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Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him
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redirected from Main.WhyDontYouJustShootHim
alt title(s): Why Dont Ya Just Shoot Him; Why Dont You Just Shoot Him; Just Shoot Him 
When a Genre Savvy minion, usually the Hypercompetent Sidekick, lampshades their master's Bond Villain Stupidity (or just general Genre Blindness) and offers a pragmatic solution instead of a dramatic one. Praise is rarely given, with the villain usually exploding in a rage, allowing the audience to see their obsessiveness or outright insanity. If the minion is lucky they don't get tossed across the room, beaten to a pulp or tossed in the Shark Pool. A pair of logical defenses are " It's personal", another is " He'll suffer more this way". " Where's the fun in that?" is generally a more honest answer, though. And, of course, a Card Carrying Villain who's a Slave To PR has to maintain his Contractual Genre Blindness. Minions don't understand things like that.
This trope also tends to come up when the villain is a Noble Demon or a Worthy Opponent; in that case, they will refuse to take an easy, 'quick and dirty' route to kill the heroes, opting instead for a 'fair fight', and their rage at the henchman who suggested doing otherwise is intended to underline their Worthy Opponent status. This may be a case of villainous Honor Before Reason, though.
Comparisons and variants: When heroes are doing this, it's Kill Him Already, if the hero objects to being kept hanging by the villain, it's Get It Over With. Just Hit Him is the somewhat less sophisticated cousin of this. Man In The Iron Mask prolongs the folly, keeping the one man dangerous to your rule in prison. If a heroic protagonist gives way to the impulse they may go over the Moral Event Horizon. Compare " And Then What?"
Finally, if a villain never has to be asked this question in the first place, he's likely Dangerously Genre Savvy and will openly be defying the situation that requires the use of this trope.
Examples
Anime
- In Rurouni Kenshin: Shishio and Kenshin are having their climactic duel. Both of them are severely injured and weakened, and Shishio's 15 minute-time limit for fighting has elapsed. Yumi (Shishio's lover) and Houji (Shishio's right-hand man) are watching, and Houji has a rifle. The Trope is invoked by Yumi... and Houji throws his gun away, on the grounds of his belief that Lord Shishio will win. He doesn't.
- Shishio's philosophy, which Houji adopted, was that the strong should reign over the weak. Houji helping Shishio during the duel would mean admitting Kenshin was stronger, which would invalidate their whole reason for being villains in the first place.
- Sent up in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series. During an "evil council" of the series' villains, several of them ask why they must always play card games with Yugi instead of just killing him, to which Marik replies "Those $%&&tards would just censor it."
- The dub at least handwaved this. Marik acknowledged he could just take the Millenium Puzzle, but the ancient scriptures his family follows dictate he needs to win it in a duel to get its power.
- Code Geass offers a non-fatal version: when Lelouch learns that his best friend is the pilot of the Humongous Mecha that's thwarted him at every turn, his partner C.C. asks why he doesn't just use his Geass to make said friend join La Resistance. She guesses that it's either pride, sentimentality, or distaste for robbing another person of their free will; Lelouch responds that it's all three.
- Consciously averted by the writing staff later in the show. While scripting out the final episode, the head writer realized that there was absolutely nothing keeping the enraged Suzaku from just shooting Lelouch. The answer, simply enough, was to make Lelouch lie about having a Dead Man Switch bomb powerful enough to take out the room and everyone in it. Since Lelouch had previously Geassed Suzaku to "live", Suzaku was incapable of knowlingly doing something suicidal and thus couldn't simply kill Lelouch on the spot.
- At the climax of the Non Indicative First Episode (filming a movie) of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Nagato confronts Itsuki, who refuses to join forces with her. Nagato's shoulder-mounted cat suddenly starts talking, asking why she doesn't just use mind control on the guy already, since judging by what she's shown so far it ought to be well within her powers. But that's not in the script, so after a scramble to shut him up Nagato has her final battle with Mikuru.
- Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu features what may be an inversion of the trope - ("No, you can't just shoot him!") - when Sousuke is challenged to a no-holds-barred martial arts battle and, after being warned by his opponent not to pull any punches, calmly shoots the guy with a rubber bullet. Once it's explained to him that using a gun isn't allowed, he repeats the performance with his next opponent by gassing him with a tear gas - and when it's further explained to him that he's supposed to be fighting solely hand-to-hand, he downs his third opponent via a Hey Catch with a grenade followed by several Groin Attacks, explaining afterwards that the pin was still in the grenade, and clearly never quite grasping the concept of a "fair fight" at all.
Comic Books
- In the DC Universe, the new Blue Beetle has a race of evil aliens called the Reach as villains, led by the Negotiator. The Negotiator's Dragon's first line is "Why don't we just kill him?" to which the Negotiator replies "No. Not without study."
- This is implicitly justified, BB has a piece of their tech that has turned sentient and now hates them.
Film
- From the Trope Naming quote above: Scott Evil uses almost exactly these words to express his impatience with the means his father, Dr. Evil, uses to attempt to dispose of Austin Powers:
Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism. *guard starts dipping mechanism* Dr. Evil: Close the tank! Scott Evil: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away! Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What? Scott Evil: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out! Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't.
- Justified in that if Dr. Evil killed Austin Powers he wouldn't have anything else to do. It's not his fault that Austin is to stupid to escape a decent trap.
