the forces of darkness. The only thing that makes it slightly easier (or even worse) for him is that they beg him to do so.
Zero had to make this decision at the end of Mega Man Zero 4. Confronted with the monster that was Dr. Weil, the latter boasts how a hero like Zero would never bring himself up to kill a human like Weil, or else he would forever be branded a Maverick. Fortunately, Zero doesn't care.

In The Wotch, Miranda offs Natasha Dahlet.
There was debate among the Schlock Mercenary fandom about whether Petey's making the Tricameral Assembly into an object lesson in the necessity of a healthy defense budget in the Teraport age by vaporizing them from orbit was a Shoot The Dog moment or falling through the Moral Event Horizon... However, the revelation that the "vaporizing" was just a show to scare the other governments into compliance, and that he'd merely teleported them away to draft them into his attempt to save the Andromeda Galaxy — and the universe in general — from hostile Dark Matter aliens made it pretty clear it's the former.
- However, at another point he revealed that he was willing to perform mindrips if necessary in order to gather information for said war—which is the quite illegal equivalent of torturing information out of someone which is guaranteed to be fatal.
In The Order Of The Stick, Lord Kubota surrenders to avoid being killed, and once captured, proceeds to outline his plan to escape justice by manipulating the upcoming trial to an enraged Elan, who can't do anything about it. Vaarsuvius, however, overhears, and takes measures to eliminate the obviously still dangerous threat because Elan can't.
- However, this borders on a cold blooded murder, given that the reasons V shot Kubota were largely based on overhearing a few words and being Dangerously Genre Savvy, rather than any true evidence.
Baron Wulfenbach in Girl Genius apparently has to do this a lot. At one point the heroine has to be talked into leaving a situation for him to deal with because they know he'll do it. (The fact that as the ruler of most of Europe he's much better equipped to handle it probably factored in as well, of course.)
In Dominic Deegan, Rilian the First Necromancer has taken the role of Dog Shooter several times, and is always ready to do so again. Rilian has killed Acibek on Acibek's request to seal the Storm of Souls the first time. He later killed the first Sylvan Oracle to deal with the Storm a second time. He's also Allowed the Deegan's worst enemy to threaten Dominic and his brothers as children, because he knew their mother would kill her to protect them. In the latest arc, he arranged for events in the tour that would "test" Dominic and Luna, to see if Dominic was ready to Mindbreak; since Mindbreak is essentially a psychic Superpower Meltdown, it is a very bad thing. If Dominic failed any of the tests, Rilian was ready to kill him. Rilian noted once that his role requires him to be cold. This troper believes Rilian to be a much better Anti Hero than Celesto.
- Of course, immediately afterwards, it was revealed that Rilian was able to simply be his old jolly self around Dominic during the test, making the whole scene a rare case of Petting The Dog while holding a gun behind your back.
  - In a twist, while unaware of the Xanitos Gambit, Dominic did check his future if he didn't go on the trip — definite Mindbreak and the mass murder of anyone within range — which, given Dominic is one of the more powerful psychics in his universe, is pretty darned big. All this with the normal caveats about how visions, by definition, show futures that can be changed, however.
In a surprisingly touching moment for Looking For Group, Cale'Anon on his quest to redeem his evil race through personal heroism, is railroaded by Forces Beyond His Control to murder a child in order to save the future.

Survival Of The Fittest character Adam Dodd was forced to euthanise his friend Marcus Roddy, as he had fallen into a coma. Most of the rest of his group didn't agree with the action, but Adam pointed out that had they left him catatonic, somebody else would have just come along and done the same, or he would have just been eaten by animals or some equally gruesome fate.
The Pacifist path of the webgame Pillage The Village is pretty based to the '' the more ethical of two evil' logic of this trope.
Happens a lot — meaning a lot — in Shadow Unit; the most memorable instance involved an actual dog, which (hidden for squick) a gamma nicknamed "Mrs. Chow" had started eating. Alive. From the middle.

