History Main / DecapitationStrike

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars'': One of Nod's first acts is to destroy the GDI space station ''Philadelphia'', with almost the entire GDI leadership onboard, with the exception of Secretary of the Treasury, Redmond Boyle.

** Almost sixty-seven years earlier, in 1943, Poland's government-in-exile during WorldWarTwo struck a similar fate. During a troop inspection in the Mediterranean, the B-24 transporting the Polish Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces General Wladislaw Sikorski, Polish Army Chief of General Staff Major General Tadeusz Kilimecky, Army Chief of Operations Colonel Andrzey Marecky, plus an assortment of adjutants and some British dignitaries, crashed off the coast of Gibraltar, crippling the remaining government dangerously. Again, plenty of ConspiracyTheories abound.

Compare to its {{Supertrope}} DecapitatedArmy, ThePurge, StraightForTheCommander and RulingFamilyMassacre, which restricts itself to actual royal families.

* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', Lanfear near-fatally sabotages the armies of the Light in the Final Battle by infiltrating the generals' dreams and turning them into Manchurian Agents who misuse their troops in subtle but debilitating ways. Were it not for Mat Cauthon taking command, the ploy likely would have won the war for the Dark One.

Note that this trope could just as likely occur by ''nobody's'' hands, and easily triggered by either ''force majeure'' or just a plain, tragic ContrivedCoincidence.

While, in some of the less realistic stories, cornering and killing the BigBad or his {{Dragon}} can already have a devastating effect on the entire [[TheEmpire Empire]], there is a certain charm and effectiveness to ensuring that many - if not ''all'' - leaders of any importance are assembled in one place, so they can all be taken out of commission in one fell swoop.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': After infiltrating the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Sae, Azula works with Long Feng and the corrupt Dai Li to take over the city by capturing all the high-ranking officials and generals who might be able to oppose them. The Earth King eventually escapes with the help of the Gaang but is still forced to leave his city.

* In ''VideoGame/Hitman2016'', this is the story behind the majority of your missions.

-->-- '''Baroness von Gunther''', ''BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold''

* In ''Series/GameOfThrones'', this happens multiple times.

* In ''Series/DesignatedSurvivor'', the US president and most of his staff are killed by a terrorist bombing, promoting the eponymous protagonist (see RealLife for more) to presidency.

** And then in the final episode of ''Series/{{Angel}}'' when Angel and his followers kill the entire leadership of the Circle of the Black Thorn in one night.

* Happens in the final season of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' when the First Evil's followers blow up the Watchers' Council headquarters in London, killing almost all the leadership. And then in the final episode of ''Series/{{Angel}}'' when Angel and his followers kill the entire leadership of the Circle of the Black Thorn in one night.

''Literal'' decapitating attacks would fall under OffWithHisHead, a related but different trope.

* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', the Freys killed the vast majority of the northern lords during lord Edmure Tully's wedding, thus ending the war of the five kings in a single night.

* In ''Series/BreakingBad'', BigBad Gus Fring ostensibly surrenders his entire business to a rival Mexican cartel. He is invited to the Don's hacienda in Mexico, and after the 'negotiation' ends, Gus poisons [[XanatosGambit himself]], the Don and all his lieutenants with a laced bottle of rare tequila. He then escapes quickly enough to get himself medically treated before the poison kills him too.

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* ThePunisher often pulls these off, as disorganized crime is easier to deal with.

* ''Film/InglouriousBasterds'' has "Operation Kino", a joint SOE/OSS plan where almost the entire Nazi high command - including Goebbels, Goering, Bormann, and even Adolf Hitler himself - is to be blown up while attending the premiere of a major propaganda movie in Paris. [[AlternateHistory Surprisingly, it goes off almost without a hitch]].
* In ''Film/DerWixxer'', it turns out it was Victoria Dickham's plan all along to blow up the entire British royal family during a wedding to catapult herself onto the throne. It is foiled by the protagonists via WireDilemma.
* In ''Film/LondonHasFallen'', Islamists try to simultaneously assassinate all the leaders of the G7 as they attend the funeral of the British prime minister. Of course, the American president is the only one to survive.
* Tried unsuccessfully in ''Film/{{Valkyrie}}'', as detailed in the RealLife section. Colonel von Stauffenberg, in collusion with several other German officers and politicians, stashes a bomb in the Wolfsschanze, the Nazi German military headquarters, during a 1944 meeting headed by Hitler. Though some generals and officers are killed, Hitler himself survives, and promptly orders his Schutzstaffel to arrest and execute the conspirators.

