Basic Trope: The practice of shooting someone or something presumed to be dead or at least incapacitated, just to make sure.
- Straight: Bob is in a violent gun battle while assaulting the enemy's base. After shooting one mook down, he fires another bullet into the mook's chest as he walks by.
- Exaggerated: After Bob shoots the mook with his revolver, he pulls out a minigun and unloads hundreds of rounds into the fallen mook.
- Downplayed: Bob instead breaks the downed mook's limbs to make sure he won't get back up.
- Justified:
- Bob is just being pragmatic. It's better to have the enemy mook dead-for-sure than to have him get up and continue firing at him.
- Bob saw, or at least thought he saw, the downed mook move a bit, indicating he's not dead.
- In a prior gun-battle, Bob was injured and nearly killed by a downed-but-living mook he assumed was dead from his shots. He's since learned to be cautious.
- Subverted:
- Just before Bob shoots the downed-&-injured mook, he surrenders and Bob agrees to spare him.
- Bob is about to shoot the dead mook, but he sees that his wounds are far-too-severe for him to have survived, with his innards spilled out. So Bob doesn't shoot and moves on.
- Bob is about to shoot the downed-mook, but then more of them show up, prompting him to shift his focus.
- Double Subverted: The mook is falsely surrendering, and tries to stab Bob as he walks away. But Bob expected as much and shoots the mook dead, and then fires another bullet into his head.
- Parodied:
- Bob shoots the skeletal-remains of a long-dead mook.
- Bob is a lousy shot. When a mook is killed by his boss, Bob tries to perform a Double Tap on him at extreme point-blank range... and still misses every shot.
- Invoked:Bob: I'm gonna' make sure this guy's dead.
[He pulls out his gun and fires three bullets at the downed mook's head]
Bob: He's Dead.
