Marvel Universe
Thou Shalt Not Kill in this franchise. open/close all folders
Comic Books
Comic Books
- In one issue of Alpha Flight, the writer says "Some armchair moralists would hold superheroes to an impossible standard, requiring them to routinely face opponents who use lethal force while denying themselves the same option." This punctuated a series of panels in which the members of the team agree — reluctantly and with much debate — that the particular foe they're facing cannot be contained, controlled, or made anything remotely resembling safe. You can guess what comes next.
- Surprisingly, this did not mark a Start of Darkness for the title and is probably one of the best examples in comic books of handling the topic in a mature manner, with the writer quite firmly averting any instance of Strawman Fallacy, Debate and Switch, and Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. Furthermore, the team is directly employed by the Canadian government as a branch of the Department of National Defence and subject to governmental oversight, thereby preventing any accusations of their actions being a Vigilante Execution.
- In The Avengers, there is (was?) a very strong policy against killing, to the point that one of their mottoes was "Avengers don't kill." This has been brought to attention several times, with Hawkeye almost getting separated from his wife because he heard that she allowed her rapist to fall to his death.
- Their later divorce was specifically built on the tension caused by this incident. Notably, however, all the Avengers who heard Mockingbird's side of the story (Hawkeye heard about it from the ghost of the dead man, who significantly downplayed his actions) sympathized with her, because her circumstances were considerably different from that of their usual fights.
- These days, they are a little more flexible about this rule. After Scarlet Witch killed Hawkeye, Ant-Man and The Vision during Avengers Disassembled, Iron Man came to the conclusion that it was unethical and dangerous to completely take killing off the table. He asked Wolverine to join the Avengers precisely because he wanted a hero who wouldn't hesitate to use lethal force if a situation ever called for it.
- This was continued in Secret Avengers. In one instance, Beast was forced to kill a group of terrorists in order to save the populations of two large cities. He was understandably upset by this, and Captain America comforted him by telling him not to dwell on the few lives he'd taken, but the millions he'd saved. Though this line of thinking may of have been a mistake for Cap to impart to Beast, especially as Hank starts cruelly invoking The Needs of the Many hard in X-Force (2019).
- Black Panther is not averse to killing, though he usually tries to use non-lethal means if at all possible. During his run as the protector of Hell's Kitchen, he notably told a thug that as a warrior first and foremost, he did not share Daredevil's no-kill rule. And in the first arc of The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman), he tells Namor that once their mission is over, he's going to kill him for the innocent Wakandans that were drowned during Avengers vs. X-Men.
- Despite being known for his soldier days (where he did kill a lot of people); Captain America prefers not to kill and would like to avoid it if possible. How far is he willing to go? In one instance, the Red Skull becomes empowered by the Cosmic Cube itself and is slowly getting more and more adept at controlling its power, and Cap refuses to outright kill him. Remember, this is the Red Skull - a literal Nazi and Hitler's protege - and he makes it clear that should he receive the full power of the Cube, he will plunge the world into an eternal survival of the fittest contest to cull all of the non-worthy. Cap only does the deed when he's finally convinced there's no other way.
- In Avengers #0, apptly titled "The Night That Hell Froze Over", Steve Rogers sends Deadpool on a mission to get a canister of Terrigen Mists with the specific instruction of not killing anyone. Deadpool being able to do this is what then gets Steve to name him an Avenger.
- Cap’s stance on this has been deconstructed before with his instance on never killing, jarring greatly with his military history (especially his Golden Age comics). In Warren Ellis’s Avengers: Endless Wartime Wolverine actually calls Steve out for looking down on him as a killer, reminding Cap that he’s a soldier who’s taken lives in war same as him.
- Daredevil used to have a typical view of killing, claiming that it wasn't his place to pass judgment. During Frank Miller's run, which redefined the character, Daredevil eventually went against his principles when he tried to kill his archenemy Bullseye. He's killed people several times, and he hasn't tormented himself for issues on end because of it, perhaps the only "regular" superhero who can make this claim.
