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You Have Outlived Your Usefulness
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Grytpype-Thynne: Little does this poor goon know that the moment he shows me the gold mine, it's curtains for him. Eccles: Little does he know that I've already got some curtains.
Finn: Can we be excuse, Shendu?
Ratso: Yeah, since we opened up all the portals for ya...
Chow: You don't need us to carry old Pan'Ku anymore.
Shendu: Never seeing any of you ever again would make a very happy dragon.
To show or remind the viewer how nasty the Big Bad or his Evil Minions are, a common trope is their habit of ruthlessly killing any associate who has concluded their useful function in the organization.
It is often punctuated with words to the effect of "You have outlived your usefulness" before the murder.
Often done as an excuse not to pay them, or to punish the minion for asking for a raise, especially when done right before the critical mission. May also happen to a villain who thought he was the Big Bad, but forgot that Evil Is Not A Toy. More realistically, the victim in question may be privy to information that the villain doesn't want to get out. As the Pirates say: "Dead men tell no tales."
If the Big Bad is also particularly annoyed by how his Evil Minions have functioned in their role, he may use The Blofeld Ploy.
A variant of this trope is common when a villain who has enlisted the help of the oblivious heroes reveals his true villainy, the comment usually following his gloating of how they played right into his hands. Warning to any Genre Savvy villains out there: This version of the trope has a noticeably lower success rate, and trying it on The Hero is tantamount to suicide.
Compare You Have Failed Me, Rewarded As A Traitor Deserves, and The Uriah Gambit. See also Villainous Demotivator and Even Evil Has Loved Ones.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- In .hack//SIGN: Morganna attacks Tsukasa after Tsukasa brings Subaru to the hidden area where Aura was held. This too used an alternate phrase, "I don't need you anymore."
- Mistress 9 does this to Kaolinite in the third season of Sailor Moon, which also happens to be the only season in which the "You Have Failed Me" trope is not used. Of course, considering how nasty Kaolinite had been to Mistress 9's host body, Hotaru, this was also motivated by revenge.
- Although no special line is used, this is the reason Captain Kuro tries to kill his entire crew in One Piece: he no longer needs them, and can't allow anyone who knows his true identity to live.
- In Soukou No Strain, when Ralph finds the other Emily aboard the Libertad and knows that the Reliable Traitor is about to move against him, he throws a coup and kills the rest of Medlock's crew, only keeping her around until she too "serves her purpose".
- In Konjiki No Gash Bell, Gash's evil twin Zeon hires a demon named Baltro to kidnap Kiyomaro's father and lure Gash into a battle. When Baltro and his partner fail to burn Gash's book, Zeon promptly burns Baltro's, stating that all losers in battles must return to the demon world and that those are the rules.
- Dragonball Z uses this quite often, mainly with Babidi, Frieza, and even Vegeta.
- The homunculi from Fullmetal Alchemist are prolific perpetrators of this trope.
- A revent example of the "more useful dead" variation: The gold-toothed Alchemist was in charge of readying the five sacrifices need for the Promised Day. When he fails to turn Mustang into the last one, Wrath and Pride use him instead.
- Used in Bleach when the main antagonist, Sôsuke Aizen, betrays and (almost) coldly murders his loving subordinate Momo Hinamori, and attempts to do so to Rukia Kuchiki as well after noticing that she's still alive after the Hogyoku is extracted. Oh, and don't forget what he did to Halibel. After two of her higher-ranked fellow Espada had been defeated, Aizen just slashed her with his sword, claiming that she "was to weak to keep on fighting for him"
- Likewise, the Big Bad of the filler arc loved doing this, to the point where "you were just pawns" almost seems like his Catch Phrase.
- Zako Red in SD Gundam Force gets deactivated by Commander Sazabi as soon as he's finished helping the invasion of Neotopia commence. This is particularly stupid because, aside from Zako Red, Sazabi was more or less Surrounded By Idiots.
- However, the show implies rather strongly that Zako Red is simply a drone operated by Sazabi to allow him to carry out his plans without revealing himself.
- And it turns out the Zakos and their bumbling commanders are only a small iteration of the Dark Axis anyway, as shown by the Doga Commandos and the villains that appear in the second half of the series.
