History Main / MakeSureHesDead

* ''Manga/DragonBall'':

You know the drill: DeathTrope = Administrivia/SpoilersOff.

You know the deal; it's a DeathTrope, possible spoilers ahoy!

* In ''Film/TheShawshankRedemption'', the man who killed Andy's wife and her lover technically did this, although the prosecutor's point when telling the court that the gun would have to have been emptied reloaded several times was that the killer did so for sadistic rather than pragmatic reasons. Fair point; he just had the wrong man.

* The players in ''Podcast/RoleplayRetcon'''s re-imagining of ''Film/TheDarkTower'' film insist on making sure the [[BigBad BBEG]] is truly dead after some [[Metagame metagaming]] suspicions about the GM's choice of phrasing.

* The players in ''Podcast/RoleplayRetcon'''s re-imagining of ''Film/TheDarkTower'' film insist on making sure the [[BigBad BBEG]] is truly dead after some [[metagame metagaming]] suspicions about the GM's choice of phrasing.

* The players in ''Podcast/RoleplayRetcon'''s re-imagining of ''Film/TheDarkTower'' film insist on making sure the [[BigBad]] is truly dead after some [[metagame metagaming]] suspicions about the GM's choice of phrasing.

* ''Fanfic/SonicManiaTheNovelization'': When the Flying Battery crashes in the Press Garden Zone, one of the Eggrobos initially assumes that Team Sonic simply perished in the crash. Eggman is smarter than that and orders his minions to find and bring back their bodies. When they find them unconscious in the snow, they also make sure to check Sonic's pulse first; indeed, Team Sonic survived, and they destroy the Eggrobos.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': After taking down the genetically-altered MonsterOfTheWeek, Vala dumps another clip into it "just to be sure."
* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': Subverted in "The Defiant One" when Sheppard seems to kill a Wraith, then puts a few more rounds into him for good measure, only for the Wraith to get back on his feet and start shooting back.

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'':
** In a season 2 episode, Buffy furiously smashes the bones of the already dead The Master with a sledgehammer in order to make sure he can't be resurrected. "Make sure he's dead" and "make sure he stays dead" are basically the same thing in the Buffyverse.
** An amusing variant occurs when Buffy knows Dracula will immediately reconstitute himself after being staked so she sticks around to stake him again. When he starts pulling himself together ''yet again'', she points out that she's standing right there and he dissipates completely. In this case, she couldn't permanently kill him but she did make sure he knew she wouldn't tolerate him trying to come back.
* In ''Series/{{Angel}}'' season 4, Wesley decapitates Lilah to make sure she doesn't return as a vampire. There wasn't any danger of that, but he didn't know that at the time. Then she 'did' come back as one of Wolfram & Hart's Undead Employees.
* ''Series/BattleBots'' saw ROTATOR continually assault Predator, even though it had effectively crippled the bot at the start of the match by taking out its wheels. This was done because Predator kept lurching back into motion, and the operator of ROTATOR wanted to make sure they won the fight. Finally, the referee counted Predator out and ROTATOR ceased its assault.