- However, despite the occasional team up he is frequently at odds with The Punisher for his blatant disregard of the no-kill rule, to the point where the latter might qualify as a member of Daredevil's Rogues Gallery (the key word here being "blatant", Daredevil has killed when the situation called for it, and when the situation has called for it, he has hated but not regretted doing it. That said, he does not endorse wholesale murder as the answer to his, or anyone else's, problems). Though their enmity has softened somewhat ever since Punisher rescued Matt from prison and helped him keep his secret identity, Daredevil was probably the hero most devoted to locking Frank Castle up, even more than Spider-Man who only sporadically puts serious effort into catching him. Murdock was known to organize hero teams for the sole purpose of hunting The Punisher down.
- However, Daredevil teaming up with other heroes to capture the Punisher usually backfires with Frank throwing their (to him) noble intentions right back in their faces. Every time Frank has been sent to prison, he simply kills every criminal he can until he escapes. Daredevil knows this, so in a way, he's partly responsible for those deaths. Once, when Daredevil enlisted Spider-Man and Wolverine to help take down the Punisher, Frank hit him with this: "You want to send me back to prison? That's crazy. All I'm going to do is kill every single person in there with me. There's only one way you can stop me, and if you haven't got the guts to do that, stop wasting my time." The story ended with Frank definitely not behind bars.
- Another comic has Frank try to kill a Russian mobster that Murdoch is defending. Murdoch is trying to move the trial to Texas because there's no way the mobster could get a fair jury in New York. As Frank tells Daredevil (he doesn't know Murdoch's other identity in this comic), it utter BS and Murdoch is sending the mobster to Texas because they have the death penalty, wanting the man dead without getting himself involved. Daredevil is very unhappy at being unable to correct Frank as to what Murdoch thinks (and it doesn't help that during the inevitable attack on the convoy, the mobster tries his best to kill both of them).
- However, despite the occasional team up he is frequently at odds with The Punisher for his blatant disregard of the no-kill rule, to the point where the latter might qualify as a member of Daredevil's Rogues Gallery (the key word here being "blatant", Daredevil has killed when the situation called for it, and when the situation has called for it, he has hated but not regretted doing it. That said, he does not endorse wholesale murder as the answer to his, or anyone else's, problems). Though their enmity has softened somewhat ever since Punisher rescued Matt from prison and helped him keep his secret identity, Daredevil was probably the hero most devoted to locking Frank Castle up, even more than Spider-Man who only sporadically puts serious effort into catching him. Murdock was known to organize hero teams for the sole purpose of hunting The Punisher down.
- During Dark Reign, the Thunderbolts team observed that, despite being Osborn's hit squad, they almost never killed anybody. In fact they completed one assassination without taking any lives.
- The Incredible Hulk: With the exceptions of truly mindless incarnations of the character, the Hulk rarely kills anyone intentionally. Most deaths caused by his rampages are accidental and the result of property damage, that — to be perfectly fair — could result from most superhero battles (admittedly, the Hulk tends to cause more damage than most superheroes). Even then, deaths are fairly rare.
- The Hulk does makes exceptions for any thoroughly malevolent Eldritch Abomination, Omnicidal Maniac, and such, or as a very last option if too many other lives depend on it, but contrary to popular belief (due to that he loves to rumble and smashing inanimate objects), and similarly to Spider-Man, the most heroic Hulk incarnations (including Banner, Savage Hulk, the merged version, and likely the Green Scar), are as close as the Marvel Universe gets, or at the very least far more so than the majority of the heroes. He really, really hates to kill, and has repeatedly gone into a panic or been brought to tears at times when he hasn't been able to save bystanders. It takes ridiculous extremes to get him to that point. Lampshaded by his son Skaar who considers him extremely "weak" in this respect. Of course, Joe Fixit doesn't have that problem, although he seemed to avoid using lethal force during the Dale Keown run/towards the end. The Immortal Hulk likewise doesn't, being more than willing to kill if he feels it deserved.
- In one issue, where Bruce Banner admits to murdering his abusive father and making it look like an accident while defending himself, he stated that as the Hulk, he had leveled entire cities without killing a single person. All of this being said, it isn't clear just how much of this is intentional and how much is coincidental; in some cases the Hulk clearly intends to kill an enemy, with them happening to meet a Karmic Death during the course of the battle.
- This is averted when it comes to the Immortal Hulk, who has no issue killing his enemies, having killed Arc Villain Fortean (twice).