- Orochimaru of Naruto pulls this one on the two surviving members of the Sound genin team that was entered into the Chuunin Exams, after they lost their respective fights during the preliminaries. He sacrifices them and uses their corpses as vessels to bring back the First and Second Hokages of Konoha under his control, to fight the Third Hokage, his old teacher. Orochimaru and Sarutobi's respective reactions when the latter breaks the jutsu and sees who the sacrifices are are quite telling.
- Unfortunately for Orochimaru, this tropes back to haunt him when he outlives his usefulness to Sasuke as soon as he feels he has learned all he can from him. Sasuke goes on to repeat this with his new team, throwing Suigetsu and Jugo to the wolves just because he doesn't want to wait to fight Danzo, then stabbing Danzo through Karin rather than making an effort to save her.
- Nakago of Fushigi Yuugi does this to one of his fellow Seiryuu warriors after he receives the Mac Guffin he was ordered to steal (although this is partly because the man's "human form" was killed, making him little more than a smart wolf).
- Code Geass has its Anti Hero protagonist do this with mind-controlled enemies. He does it to a fair few of his "allies" too, although never to their faces.
- Then, as a subversion, his "allies" do it to HIM. They get away with it too, sort off.
- At the beginning of R2 Lelouch is stripped of his memories and used in a plan to lure out C.C., so when the Britannian soldiers find C.C., they plan to kill Lelouch since he's fulfilled his purpose.
- The Searrs Story Arc in Mai-HiME ends with a distraught and disgraced Joseph shooting Alyssa in the back because she lost against the heroes, and thus was no longer useful to him. He gets his comeuppance immediately, when Miyu turns around and kills him.
- Fuuma does this to Kusanagi in the X1999 movie after the latter gets his arm dismembered by the protagonists. The result is a Rain Of Blood. The manga and anime versions of Fuuma do similar things, but in the anime it's the result of Character Derailment, while the manga version clearly has a different (and still mysterious) reason.
- In Death Note, this is is the fate of almost everyone used by Light, even if they are close to him, so that he can safely cover his tracks after they had served their purpose. Also the fate of many pawns that served under The Mafia group of Mello, especially when they were trying to get the titular Artifact Of Doom. Surprisingly, the last use of the trope in the manga wasn't done by either of those two but by Ryuk on Light himself because Light had used up his entertainment value by then, reminding us that, despite his personality as a lovable goof, Ryuk is still a Shinigami to the core.
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, despite having successfully held off the Ala Rubra till the ceremony to bring about The End Of The World As We Know It was over, the Big Bad in a sneak attack shot both Nagi and Fate through the chest with a high piercing Death Ray. This wasn't due to Fate being a casualty in the way, because of the way the two were facing: Nagi's back turned to the direction of the on-coming attack. By the way that Nagi had Neck Lifted Fate, he likely watched the Black Cloaked villain as the beam was fired, smiling as it did.
- In Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni: Okonogi gives Takano this Treatment near the end of Matsubayashi-hen after it becomes clear her plans to Trigger Protocol 34 have been completely foiled. Complete with a Hannibal Lecture about how Tokyo never really cared about her research and was only using her a pawn. He than hands her a gun with a single bullet and tells her to blow her brains out. And if not for the intervention of Hanyuu that is what she most likely would have done. It is safe to assume that she does not fare better in the other worlds either.
- This is an especially unusual example because Takano is supposed to be the Big Bad.
- In Gundam Wing, General Septem is tricked by Lady Une on behalf of OZ to give a live speech (aboard a plane fleeing the attack of the New Edwards Base) condemning peace with the space colonies and reaffirming Earth's resolve to the war. After ending the broadcast, Lady Une calmly and politely informs the General that his "services were no longer required," immediately before opening a hatch under his seat. Then shooting him in the head on his way down.
- Gundam 00's (f*cking) Ribbons Almark does this quite a bit.
- Orikakan gets this from Niwe in Utawarerumono in the form of an arrow through the neck.
- Genkishi from Katekyo Hitman Reborn had this happen to him seemingly just to show that people can actually die.
- And Xanxus kept apparently doing this to all of his underlings whenever they lost matches with Tsuna' guardians, laughing about how they're trash... only for it to be revealed that not a single one of them actually did die.