* {{Discussed}} in ''Film/WarGames''. This is the reason why WOPR cannot be "unplugged" to resolve the problem. A power loss would be interpreted as a decapitation strike and would launch immediately. Many real world nuclear powers do have safety measures in place that will launch if there is no positive signal from Command.
* The 1998 Austrian thriller ''Opernball'' is about a right-wing terrorist cell venting cyanide into the Viennese Opernball (an annual high-society event typically attended not only by most of the Austrian government, but by all of the social and economical elite), gassing thousands of people to death in an apparent suicide mission, including the chancellor and the president.
* This is the plan of HYDRA in ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'', as they plan to assume control of SHIELD's newest weaponry and aim them simultaneously at thousands of high-ranking targets (including several in the White House and the Pentagon) to take over the world in an enormous coup d'etat(s). Thanks to the Avengers' intervention, they end up blowing ''each other'' up. And that's only ''after'' they entrap and kill most of SHIELD's own (uninvolved) leading figures.
* Played ''literally'' in ''Film/KingsmanTheSecretService'', where much of the world's leaders (including the entire White House and the Swedish prime minister) have conspired with the BigBad to let a HatePlague decimate the world's population. Eggsy and Merlin manage to reverse-engineer the cranial chips that are supposed to protect them from the plague's effects, causing [[YourHeadAsplode every involved world leader's head to overheat and explode simultaneously in one glorious montage]].

** ''RevengeOfTheSith'':
*** The Jedi Order are the only serious threat to a Sith regime. Order 66 decimated the Jedi Knights, including the majority of the Jedi Council, leaving a spotty few to counter {{TheEmpire}}'s multi-million marching army.

* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', Lanfear near-fatally sabotages the armies of the Light in the Final Battle by infiltrating the generals' dreams and turning them into Manchurian Agents who misuse their troops in subtle but debilitating ways. Were it not for Mat Cauthon taking command, the ploy likely would have won the war for the Dark One.

* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', the Freys killed the vast majority of the northern lords during lord Edmure Tullys wedding, thus ending the war of the five kings in a single night.
* In ''[[Literature/HonorHarrington A Short Victorious War]]'' Rob S. Pierre's conspiracy hijacks a naval shuttle and carpet-bombs the Haven presidential palace while his entire family and the heads of all the major Legislaturist houses are there. Framing "rogue element of the People's Navy" for it and giving him an excuse to Purge the Navy of old regime loyalists.
* A somewhat more small-scale (and thus realistic) example popped up in ''Cursor's Fury'', book three of ''CodexAlera''. The First Aleran Legion is struck by a powerful, magical attack, targeted at the Commander's Tent, just when every officer in the camp has been summoned there to discuss a recent development. If it had worked as designed, it would've wiped out everyone who could've taken command of the Legion, except for a strategically-placed traitor... but instead, command of the Legion winds up falling to the Third Subtribune Logistica (which basically means undersecretary to the undersecretary of logistics) who had been delayed. Fortunately, said Subtribune happens to be a Cursor - a secret agent of the First Lord, sent to infiltrate the legion to search for signs of treason and general espionage, and given a lowly officer's billet specifically to keep him flexible and out of the spotlight. Later, several characters state that the ORIGINAL leadership of the Legion, however competent they might have been, could not have accomplished even half of what he then proceeded to do with the 'decapitated' Legion...

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* In ''Series/BreakingBad'', BigBad Gus Fring ostensibly surrenders his entire business to a rival Mexican cartel. He is invited to the Don's hacienda in Mexico, and after the 'negotiation' ends, Gus poisons [[XanatosGambit himself]], the Don and all his lieutenants with a laced bottle of rare tequila. He then escapes quickly enough to get himself medically treated before the poison kills him too.
* In ''Series/DesignatedSurvivor'', the the US president and most of his staff is killed by a terrorist bombing, promoting the eponymous protagonist (see RealLife for more) to presidency.

* Happens in the final season of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' when the First Evil's followers blow up the Watchers' Council headquarters in London, killing almost all the leadership. And then in the final episode of ''Series/{{Angel}}'' when Angel and his followers kill the entire leadership of the Circle of the Black Thorn in one night.