- Iron Man, shockingly for a former Arms Dealer and a person armed to the teeth in More Dakka Powered Armour actually abhors killing with his dislike of it being one of his better traits. Indeed after killing his Vietnamese captors in his first comic, Tony tries his damnedest to never kill again with his most notable slip ups: being Sergei Kotzinin whom was unintentionally killed by Iron Man when Justin Hammer activated Tony’s Repulsor Beam while he was holding Kotzinin, Black Knight (Nathan Garrett) whom Tony accidentally caused to fall to his death, The Guardsman whom Tony accidentally killed trying to stop the tank he was held hostage inside and Titanium Man who was holding onto Tony’s boosters jet and whose armour caught fire to the horror of Iron Man and Titanium Man himself. In modern comics this is zigzagged, as while he still doesn’t like killing Tony will use lethal force if left with no alternative, as seen when fighting Mallen in Iron Man: Extremis.
- Moon Knight is a strange case. Being Batman wearing white and an obsession with Egyptian moon gods of vengeance, he has a disdain towards killing. However, it's not so much he doesn't want to be like the people he fights, it's that he is extremely tempted, to the point of addiction, to killing, and wants to fight it. Doesn't stop him from torture, maiming, and cutting off a guy's face and wearing it for the sake of the moment.
- Originally and for most of her career, Ms. Marvel was a kind (if not precisely gentle) heroine who always attempted to avoid any loss of life if at all possible. In one Avengers story arc (involving a rampant Kang the Conqueror) she broke this rule, for which she felt sufficiently bad to demand an actual court-martial inquiry for murder.
- This aspect of her characterization was dropped/ignored by Brian Reed, however, who wrote her as a Sociopathic Soldier and showed her killing gleefully with a Slasher Smile.
- During the Mutant Massacre, a lot of the heroes involved in the event have a bit of crisis between murdering the Marauders for their indiscriminate killing of the Morlocks and upholding their morals. Some, like Shadowcat and the Power Pack, just can't bring themselves to murder anyone, The Mighty Thor is forced to kill Blockbuster to save himself and Angel and Storm ultimately allows Wolverine to murder any of them as long as they get one back as a prisoner.
- Obviously, The Punisher has no business with the standard version of this. However, he will absolutely under no circumstances ever kill someone who isn't a criminal or otherwise corrupt. He'll go out of his way to prevent bystander casualties and will even let a bad guy slip if he has to. (Depending on the Writer. At least one issue has him willingly allow a woman to be killed in order to stop a criminal who is banking on his "Doesn't allow innocents to be harmed" schtick.)
- He also doesn't like people other than himself doing it, because they don't put nearly as much thought and planning as he does (one story says he always scopes out a place for 4 days before attacking). Thus his reaction to the Watchdogs (an axe-murderer priest, a masked WASP shooting drug dealers and Mexicans in his neighborhood and a disgruntled employee with heavy weapons) was to kill them (for being insane, for being a Nazi, and for shooting an innocent cleaning lady during his More Dakka moment).
- He usually spares Jigsaw, if only because letting him live (after messing up his face yet again) is a Cruel Mercy.
- Frank repeatedly clashes with heroes with a strict Thou Shalt Not Kill code, who usually easily curbstomp him thanks to their powers and the fact that he won't kill them. However, he makes it clear that if they want him to stop killing criminals, they need to kill him.
- Invoked and defied by the protagonists at the end of the Revolutionary War event. Villain Killpower asks for death before his corrupted personality takes over again. Captain Britain objects and starts to say that heroes find another way, that they don’t kill... but Death’s Head, Death’s Head II, Hauer and Liger shoot Killpower dead before the Captain can finish the sentence. “Who said we’re heroes?”
- The Mighty Thor plays with this. In most comics as per standards of The Cape and Big Good, he shows mercy to the majority of villains as well as evil gods like his brother Loki (though he has Joker Immunity). Yet when it comes to monsters and other cosmic threats, Thor is indeed prepared to kill and has one of the biggest bodycounts in the Marvel Universe having killed the likes of Desak, Gorr, Fallen Hero Sentry, Bor and Galactus. It’s implied spending time with the Avengers on Earth actually made Thor give heed to this trope more as before when he was just a Physical God Barbarian Hero he didn’t care at all for the lives of the foes he slew in battle.
- Ultimate Marvel:
- Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: Discussed by Hawkeye, to Reed Richards, when boarding the Kree vessel. He kills, Tony kills, Marh almost certainly kills, but Reed and Sue do not. Later on, Nick mentions that Johnny and Ben only beat up the Kree soldiers they fought, as opposed to everyone else. So he'll have them burnt once the Fantastic Four aren't looking.
- Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra: Daredevil and Elektra discussed this when she intended to kill the bully and he stopped her.
- Ultimate Vision has a fluid programming, but this rule is fixed. Even non-lethal fighting is troublesome for her.
- Ultimate X Men:
- When they got out, the X-Men and the Brotherhood were out for blood. Jean had to step in remind them that, even after so much torture, killing is wrong.
- Averted by Bishop, as he has no problems shooting villains dead (much like 616 Bishop when he started out). Wolverine takes this in stride, but Storm is less sanguine about his itchy trigger finger tendencies.
Films
Films
- In both the Spider-Man Trilogy and The Amazing Spider-Man franchise, Peter Parker will always try to reason with his enemies instead of killing them. However in Spider-Man, Peter killed one of Uncle Ben's muggers and arguably killed the Green Goblin by inaction but when he appears in Spider-Man: No Way Home, he makes it clear that he deeply regrets both of these. He even steps in personally to prevent MCU Spidey from killing the Goblin in revenge for his murder of Aunt May, showing he knows full well with great power comes great responsibility.
- X-Men Film Series:
- This is the hallmark of Professor X for most of the X-Men hexalogy;note he detests violence and firmly objects to the notion that deadly force is required to subdue evildoers. A grey area occurs in X-Men: First Class, where Magneto's insatiable desire for revenge corners Charles into a moral bind — if he releases Sebastian Shaw from his psychic grip, then Shaw will eliminate Erik, but if he maintains the mental hold, then Magneto will kill their target, and Xavier becomes an accessory to murder; Charles opts for the latter. In X-Men: Apocalypse, he breaks his one inviolable rule when his own life, the lives of his team and billions of others are at stake: he's unable to take down Apocalypse on his lonesome, so he commands Jean Grey to immolate his adversary with her Phoenix Force.
- Nightcrawler from X2: X-Men United, given his religiousness. Averted in X-Men: Dark Phoenix though where Kurt butchers a bunch of mooks during the climax.
- Most of the movies have the characters perfectly okay with using lethal force, but this is a specific plot point in X-Men: Days of Future Past. It's stated that the young version of Mystique never killed anyone (even the people she used her Shapeshifter powers to impersonate), but Jumped Off The Slippery Slope when she decided to kill Bolivar Trask. Her decision to kill Trask set off a chain of events resulting in a Bad Future, which is the main reason Wolverine travels back in time to stop her.
Live-Action TV
Live-Action TV
- Daredevil (2015) makes it a hard rule not to kill, and is one of the only heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to do so. (The Hulk is a special case as Bruce Banner tries hard not to kill anyone but ultimately has no control over the Hulk's actions; the MCU version of Spider-Man has yet to be seen using deadly force and his views on the subject are as yet unknown.) This mostly comes from the fact that he's a devout Catholic and knows he's toeing the line of morality already by administering brutal beatings to criminals. This rule is challenged in the second season when he's contrasted with remorseless killers Elektra and The Punisher; Daredevil's appalled at how they kill their enemies, but at the same time his insistence at keeping everyone alive sometimes puts him and his allies at risk.
- In the pilot episode of The Incredible Hulk (1977), David Banner's research partner assures him that the Hulk will not kill, "because David Banner wouldn't kill." Nevertheless, David spends the series worrying that the Hulk will one day cross the line. (He doesn't, but only because so many of the bad guys are Made of Iron.)
- Iron Fist: Claire believes this, though Colleen disagrees, and they argue about it.
Video Games
Video Games
- It is strongly implied in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions that the player never kills anyone. This is Lampshaded in the tutorial, when Spider-Man 2099 throws a Mook off an elevated bridge, only to have Madame Web whisk him to safety via a dimensional portal. Also, Spider-Man Noir doesn't have his pistol from the comics; its absence is never acknowledged.
Western Animation
Western Animation
- In X-Men '97, Magneto decides to pull this trope after he comes into Xavier's legacy, wanting to uphold it in his old friend's memory. Thus, he holds back when rescuing the Morlocks from the Friends of Humanity and spares the X-Cutioner despite the fact that he had just depowered Storm. He flat out tells the UN judges "Please... do not make me let you down.".