Happens several times in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. These unpleasant-but-necessary duties seem to fall on Shayera "Hawkgirl" Hol's shoulders quite frequently:
- In "The Savage Time", in the middle of a retreat, Green Lantern tells Hawkgirl to leave him behind so she can carry wounded soldiers out in his place. She does so without argument.
- In "Starcrossed", she helps the Thanagarian invasion force defeat the League and conquer the Earth, because she believed the occupation of Earth was necessary to defeat the Gordanians, which was in the best interests of both her home planet Thanagar and Earth. (Though she draws the line at destroying Earth to save Thanagar, and she turns on her brethren upon discovering that they intend to do exactly that.)
- In "Wake the Dead" Solomon Grundy gets reanimated through Chaos Magic as a raging, mindless zombie, and the only merciful option is to kill him (again):
  Dr. Fate: (to Shayera) Your mace may be the only thing that can give the creature peace.
  Green Lantern: What are you saying?
  Shayera: Your favorite movie is Old Yeller, you know exactly what he's saying.
- The Question gets in on the act in "Question Authority". He struggles for months about how to prevent the events that led, in an Alternate Universe, to the Justice League becoming fascist rulers of the world—events that centered around Superman murdering Lex Luthor. Question's solution: go kill Lex himself (using his tie). After all, Supes is the ultimate good guy, and Question's a confirmed loony conspiracy nut. (Unfortunately, the real conspiracy Question uncovered in the process of confronting Lex was a bit more than he could handle.)
Ben 10: In the episode "Framed," Ben and his Evil Counterpart Kevin 11 are dueling on a bridge, surrounded by an army led by Lieutenant Steele, an Inspector Javert alien hunter, whom Ben just stopped Kevin from killing. After Ben wins and spares Kevin, he ends up dangling from the bridge.
Kevin: You know why you can't beat me? Cause you're a good guy, and good guys never have the guts to finish guys like me!
Steele: But I do. (orders his men to shoot Kevin down)
Avatar The Last Airbender: Avatars Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk and Yangchen(and probably others, but notably not Aang) believe this to be part of the duty of the Avatar.
- Kyoshi in particular takes responsibility for the death of a conqueror, who fell off of a cliff after Kyoshi separated her home from the main conintent. When Aang consults her in later episodes, he claims that she was not responsible for his death as he was killed by a freak accident when the rocks he was standing on fell away. Kyoshi refuses to recognize the distinction.
In Teen Titans, when Robin becomes Red X to uncover Slade's plans.

In A World Gone Mad, Jack Bauer-esque Anti Hero Agent Griffin's whole philosophy is that someone like him has to do horrible things in order to protect the naive, peace-loving citizens who don't even know he exists. The joke is that he's horribly incompetent. So, not only does he kill civilians, cause the death of innocents, double-cross his own allies, and torture prisoners out of necessity, he often ends up killing, double-crossing, or torturing the wrong civilians, innocents, allies, or prisoners who have absolutely nothing to do with whatever evil plot he's trying to stop. It helps that he's a Heroic Sociopath and Karma Houdini.

George Washington (hero number one in the U.S.A) has a Shoot The Dog episode among his many awesome moments. With the revolution in danger of falling apart due to the demoralizing effect of endless military defeats, Washington broke the traditional Christmas truce to lead troops across the Delaware River◊ and sneak attack a group of enemy mercenaries. The resulting lopsided victory had a crucial psychological effect.
After placing second at the Kentucky Derby, the filly Eight Belles collapsed due to compound fractures in her front legs. She had to be euthanized, right there on the track.
- In fact, this is more or less standard practice for injured race horses (albeit usually not right on the track).
One could call Dr. Jack Kevorkian a dog killer, only instead of dogs, he euthanized terminally ill patients. However, unlike dogs, human euthanasia is illegal pretty much everywhere in the U.S.; thus, he served eight years for murder.
- And they all asked him to do it.
Roald Amundsen strategy for reaching the South Pole and returning alive included shooting half the dogs and using them to feed the rest. It worked.

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