- Alphard from Canaan simply decides to discard Liang Qi by deliberately leaving her behind in a building that is about to be bombed.
- This is standard procedure for Johan in Monster. Anyone who's come into contact with him for whatever reason tend to die shortly after their role has been played.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S, Due, after killing Regius tells Zest that his "usefulness and (his) revenge are at an end". In an inversion of the typical result of this trope, Zest kills her.
- In Pokemon Special, Archie rewards his very loyal and very competant henchman, who successfully managed to steal the Blue Orb for him and is now inside a submarine, asking for a hand up, by sending the sub off after removing the device that equalized the pressure inside, effectively leaving the poor guy for dead. Apparently it would have been too much of an effort to pull him up. The henchman barely manages to make it to the surface but sadly, he goes in denial, refusing to believe that his boss abandoned him, and fights on to make sure no one stops Kyogre.
- Done a few times in Yu Yu Hakusho. First with Byakko, stumbling into Seiryuu's room after the former's supposed defeat. Lacking pity for his supposed comrade, Seiryuu proceeds to superfreeze Byakko and then knock his head clean off. Later, this happens with the Elder Toguro, coming back in a similar fasion as Byakko, only to be knocked into and/or vaporised into a whole 'nother zip code by that season's Big Bad, his younger (but taller) brother. Later it's revealed that he was Not Quite Dead, but that's quickly remedied by Kurama, granting him a Fate Worse Than Death instead.
Comic Books
- Tintin's archnemesis, Roberto Rastapopoulos, shows his worst in Flight 714. He doesn't get to carry out his plans, though.
- The Joker from Batman often does this with his henchmen after he feels they have fulfilled their purpose. Or even if they haven't, really.
- Watchmen The Big Bad, Ozymandias, does this to the people who helped him with various parts of his master plan, so they won't be able to piece together what really happened. If it helps, Ozymandias feels really, really sorry about having to do it. Honest. Applies to The Movie too.
- In Sonic Universe's "30 Years Later" storyline, King Shadow breaks Lien-Da's armband, causing her to fade into the time-line after she rescues him from stasis. This seems to be because she questioned releasing Tikhaos
Film
- In Superman II, Lex Luthor aids the bad guys by giving them information on Superman. Being the epitome of people who are so powerful they wouldn't need his help, they threaten to kill him multiple times when he's outlived his usefulness — which Lex manages to avert by revealing something new.
- The villains of Live Free or Die Hard are quite fond of this trope. They execute just about everyone they have contact with once they're through with them.
- In a scene that got a lot of fans screaming Character Derailment, X-Men: The Last Stand includes a scene where Mystique, Magneto's most loyal lieutenant, gets depowered... and Magneto immediately abandons her to the cops as "not one of us anymore".
- Surprisingly, the Sith mastermind Darth Sidious in the Star Wars series only does this twice, and both in Revenge of the Sith. Count Dooku doesn't realize how expendable he is until Sidious orders his replacement, the future Darth Vader, to execute him (though to be fair, the rules state that there can only be two Sith). Then, once the Separatist leaders have done their job, Sidious informs them that he is sending Vader to "take care of them." Naturally, this means Vader locks the door and slaughters them. Vader's sweetheart Padmé probably would've also been discarded by Sidious, if Vader hadn't accidentally done that himself.
- He does it a third...or is that first?...time in Return of the Jedi, when he urges Luke to finish off Vader and take his place at the Emperor's side.
- In the movie Mystery Men, Casanova Frankenstein kills his own men for no other reason than to show that he is so evil.
- That and he wasn't willing to wait for them to get out of the way before activating the booby trap that would prevent the advancing heroes from reaching him.
- James Bond films are fond of this trope.
- A View To A Kill: After his workers finish setting up a plan, Max Zorin not only detonates the explosives early while people are still in the caves, but then proceeds to take out an assault rifle and gun down all the survivors.
- Tomorrow Never Dies: During the standoff on Carver's ship, James Bond is holding Big Bad Elliot Carver's tech genius, Gupta, hostage at gunpoint in order to get him to release Wai Lin, who Carver himself has taken hostage. After Gupta confirms that Carver's stolen missiles are ready to fire on Beijing, Carver promptly kills him, declaring, "It seems you have outlived your contract."