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

* In ''Film/JeepersCreepers'', when Trish and Darry are confronted on the highway Trish runs The Creeper over. When Dary asks is Trish thinks she's really dead, Trish then proceeds to run him over not twice but five times. Unfortunately, it got better.
** In ''Film/JeepersCreepers2'', the protagonists manage to ground the Creeper and Jack Sr. goes to town on him with a spear, but the Creeper just goes into hibernation. Jack Sr. then nails the corpse to his barn and waits for the hibernation to end, just to be sure it stays dead.
* In ''Film/TrickRTreat'', Kreeg blasts Sam again with his gun after the latter finally goes down, and it still isn't enough.
* In ''Film/SinCity'', after Hartigan's bullet causes the assassin chasing them -Roark Junior- to crash, he tells Nancy to pull over so he can go back and confirm the kill.
* In ''Film/TheGodfather'', Sonny is killed by a small squad of mafia hitmen. One of these hitmen showers his corpse with bullets, spraying his body from top to bottom to make sure he died, then kicks him in the head.
* In the movie adaptation of ''Film/{{Bloodrayne}}'', the protagonists decapitate fallen vampires to make sure they're really dead.
* In ''Film/TheShawshankRedemption'', the man who killed Andy's wife and her lover technically did this, although the prosecutor's point when telling the court that the gun would have to have been emptied reloaded several times was that the killer did so for sadistic rather than pragmatic reasons. Fair point; he just had the wrong man.
* This is done in a kaiju fight in ''Film/PacificRim'' by Raleigh Becket who lost his brother to a kaiju who hadn't really been dead years before and didn't want to repeat the mistake. "Let's check for a pulse to be sure." ''[[DoubleTap (BANG BANG BANG)]]'' "Yup, no pulse."
* Said word-for-word in ''Film/TheHost2006'' by Nam-il after Hee-bong manages to shoot and down the monster. [[DoubleTap Nam-il shoots it again]], and sure enough, the monster just PlayingPossum and immediately gets up and tries to run away.
* In ''Film/OlympusHasFallen'', the terrorists attacking the White House shoot all the Secret Service agents who appear dead in the head as they pass, to make sure they don't get up.
* In ''Film/BloodDiamond'', Danny Archer shoots a pair of RUF soldiers at a checkpoint. A third soldier, surprised and unarmed, tries to flee. As Danny goes after the third one, he casually puts a bullet in the heads of both of the fallen soldiers he shot seconds ago as he walks past them.
* ''{{Film/Skyfall}}'': After the titular manor explodes, the villain Silva says this to his henchmen regarding Bond, as he himself is still hell-bent on killing M.
* ''Franchise/EvilDead'': According to Professor Knowby, the only way to definitely kill those possessed by the Necronomicon is by completely dismembering their bodies.
* ''Film/FridayThe13thTheFinalChapter'': During the climax of the film, Tommy grabs Jason's machete and chops halfway into his head with it, [[EyeScream destroying his left eye]]. As Tommy and Trish are hugging in relief, Jason seems about to pull off a FingerTwitchingRevival... and when Tommy sees, he freaks out, grabs the machete, and starts chopping away at Jason's body.
* In ''Film/GetRichOrDieTryin'', a rival gang bursts into a recording studio and shoot half a dozen people. While the gang leader is relaying a message to the singer in the sound booth, his mooks are calmly walking amongst the bodies finishing them off.
* In ''Film/ColossusTheForbinProject'', Colossus orders people to be first shot and then decapitated, while [[Main/ItIsDehumanizing he]] is [[Main/BigBrotherIsWatching watching]].
* During the first battle scene in ''Film/Fury2014'', the tank's driver, Gordo, tells his NewMeat crewmate Norman to shoot a bunch of dead Germans. When Norman protests that they're already dead, Gordo caustically asks if Norman is a doctor to be able to tell that someone is dead just by looking at them through a tank's periscope, then points out that any one of the Germans could be pretending to be dead, all the while preparing to get back up and shoot them InTheBack with a hidden anti-tank weapon. [[spoiler:In the final battle, Bible gets surprised and nearly killed when he tries to grab a weapon from among a pile of dead bodies and it turns out one of the Germans was PlayingPossum.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' episode "The Worst Stan," to prevent Principal Lewis' "prison wife" Tracy from interfering with Lewis' upcoming wedding, Stan goes all out with this trope: in this order, he shoots Tracy four times, throws him off a cliff, runs him over in his [=SUV=] ''six'' times, and finally feeds the body to an alligator, which he proceeds to gun down and have made into boots, a belt, a handbag, and a tie. Much to his shock, when he gets back to Lewis' house, he finds Tracy alive and well:

* ''Film/EnemyAtTheGates'' has a scene where ''every'' German patrol passing a heap of Red Army corpses left over from a previous fight makes a point of machine-gunning it. This isn't done out of irrational hatred; it is insurance against living Russians getting in among the uncleared corpses, and using them as cover to snipe from.

