As this is an Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Uriah Gambits in Live-Action Films.
- Amsterdam: Burt's in-laws, who hate him and don't approve of their daughter being married to a Jew, send him off to fight in World War I in hopes that he'll get killed. When that doesn't work, they kick him out of their neighborhood when he tries to open a medical practice catering to veterans and avoid seeing him as much as they can.
- In The Anderson Tapes, the mob's price for its help is that Duke take Socks along on the job...and make sure he doesn't survive it.
- In the 1989 Batman, when mob boss Carl Grissom discovers that his mistress has been sleeping with his right-hand man Jack Napier, he sends Jack to go steal the books from a mob front under investigation by the authorities, then tips off the Dirty Cop on his payroll, Lieutenant Eckhardt and orders him to kill Jack, making him a more direct perpetrator than most examples of this trope. This backfires magnificently when Eckhardt is killed by Jack, and Jack is dunked in chemicals following a battle with Batman and becomes the Joker.
- Good Guys Wear Black (1978) opens with John T. Booker leading a CIA commando unit to rescue prisoners of war, only to find the camp full of Vietcong instead. They manage to blast their way out only to find their pickup helicopters aren't at the rendezvous either. Only five of them make it back to their own lines. Booker knows they've been set up, but figures there's nothing he can do about it. Turns out the people who wanted him dead aren't happy that he survived, which is what drives the rest of the movie.
- Good Morning, Vietnam: "I recommend we issue a 24-hour pass..." To get Cronauer out of the way, he was assigned to interview soldiers in the field, but the only way to get to the location was a road known to be hostile due to 36 hours of Viet Cong control.
- In Iron Man, Obadiah Stane arranges to have Tony Stark killed by terrorists in Afghanistan while he is presenting a new missile system to the American troops stationed there. A more direct example since he sent them to use and then kill him. It doesn't quite work out as planned.
- John Wick: John's backstory involves being given an impossible task to retire his career as a hitman. Viggo was surprised (albeit grateful) when he pulled it off.
- The Man in the Iron Mask: King Louis XIV desires a woman named Christine. Upon finding out that she is already engaged a soldier named Raoul, he sends the man to the front lines to die in battle. The Spanner in the Works is that Raoul is also the son of Athos, the super-serious member of the legendary Three Musketeers. His son's death motivates him to join the plot to depose the king.
- Kangaroo Jack: Charlie and Louis are sent to Australia to deliver money to a hitman named Smith on behalf of Charlie's mob boss stepfather. The money is actually Smith's payment for killing Charlie and Louis. Lampshased by Frankie who states that they were to be the bagmen for their own hit.
- Magnum Force. Dirty Harry suspects that the mob killers disguised as policeman are actual policemen carrying out Vigilante Executions. Da Chief refuses to believe him and orders a wave of arrests. Harry is sent to arrest a prime suspect, Professional Killer Frank Palancio. Palancio however receives an anonymous tip-off that he's about to be hit by men disguised as police. After what's been happening Palancio is not inclined to take chances and opens fire when the police knock on the door to serve their warrant.
- In The Mechanic, the mob gets angry at Mr. Bishop for taking on an apprentice without their permission. So they give him a job in Italy to "cowboy" the next hit, where he's bound to be killed.
- Louis' assistant Rick in Nightcrawler gets too demanding in terms of salary, so Louis sets him up to become Cannon Fodder for a wanted killer they are chasing.