- However, Licence To Kill averted it: When The Dragon ask why they don't just kill the corrupt cop, the Big Bad insists that loyalty is important to him, and pays up the bribe. The guy does die, but at Bond's hands.
- In Thunderball, Angelo Palazzi, the impersonator, asked for a raise immediately before his mission of stealing the nuclear warhead. His boss was not pleased.
- The Spy Who Loved Me. After Dr. Bechmann and Professor Markovitz completed the submarine tracking system for Stromberg, he called them in, congratulated them and told them he was transferring $20 million dollars to their Swiss bank accounts. After he sent them off in a helicopter, he blew it up by remote control and sent a message canceling the money transfer.
- The Dark Knight has an astounding example of this in the opening sequence, where the Joker has actually instructed his men to do this to each other.
- Subverted in pretty much the only clever moment in the Dungeons and Dragons film. Damodar begs Profion to take out the parasite in his head as promised, and the spell Profion casts knocks him away and to the floor, apparently killing him. However, Damodar then gets right back up as the parasite leaves.
- Though in the Sci Fi Channel sequel it turned out he was cursed and became undead.
- In Angels And Demons, The Dragon gets offed by a car bomb after having dealt with or tried to kill, in the fourth case anyway the four cardinals.
- In Firestorm, Randall Alexander Shaye systematically kills each of the convicts who helped him escape once they's stopped being useful/become a liability.
- In the third Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, The Big Bad Lord Beckett orders the execution of Elizabeth's father because he hasn't got any use for him anymore now that he gained full authority and the ex-governor got too curious about the Mac Guffin.
- In XXX, the villains test out a deadly nerve gas on the scientists who developed it for them.
- In Time Bandits, Kevin demands that Evil call off his skull-headed monsters or he'll destroy the map. Evil replies, "Very well. I have no more need of them," and destroys all the monsters, then goes a step further and kills all his remaining minions.
Literature
- In Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, the psycho killer assassin Mr. Teatime
 always does this, even to hostages and bribees, creeping out other guys who only "won't hesitate to kill anybody between them and some gold." He's described as being one of the rare literal examples of "someone who will kill you as soon as look at you".
- In another Discworld story, The Truth, a pair of villains plan to kill their Lord Vetinari look-alike once "his face no longer fits". Luckily, he is rescued in time.
- The villain in Making Money also does this, thereby enabling Vetinari to deduce his plan from the string of bodies left behind.
- In Interesting Times Lord Hong has Two Fire Herb killed after he's done with the Resistance. However, because Two Fire Herb had enough foresight to ask for a promise that Hong would neither write or say an order for his execution, Lord Hong makes an origami man. Without a head.
- And in Mort, the Duke (a dab hand with poisons) catches the antidote-dosed King Olerve off-guard by simply hiring an assassin with a crossbow and a fast horse. Death assures the King's ghost that the assassin's horse isn't fast enough: He allowed the Duke to provide him with a packed lunch.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Voldemort kills Snape because he believed that Snape needed to die at his hand in order to gain control of the Elder Wand. Ironically, Voldemort failed to notice the slightly greater crime of continually betraying him for the last eighteen years.
- He also kills Bertha Jorkins in the fourth book because she is of no use to him anymore.
- In Dune, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen has Yueh's wife kidnapped to coerce him into betraying the house of Atreides, then "frees" his wife and "reunites" him with her, because "he always keeps his promises". (However, Yueh had already guessed the Baron's intentions and planned a posthumous revenge.)
- In a variation, Baron Harkonnen — after surviving an assassination attempt by his nephew and baronial heir Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen — reaches an agreement in which he will forgive this attempt on his life if his nephew agrees to wait until the Baron feels that his heir is properly prepared to take the throne, at which time he will step aside willingly (a sort of "I Have Outlived My Usefulness").
- In a particularly cruel example, Raistlin Majere does this to Crysania near the end of Dragonlance Legends, telling her, "Farewell, Revered Daughter. I need you no longer."
- OHenri: "Boulivard cannot carry two."