- Used in the 1969 political parody Mr. Freedom. After meeting with the Russian secret agent Moujik Man and the Chinese agent Red China Man, he retreats while shouting insults at them and accidentally knocks himself out on a sign.
Red China Man: Perhaps we should put him out of his misery?
Moujik Man: We can't do that!
Red China Man: Why not?
Moujik Man: The most elementary rules of hospitality forbid it.
- Used in the film Puma Man; the Big Bad uses Mind Control to make the hero jump to his death, instead of going with his Mooks more practical suggestion of just having one of them shoot him, to make it look like death from natural causes. In all fairness, he had no way of knowing that The Obi Wan stopped the suicide and taught the hero how to enter a death-like trance in order to deceive the villains.
- Which would have all been great had it not been for the fact that Vadhino tells us at one point that thanks to the mask, Kobras has total control over the police. So...why did it have to look like an accident again?
- Of course, when the movie was spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mike responds to the Mook's invocation of this Trope with "No, that would be cheating."
- On Song Of The South, Br'er Bear points out that Br'er Fox's plans to catch Br'er Rabbit never work and suggests that they just "knock his head clean off".
- In Attack of the Clones Count Dooku puts the heroes into an arena, to be killed by large monsters. This, of course, doesn't work, and Viceroy Gunray demands their execution by shooting. Dooku actually listens, but the cavalry arrives before anything can be done about it.
- In Ip Man, Colonel Sato crosses the Moral Event Horizon for shooting Master Liu after his three-on-one fight goes awry and afterward keeps asking to Just Shoot the titular hero, but keeps getting prevented from doing so by the more honourable General Miura.
- Justified in Six String Samurai, where the USSR have occupied a post-nuclear America for decades.
Why don't he just shoot him?
We haven't had bullets since '57 !
- Inverted on both sides of the ledger in the otherwise-forgettable movie Batman Forever. Riddler talks Two-Face out of just shooting him by essentially saying taking out a cultural hero will leave him with a guilt trip, so it's better to make him die after mental and physical suffering since no one mourns a pathetic shell of a man. Meanwhile, Batman talks Robin out of wanting to kill Two-Face by saying that it's very possible his anger won't go away by having Two-Face killed off. (Ironically, when Two-Face falls to his death, it's implied that Robin gets his revenge anyway.)
- In The Boys From Brazil, Josef Mengele insists that the Nazi conspirators should just kill nosy busybody investigator Ezra Lieberman. Mengele claims that no one would pay attention to Lieberman's "paltry shreds of evidence", to which his superior replies, "If he dies suddenly, they would."
- In The Count Of Monte Cristo, ever-practical Jacopo asks this question of Edmond Dantes in response to hearing his plan to slowly destroy his enemies:
Jacopo: Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam - I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?
- Dantes declines, insisting that his enemies must suffer as he has suffered.
- In The Mask of Zorro, when Zorro is going to face Captain Love for their final battle he draws his sword and in response Ctn. Love unsheathes his pistol... and throws it away.
- The Bollywood film Don manages to play this straight on a large scale but avert it on a small one. When Roma is accepted into Don's gang, she doesn't kill him right off the bat because it's personal. However, when she gets her opening, she explains why she's about to kill her boss in one sentence and is squeezing the trigger of her gun by the time the protagonist finally starts to defend himself. He survives this encounter, but only just barely.
Literature
- In The Goblet of Fire, several of Voldemort's Death Eaters suggest to Voldemort that they should just kill Harry Potter on the spot instead of arming him with a wand and killing him in a mock duel. He doesn't listen (and gets a Deus Ex Machina that foils him for his troubles).
Live Action TV
- Kirk managed to use this trope to escape in the Star Trek The Original Series episode "The Squire of Gothos". Kirk asked his captor, "Where's the sport?" in simply hanging him, as he had planned. Instead, Kirk talked his captor into staging a "royal hunt." This bought Kirk enough time for a Deus Ex Machina rescue.
- On The X Files, when the Syndicate discusses killing Mulder to keep him from thwarting their plans. Several of the members argue against this, pointing out that such an action would just make Mulder a martyr. By leaving him alive and not doing anything, they just make Mulder look like a paranoid Cloud Cuckoolander who no one will take seriously.
Video Games
- Used by Guybrush in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge after LeChuck captures Guybrush, ties him and Wally up into an extremely elaborate torture device, and explains his plan to have both of them killed. When Guybrush asks why Lechuck didn't shoot him as soon as he came in, he responds: "Because we had an extra disk."
Webcomics
Web Original
- In the Fan Fic "Dark Heart High"
 , a shojo-style parody of evil overlords that deliberately seeks out tropes to adopt and cherish, a class for aspiring supervillains is asked what they'd do when they had their nemesis at their mercy. After listening to the litany of death traps and tortures of her classmates' answers, protagonist Yuki fumbles for a moment, then shrugs and says, "I'd just shoot him." Her teacher is quite impressed.
- Cracked has a list of The 6 Most Pointlessly Elaborate Movie Murder Plots. The alternative they recommend to each boils down to "shoot him".
Western Animation
Real Life
- There is an old parable about philosophers discussing how many teeth are in a horse's mouth. One naive young man suggests finding an actual horse and counting the teeth, much to the outrage of his peers.
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