- In Road to Perdition, Connor Rooney first tries to kill Michael Sullivan Sr. by sending him out on a debt collection run to a speakeasy, with a letter for the guy there who owes some money. When Michael is in the back office, the guy opens the letter and reads it, then breaks out in a cold sweat. This tips Michael off that something is wrong; he sees that the guy has a revolver on his desk poorly hidden beneath a magazine and realises that the guy is going to shoot him. He manages to get the drop on the debtor and fatally shoots him and the bouncer, then grabs the letter Connor gave him: "Kill Sullivan, and all debts are paid." He then instinctively realizes it's a distraction to keep him occupied while Connor goes to Sullivan's house to kill Sullivan's son Michael Jr. for witnessing Connor's murder of Finn McGovern the day before.note
- RoboCop (1987) features a case where the two people involved didn't even know each other in person, let alone have a disagreement, as Bob Morton wanted a skilled, experienced police officer to use for his RoboCop project and for said officer to be dead so he could exploit legal loopholes regarding the use of the officer's body, and thus arranged several officers to be sent to the dangerous Metro West section of Detroit. Alex Murphy just has the crappy luck of being killed and selected by Morton.
- Serpico. Frank Serpico's colleagues are implied to have set him up to get shot in the face. One of Serpico's clean colleagues even warns him of the danger he's facing confronting the NYPD corruption:"They don't even have to shoot you. They just have to not be there when you need them."
- In Seven Ways from Sundown, Lt. Herley sends out Sgt. Henessey and New Meat Seven Jones on their own to bring in Joe Flood, the most dangerous outlaw in the territory. Herley does this because he hopes Flood will kill the pair of them, thus allowing Herley to keep secret the fact that it was his cowardice which led to the death of Seven's brother at Flood's hands.
- The Shadow: Shiwan Khan invokes this to prove that Lamont Cranston is still Ying Ko, the Butcher of Lhasa, at heart.Lamont: By the way, you sent Margo Lane to kill me.Shiwan: I would no sooner kill you than I would destroy a Rembrandt! No, I sent her to be killed.
- Silver River: Mike has been alerted to the presence of Shoshone Indians in the Black Rock Range, murdering white prospectors who enter the area. He sends Stanley there anyway, because he wants Stanley's wife Georgia. A horrified Plato tells the story of the Trope Namer when confronting Mike about this. Mike has an attack of conscience and tries to stop Stanley, but it's too late and Stanley is killed.
- Star Wars
- Palpatine does this to Dooku and Grievous. Grievous is especially masterful as it works both ways — the ideal Jedi Trap, as either Obi-Wan or Grievous would die. Especially since getting Obi-Wan out of the way temporarily was the main objective.
- One of the major reasons Palpatine orchestrated the Clone Wars, and manipulated it to continue for as long as it did, was to reduce the Jedi's numbers and set them up for elimination.
- The Suicide Squad: After watching Team A be massacred to act as a distraction for Team B, it's heavily implied that Waller intended everyone on Team A to die in the firefight on the beach, and the team is therefore filled with people she either considers completely useless to her or actively wants dead. It's likely that Harley and Boomering in particular are in the latter category, considering how much of a pain in her ass they were in the first movie. What's especially notable, however, is that she puts Rick Flagg on the team she intends to die, and when he survives partially by being rescued by freedom fighters she then orders Bloodsport's squad to attack their camp in a "rescue" mission, quite possibly in the hope of getting Flagg killed in the crossfire. We find out at least part of why she wanted Flagg dead much later - the true purpose of the mission is to cover up decades of human experimentation by the US Government, and Flagg is principled enough to start making plans to reveal it to the press the moment he finds out, making him a major threat to Waller's plans.
- One of The Three Stooges shorts has the trio work as photographers. When they botch another job, their boss decides to send them on assignment in a country where taking pictures is punishable by death.
- Where Eagles Dare plays with this — Colonel Turner sends his goons along with the rescue party to ensure Major Smith is killed or captured with no loose ends; the film then subverts the trope by revealing both Smith and Admiral Rolland knew Turner, et al. were German spies, but had to set up the mission to collect evidence.
- In The Wizard of Oz, the eponymous wizard sends Dorothy to kill the Wicked Witch of the West. When she triumphantly returns, we discover that the Wizard didn't expect them to ever come back. (In the book version, it was assumed this was the case too; however, sequels prove he had multiple reasons to want the Witch dead without anyone knowing he was behind it.)