- The planet Despayre in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, as depicted in the novel "Death Star", and before that, the game "X-Wing". (scroll to 2:45)
- The octospiders in
Gentry Lee Arthur C Clarke's sequels to Rendezvous With Rama are good guys who do this. To themselves, voluntarily.
- In Graham Mc Neill's Warhammer 40000 Ultramarines novel Nightbringer, after Vedden and his men foment a riot, the ornithoptors they thought would extract them opened fire on them. Then Honan, whose home the attack had been launched from, complained to the conspirators, who handed him over for torture. Later, after de Valtos has awoken the Nightbringer, it kills him and several of the Dark Eldar, who were awakening it because they thought it would help them live forever.
- In the George Orwell novel Animal Farm, when the draft horse Boxer, the hardest-working out of all the animals on the farm and the example the other animals turn to, is injured and can no longer work, Napoleon tells the other animals that he will be taken to the vet. But the truck that arrives to take Boxer away is one that's bound for the glue factory. The line is never actually said, but you know that this was the underlying motive.
- In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Sanguinius, when Sachiel realizes the truth, Inquisitor Stele kills him to foment a battle, and also to get rid of him.
Live Action TV
Tabletop Games
- Regularly and gleefully used by the Dark Eldar and Chaos of Warhammer 40000. The Inquisition are by no means above this, either.
Theatre
Video Game
- Devil May Cry 3; Big Bad Vergil stabs Arkham through the midsection after it became apparent that he was useless to him. Arkham may have brought this on purpose, in order to later convince Lady to hunt Vergil and complete his plan for world domination. Dialogue and Alternate Character Interpretation suggests it's also quite possible that Vergil killed Arkham out of disgust; Arkham is an active worshiper of Evil and murdered his own wife, while Vergil is simply power-hungry and seeks to regain what he sees as his own heritage..
- Arkham survived Vergil's attempt to kill him. It's actually Lady who finishes him off, with a bullet to the head in revenge for killing her mother, just before Dante and Vergil's final battle.
- Happens in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Gaiden, worded just this way by Duminuss. And when you beat her, the real Big Bad, Dark Brain, comes out, says the same thing, and offs her.
- In Star Craft, Arcturus Mengsk abandons his top lieutenant Sarah Kerrigan to die at the fangs of the ravenous Zerg Swarm as soon as she ensures his ultimate victory. While Mengsk is undeniably a Magnificent Bastard, this turns out to be his single greatest mistake, and it comes back to bite him in the ass in a major way.
- Sarah herself gives this treatment to two entire armies in Starcraft: Brood War.
- In Fable, Maze is defeated, but Jack of Blades says that he had outlived his usefulness anyway.
- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin: After the barbarian known as The Beast is defeated in Mission 10, the game's Big Bad leaves him to die as the experimental drugs he was injected with ravage his psyche.
- Alfonso from Skies Of Arcadia punts his vice-captain off of his own airship and sends him plummeting to his death when Vyse and Aika invade at the start of the game. He planned to use the vice-captain as a scapegoat for allowing the Blue Rogues to board the ship (and get himself a cushy promotion for "outing the traitor"), but his boss, Galcian, sees through it and punishes him instead.
- Galcian pulls this himself much later in the game on Belleza, although in a very indirect manner as he simply unleashes the continent-destroying superweapon on the continent he sent her to. This proves to be a fatal error on Galcian's part, as Belleza is late to arrive and thus escapes the blast. She proceeds to aid the heroes in planning their assault on Galcian's fortress, then personally rams her ship into his escape pod when he flees.
- Finally, Mendoza, the prior Grand Admiral (whom Galcian replaced) tried this on Ramirez in the latter's backstory. Ramirez is a tykebomb created for assassination and has a blade that can slice photons in half, and is, not to mention, still alive when the game comes around: You work out how well that one went. It goes without saying that Galcian is not big on trying to repeat that whopper...
- Remiel says almost these exact words to the party at the end of the Journey of Regeneration in Tales Of Symphonia when he attacks you. He fails.
- The Reveal of Persona 3 involves Ikutsuki doing this to the party, though the death part, at least, had a purpose: He was going to use his tools as human sacrifices to accelerate his plan. Because apparently he can't wait three lousy months. Still fails, though.