** Not satisfied filling Jotaro with knives and dropping him several stories, Dio Brando decides to make sure he's dead by cajoling a policeman into shooting him in the heart. Then he puts his ear to the ground to make sure Jotaro's heart has stopped. Then, ''just to be sure'', he grabs a street sign and tries to decapitate Jotaro's body. [Jotaro was still alive, having had ImprovisedArmor and his Stand to protect him from the knives and fall, using his Stand to stop the bullet and his heart, and finally using his Stand to punch Dio in the skull after wrecking the stop sign.

--> '''[[PsychoForHire Teatime]]:''' I checked Sir George's breathing with a mirror, as instructed.
--> '''Lord Downey:''' Apparently, his head was [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill several feet from his body at that point.]]

* Said word-for-word in ''Film/TheHost'' by Nam-il after Hee-bong manages to shoot and down the monster. [[DoubleTap Nam-il shoots it again]], and sure enough, the monster just PlayingPossum and immediately gets up and tries to run away.

** At the climax of the battle, [[spoiler:Dio, DrunkOnTheDarkSide and basically padlocked to the VillainBall, neglects to do this after seemingly killing Jotaro via [[DeathFromAbove dropped steamroller]] and instead commits to EvilGloating, clearly not having learned his lesson from earlier. Jotaro uses this opportunity to fake out Dio and land a crippling hit. [[YourHeadAsplode It doesn't go well for Dio from there]].]]

* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'': Not satisfied filling Jotaro with knives and dropping him several stories, Dio Brando decides to make sure he's dead by cajoling a policeman into shooting him in the heart. Then he puts his ear to the ground to make sure Jotaro's heart has stopped. Then, ''just to be sure'', he grabs a street sign and tries to decapitate Jotaro's body.

* ''Film/EnemyAtTheGate'' sees a scene where ''every'' German patrol passing a heap of Red Army corpses left over from a previous fight makes a point of machine-gunning it. This isn't done out of irrational hatred; it is insurance against living Russians getting in among the uncleared corpses, and using them as cover to snipe from.

* ''ComicBook/BatmanTheCult'', [[DarkMessiah Deacon Joseph Blackfire]], the main villain, has a totem in his likeness that in hallucinations appears far taller than it is. However, after Blackfire dies, Batman does not take the chance of it being mystical and proceeds to douse the thing in gasoline and set fire to it to keep the Deacon dead

* In ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' storyline ''ComicBook/StarfiresRevenge'',
ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} is lying stil motionless after being gunned down, but Derek Ames knows his boss Starfire will want proof of her death; so he grasps her arm and prods her body for a bit. Since Supergirl does not show any signs of movement, he believes they have succeeded in murdering her. [[spoiler:He is wrong]].

* Not satisfied filling Jotaro with knives and dropping him several stories, Dio Brando of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' decides to make sure he's dead by cajoling a policeman into shooting him in the heart. Then he puts his ear to the ground to make sure Jotaro's heart has stopped. Then, ''just to be sure'', he grabs a street sign and tries to decapitate Jotaro's body.
* Sometimes, this backfires badly. In ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'', [[BigBad Makoto Shishio]] originally worked as a 'manslayer' during the rebellion, but for some reason, his employers decided to get rid of him. They knew just how tough he was, and sent a small army after him, including firearms. When he finally went down - after killing more than half of his assailants - they decided to make REALLY sure he was dead... They poured oil over him and set him on fire, essentially cremating him on the spot... SOMEHOW Shishio still survived, albeit with third-degree burns covering his entire body, and thus turns into the 'Bandaged up like a mummy' baddie we know.

One of many calling cards for the NoNonsenseNemesis. Justified version of DesecratingTheDead; related to ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill and RasputinianDeath (if it's only the subsequent attempts that work). Failure to do this causes a response similar to WhyDontYaJustShootHim (in this case, ''Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him Again?''). The DoubleTap to the head is a common method of ensuring someone is really dead. A kill may be confirmed to someone else via DecapitationPresentation.