As this is an Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Uriah Gambits in Western Animation.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- In one episode an Earth Kingdom soldier mentions that one way the Fire Nation deals with war prisoners is dressing them up in military uniforms and sending them to the front lines without weapons.
- There's a good chance Ozai sent Zuko away on a Snipe Hunt hoping that he would get killed sooner rather than later, so that Ozai could have him out of his hair permanently without getting his hands dirty. Well, dirtier.
- Invader Zim:
- The Tallest, the leaders of the Irkens, send Zim to "invade" an uncharted area they assume has no planets in it, inhabited or otherwise, because they don't want him screwing up any invasions. It turns out to be Earth.
- And in a later episode, they send him to a harsh alien boot camp in the hope that he'll be killed, while at the same time holding a betting pool on how long Zim will last. Not only is Zim the only member of his training unit to survive, but the Tallest end up losing an extremely large amount of money to the one guy they forced to bet more money than he'd ever see in his life on Zim surviving — since they'd lose money if no-one bet for him.
- In the hour-long special Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus the Tallest decide that they'd rather blow up the Earth when Zim teleports it into their flight path and finally be rid of him rather than accepting the gift he handed to them on a silver platter.
- On a similar note, they try doing the same thing to Invader Skoodge, sending him to Blorch, home of the slaughtering rat-people, because he's too short. Against all odds, he's the first invader to succeed his mission, so he's "rewarded" by being launched out of a cannon into the planet that he just conquered.
- ReBoot has Megabyte do this to his own henchmen Hack & Slash because he's sick of their incompetence.
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
- Hordak plans to execute Catra, but Entrapta persuades him to spare Catra. Instead, Hordak sends Catra to retrieve First Ones technology in the Crimson Waste and admits to Entrapta that it's a suicide mission.
- Hordak himself was unsuccessfully subjected to this by Horde Prime. In a flashback, Horde Prime sent Hordak to the front lines of battle after Hordak exhibited signs of illness, because Horde Prime despised any flaws in his clones. Hordak was supposed to die in battle, but instead was drawn through a portal and trapped on Etheria.
- One episode of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, "The Crooked Man", is based on the above mentioned literary example. In this case, the gambit involved the man convincing his co-worker to undergo an experimental genetic process they were working on, then sabotaging it, all so he could marry the co-workers fiance. Whether or not he'd hoped it'd kill the co-worker is uncertain, but it did leave the poor guy as a lion/human hybrid who had to hide from society at large.
- Homer does this unintentionally to Barney in The Simpsons episode "Mr. Plow", tricking him into thinking there's a customer on Widow’s Peak, a large treacherous mountain outside of town, so Barney's out of the way and Homer can plow driveways again. (As underhanded as this was, Barney was being sort of a Jerkass in this episode by defaming and slandering Homer in his commercials.) When it does seem like it's about to turn into a real Uriah Gambit (Barney's truck ends up trapped under an avalanche) Homer has a My God, What Have I Done? moment and drives to the mountain to rescue him.
- In Thunder Cats 2011, during a flashback, Grune thinks that King Claudus sent him on a Snipe Hunt for the Book of Omens because he feared his ambition. Which, in hindsight, wouldn't have been unreasonable since Grune really did try to become king and eventually betrayed the Cats.
- In Transformers: Prime, Starscream does this to two different 'cons. First was Predaking, whom the Decepticons felt was potentially becoming too powerful, especially with the new Predcons coming online. So they opted to get the Autobots to destroy the research facility, and hopefully when Predaking wants revenge, either scraps the Autobots or gets scrapped by the Autobots. This plan has Megatron's full support. However, the second involved him trying to off Shockwave, who, although was his equal in rank, was running the risk of supplanting him, so he sprang the plan without warning Shockwave in the hopes he'd get scrapped (Starscream handwaves this by explaining that he wanted Shockwave's reaction to be genuine). Shockwave didn't die, but he was unable to save a lot of data, which could potentially affect his standing with Megatron. The next episode reveals that Shockwave caught on to Starscream's little scheme and he wasn't too happy about it, though he accept's Starscream's Enforced Method Acting logic.
- The VeggieTales adaptation of the original Biblical story named King George and the Ducky (needing to be family-friendly) had the gambit carried out because King George wanted Thomas' rubber ducky. Instead of lust over a woman he sees bathing, it's greed over a kid's bath toy.note Thomas holds his ground and wins the day single-handedly—but suffers from some long-term severe post-traumatic stress. Granted, he was unlikely to be killed by pies in the first place...