- This happens four times in Fire Emblem 7, and two of these murders are carried by the same person. First, Ephidel stabs Lord Helman to death when he questions his plan to kill Eliwood. Second, Emotionless Girl Limstella kills one of the Reed brothers (it can be either the Swordmaster Linus or the Hero Lloyd, depending on which one you fought against) and Sonia's right hand, the Valkyrie Ursula, assuming she survives the player's Army, after their defeats. And ultimately, after being defeated at the Water Temple, Sonia is killed by Nergal.
- However, you can save Sonia by taking a certain sidequest. If you do, Limstella lets Sonia live, but not before informing her that her life was absolutely worthless. Cold.
- This doesn't actually save her; Limstella simply leaves Sonia to die from her wounds after the heroes have dispatched her personally, shattering Sonia's delusions of being a human instead of a Morph as she leaves. Given that Sonia is a Complete Monster, this is extremely satisfying to most.
- Thief: The Dark Project: Garrett almost falls victim to this after delivering the Eye to Constantine, who puts out one of his eyes and leaves him for dead, trapped in a thicket of flesh-eating plants. Garrett is rescued by the Keepers.
- In Shadow Hearts, Kato's commanding officer and love interest is gunned down by Japanese soldiers when she ceases to be any use to the army high command... as Kato helplessly watches. This starts the chain of events that turns him into the final Big Bad of Covenant.
- In Tales Of The Abyss, Van uses these words when the villain leaves Ion and the party behind to die once Luke has doomed Akzeriuth to sink into the core under his direction. In a subversion, the appearance of the villain's sister in the party suddenly adds a person the villain doesn't want to die into the mix — but since she can save herself (with the minor prize that she'll save the party alongside herself) and the villain knows this, it doesn't change matters.
- General Leo and Emperor Gestahl are offed by Kefka on two separate occasions in Final Fantasy VI. Shadow almost gets this treatment as well, but he survives and is discovered by the party when they arrive at the Floating Continent, earning them a powerful ally.
- At the end of The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the titular mask does this to the Skull Kid, whom it had been using as a host for most of the game. But he gets better at the end.
- In Kingdom Hearts: Following Sora's Heroic Sacrifice, the game's Big Bad, Ansem, appears out of nowhere and is about to pull this one on Kairi, but Riku holds him back long enough to let her escape with the others.
- Rather similarly, in Kingdom Hearts II it's DiZ who orders the 'disposal' of Namine after she completes her assigned task; an order he probably wouldn't give if she wasn't a Nobody. Sora's own usefulness to the Organization's Xanatos Gambit eventually expires as well, which goes about as well as you'd expect.
- In Birth By Sleep Aqua is in the same boat. Her role in the Xanatos Gambit is basically to just succeed at the Master exam while Terra doesn't to make him feel inferior and rush off half cocked. This happens in the first 10 minutes of the plot and the rest of her story arc is basically the Big Bad sending her into danger and later sending his Dragon to personally finish her off. But she's made Master rank for a reason and refuses to die. Eventually she winds up screwing the whole Gambit just by being an extra person who wasn't expected to be around for the final stages.
- In Perfect Dark, after the first two version of their plan, which attempted to take advantage of Trent Easton's political connections, fail, Mr. Blonde reveals his alien nature and dispatches Easton in a combination of You Have Failed Me and this trope. When the last, least subtle plan is thwarted as well, the Skedar imprison their other ally, Cassandra DeVries, for the same reasons.
- In Baten Kaitos, Kalas says to the Guardian Spirit (the player) "I don't need you any more!" and forcefully ejects the player out of the game, leaving the screen to fade to black.
- Imperator Ix, during the events of Sonic Chronicles, promptly blows Shade off Angel Island for questioning his motives after Sonic and his team rough him up. After he jacks the Master Emerald and sends Angel Island plummeting into Metropolis, Shade allies with Sonic and company to abort his scheme.
- Said word-for-word in Command And Conquer: Red Alert 3, by Soviet Premier Cherdenko. Of course, you proceed to annihilate the guy after already kicking the backside of two other significant threats.
- This is foreshadowed after killing General Krukov, who was Cherdenko's superior in the previous timeline. Krukov's Final Speech hints that Cherdenko set him up as the traitor.