* In the backstory of ''VideoGame/ShatteredUnion'', the entire US government is wiped out by an atomic bomb during a highly unpopular president-elect's inauguration speech, triggering the [[DividedStatesOfAmerica Second American Civil War]].
* In Hitman2016 this is the story behind the majority of your missions.
** In The Showstopper 47 must take out Dalia Margolis and Victor Novikov, the leaders of an international spy ring. Since they are the sole masterminds of the ring, it ceases to exist after their deaths.
** In The World Of Tomorrow you are tasked with killing Silvio Caruso, a genius but paranoid biologist who just developed a new super-virus, his assistant Francesca de Santis, who might be the only person that might recreate the virus, and then destroy the virus itself. With no means of recreating the virus, the project is cancelled afterwards.
** In A Gilded Cage 47 must kill Claus Strandberg, who scamed billions of dollar to provoke riots and his partner general Reza Zaydan who wants to use the riots to establish a military dictatorship. With the people having no one to riot against anymore and the military having no one capable of becoming dictator, the plans are terminated.
** In Freedom Fighters 47 is tasked with killing the leaders of a paramilitary terrorist group. With all of them dead the group is apparently disbanded.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' episode "Eminence", Maul has all the leaders of the Black Sun decapitated in one fell swoop by Savage when they refuse to join them.
* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': After infiltrating the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Sae, Azula works with Long Feng and the corrupt Dai Li to take over the city by capturing all the high-ranking officials and generals who might be able to oppose them. The Earth King eventually escapes with the help of the Gaang but is still forced to leave his city.

* Queen Olga of Kiev is a repeat offender.
** Following the murder of her husband Igor by the hands of uprising Drevlians, she pretended that she was willing to negotiate. The Drevlians sent 20 high-ranking diplomats by boat. Olga proceeded to have the boat seized and then had the diplomats buried alive. ''In their boat.''
** Next, she convinced the Drevlian prince Mal that she was ready to marry him. He arrived with much of his royal court in tow. She invited them to clean up from the long trip in a banya (Russian sauna) - which she had promptly locked from the outside and burned to the ground.
** Then she invited the remaining Drevlian leadership to a funeral feast in Igor's honour, which they ''again'' happily attended. After one night of partying and excessive drinking, Olga had 5000 of them rounded up and massacred by her army.

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* ''AScotsmanInEgypt''; the Timurid invasion is thwarted first by infiltrating their army years earlier with a FakeDefector who arranges for their army to head west while sending information back, then by a single assassin killing their top generals as they're looking over the planned battlefield. Despite the loss of their ([[TyrantTakesTheHelm competent]]) leaders and the fact that they're ''outnumbered'' by the Scots, the Timurids still fight and are defeated.

* Emperor Palpatine of the ''Film/StarWarsRevengeOfTheSith'' loves this trope:
** The Jedi Order are the only serious threat to a Sith regime. General Order 66 decimated the Jedi Knights, leaving a spotty few to counter {{TheEmpire}}'s multi-million marching army.
** The Separatist council get a visit from the Emperor's [[TheDragon right-hand man]], who wordlessly locks them in the war room, then massacres them. Nute Gunray's "... but we have been loyal!" reveal that to TheChessmaster, pawns are expendable.
** Further, according to ''Film/StarWarsANewHope'', the last bastion of power in the old Republic was the Galactic Senate. Quoting Grand Moff Tarkin: "The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently." Pink slips or bloodbath?

* ''FanFic/DungeonKeeperAmi'': The entirety of Crowned Death's intelligent troops has been taken out by [[spoiler:Mukrezar with a collapsible ceiling]].

** ThePunisherMax begins with Frank sneaking up on the birthday party of the centenarian Don Cesare, shooting him and as many of the invited high-rankers as he can. The resulting power vacuum fuels much of the series.
** In WelcomeBackFrank, Frank goes to a lot of trouble to rescue a Don being held hostage from a South American rebel camp. The UngratefulBastard betrays Frank and returns to New York, where he calls a meeting of the Mafia to deal with the Punisher once and for all. Frank calls him at that moment to ask him ''why'' he'd been rescued, if not as the best way to put a lot of high-ranking Mafia goons in the same room. Then shows up with an M-60.

-->''You will be with the angels when I launch this missile at the Geneva arms conference, eliminating the leaders of two dozen nations in one fell swoop! Then, from out of the chaos, Baroness Von Gunther and her forces will rise up to take control!''

** In ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', he lures the Rebel Alliance into attempting one against him as bait for a trap. Unfortunately for him, his foresight proves fallible, and the strike is ultimately successful, taking him out and dealing the Empire a crushing defeat they never recover from.

** The Separatist council get a visit from the Emperor's [[TheDragon right-hand man]], who wordlessly locks them in the war room, then massacres them. Knute Gunray's "... but we have been loyal!" reveal that to TheChessmaster, pawns are expendable.

It's no secret that often, all that's needed to end a struggle is to decapitate the enemy's leadership. Military stragegists, royal heirs, mafiosi and putschists all can agree on that.

Will occasionally, but not always, result in a surprise successor ascending the helm. It's also a very popular device during TheCoup.

* In ''BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' this was Baroness Von Gunther's plan (possible page quote):
-->''You will be with the angels when I launch this missile at the Geneva arms conference, eliminating the leaders of two dozen nations in one fell swoop! Then, from out of the chaos, Baroness Von Gunther and her forces will rise up to take control!''