- While he's not killed, Bowser gets this from Ganondorf in Super Smash Bros Brawl. The two of them are just about to report to Master Hand when Ganondorf decides to turn Bowser into a trophy in preparation to usurp the Master Hand. (Later, when Bowser is restored and Ganondorf is a trophy, Bowser takes his sweet revenge... or tries to, anyway.)
- But it's all good, because then Tabuu gives the boot to Ganondorf so that he can join the heroes in time for the final battle.
- Stated almost word-for-word by
Hitler Master-D The Leader to Killt in Bionic Commando and its Updated Rerelease.
- In Deus Ex: Invisible War, you have the choice of siding with the Templars and retarding nanoaugmentation and possibly technological progress. In their ending, your player character gets lynched. Due to script limitations and laziness in rendering the cutscenes, this only happens to male characters.
- Sephiroth of Final Fantasy VII has this policy towards the various tatooed men that you encounter (ie. victims of Hojo's Mako experiment), ruthlessly slaughtering them, among many others, after they are manipulated to joining the "reunion" in the Northern Crater. Strangely enough, this also includes the main character.
- M.Bison on Street Fighter Alpha 3 does this to the Dolls at their endings.
- In The Conduit, Mr. Ford is betrayed by Mr. Adams, who leaves Mr. Ford to be killed by invading Drudge after gathering information from Prometheus's base
- At the start of Mercenaries 2: World In Flames, the player is working for Ramon Solano, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who's friend, a Venezuelan General, is being held for treason. After breaking out the General, Solano decides to kill you before he starts his coup. After many explosions, Oil Rig explosions, castle explosions, and a war between the US and China (with explosions), and TWO nuclear explosions, the Merc finally catches up to Solano. Memo to all would be dictators; don't piss of a Sociopathic Norwegian, Scary Black Man, or High Class British Military Contractor.
- In Einhander, this is done to you after stage 6, when you find out that Selene wasn't La Resistance, but The Empire. But it might have been a bad idea to try something like that on a One Man Army.
- There is a double case in Baldur's gate 2. When the characters enter the drow city, they see a drow male killing a slave (while actually saying the trope name). A moment later his mommy shows up, and kills him, saying he is much more expendable than that slave.
- In the video game 'Valkyrie Profile' Covenant of the Plume, you are given the option of sacrificing your characters in exchange for a rather large power boost though if you do it too much you'll receive the bad ending.
- In Bomberman 64, after you beat Altair with 100 gold cards, Sirius does this to you.
- In Shogo Mobile Armor Division, if Sanjuro agrees to help Ryo in exchange for his support in saving Kura, after completing the task, Ryo says "Thanks for the assistance, Commander. You're no longer useful to me. Sorry to leave you hanging," then deactivates the energy bridge leading to the area the Sanjuro is in, forcing him to get back to the main part of the building an air intake chute.
- In Wing Commander II's second Special Operations pack's ending, it is revealed that the Mandarins, humans who cooperated with the Kilrathi in order to become part of the Kilrathi government and change Kilrathi society from within, were about to outlive their usefulness before Blair destroyed their Ayers Rock base.
- In Mario And Luigi Partners in Time, the Shroob Princess (the younger one), declares that Peach is useless after the brothers break her out of her force field and tries to finish her off, but the brothers fight and defeat her.
- In Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Joker kills Frank Boles after Frank's helped him escape from Intensive Treatment.
- This is one of the main M.O.s for the Order of Zugzwang, the main villains of Dragon Quest V. The slaves forced to build their colossal temple in the human world? Killed to cover their tracks. The Evil Chancellor who hands over your wife to The Dragon? Promptly murdered. Hell, not even their own are safe from this treatment. King Korol, a high ranking Order official who was in charge of the aforementioned temple, is casually tossed aside by Nimzo after he fulfills his final duty.
- In Modern Warfare 2, General Shepherd shoots his subordinates, Roach and Ghost, after they retrieve intel on Makarov, then has his Shadow Company goons douse the bodies in kerosene, which he personally ignites. Oh, and you see all of this through Roach's eyes.
- Kotomine gives one of these to Lancer when he refuses to obey a really nasty order unless Kotomine uses a Command Seal, specifically killing an unarmed, bound and defenseless Tohsaka that he had been ordered to save and protect and then bonded with. So instead he orders Lancer to stab himself in the heart. At which point Lancer does so then, and then kills Kotomine and beats up Shinji.
Web Comic
- In Order Of The Stick, When Redcloak informs Xykon that his ogre minions are asking for payment, Xykon kills them and zombifies them. "Just as strong, but they eat less!"
- Sequential Art:
- In an amusing moment of Genre Savvy (for him), Otacon from The Last Days Of Foxhound uses Sniper Wolf as an intermediary to tell Liquid that he's finished modifying Metal Gear to fire nukes, stating that he suspects Liquid will adhere to this trope and kill him the moment he finds out. Obviously, it doesn't happen.
- In Everyday Heroes, Wrecking Paul is a serial killer preying on women, as well as a thief. When faced with Mr. Mighty instead of the female hero he was expecting, he turns on his accomplice. Apparently he goes through a lot of them.
- In Drowtales, Quain'tana gives Syphile a warning that she has "outlived your purpose [raising Ariel] and my patience" and effectively banishes her. The threat to kill her is not explicitly said, but it's definitely there.
- And she recently made good on it, though Syphile attacked her first rather than the other way around.
- Black Mage from Eight Bit Theater was always a devouted worshipper of Chaos and made no attempts to hide it. Once Chaos himself shows up, he makes it clear that he intends to slaughter BM as well as everything else.
Web Original
Western Animation
- InJackie Chan Adventures, Shendu did this to Valmont and the Enforcers after getting all of his talismans. Later in season 2, he no longer needed Finn, Ratso, and Chow to carry the Pan'Ku box and sends them out. Shendu tries to do this to Hak Foo, but Valmont wouldn't allow him.
- In Jonny Quest, a villainous maharaja working with Dr. Zin on a fake gold mine makes the big mistake of mentioning that he will be sharing the ill-gotten gains with Zin. At that statement, Zin casually orders his lackey to implement Phase 2 of his plan. When the Maharajah asks for a light and asks what Zin is referring to, the lackey suddenly hits the Maharajah with a hidden spring-loaded poison needle in his lighter to kill him since he is not needed anymore.
- This occurs in Justice League Unlimited where most of the main villains team up to revive Brainiac at Lex Luthor's command. When it turns out to be Darkseid instead, the evil alien rewards their efforts by killing almost all of them.
- Xanatos tries this on the Gargoyles in the series' opening after his initial Xanatos Gambit on them has succeeded. It doesn't work.
- Typhonus lays it out fairly openly in Exosquad when asked about Barca, a traitor Pirate helping the Neosapiens in return for Pirate dominion over Venus: "All of Venus Barca will ever see is a six-foot hole in the ground."
- In the Musical Episode of Batman The Brave And The Bold, the Music Meister sings his brainwashed mindslaves into dancing to a fiery grave:
- Winx Club season 2: Once Darkar has the four pieces of the codex and Dark Bloom at his side, he makes clear that he doesn't need the Trix anymore by tossing them into a black hole. That decision bite him in the ass not much later...
Real Life
- In Stalinist Russia, those who were involved in the government's atrocities were regularly purged by that same government.
- Earlier, but involving some of the same individuals, once the Leninists got control of the Soviet government, Trotskyists (including Trotsky himself) were gradually made to disappear, not only from life (as in killed), but from any records that they ever existed or were involved with the Communist take-over of Russia, effectively becoming "unpersons".
- Actually, they were Stalinists, or for better use of the term Marxist-Leninists. Trotskyists and Stalinists were all Leninists when Lenin was alive, but then he died in 1924, and Stalin completed his grab for power in 1927. Then, he got rid of Trotsky, and later removed his supporters. Another point to note is that Trotskyists were not useful to Stalin in any way, and were thus threats.
- When the SS troops were trying to get rid of all the Jews in Poland, they often delegated the dirty work to the local anti-semitists, quite common in Poland, but still considered racially inferior by the Nazis, who were promised a cut of the Jews' fortune. When they came back to their employers, they were shot to eliminate all the witnesses to the atrocities.
Manga: Sasuke finally enters the moral event horizon when he uses his powers to stab Karin straight into Danzo who was using her as a hostage. http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/481/02/
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