Don't Create a Martyr

"Kill [Batman], and you martyr him. You make him a legend. But break him, humiliate him, terrify him, and hold him up for the world to see? Then he's nothing but a man."

— Scarecrow, Batman: Arkham Knight

When someone dies fighting for a cause they believe in, it can create a powerful symbol for others to rally around. The character's message may not have been all that effective while alive, but once their enemies kill them, others take notice of their example and agree with them, and begin to rise up. In works of fiction, some characters are aware of this and take efforts to avoid it.

This trope is whenever someone could kill their enemy, and perhaps does, but it is addressed that their death could make them a martyr for their cause and prompt even more people to rise up to follow their legacy than rose up to follow them in life. Regardless of if the character actually dies or not, the story treats this as the truth — if they die (or at least, die before their enemies can discredit them), their enemies will have it even worse from those that take up the cause in their name.

Compare Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?, and You Cannot Kill An Idea, which this trope may be the answer to. See also Nice Job Breaking It, Hero and Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, which may overlap with this trope if the character does die and become a martyr, and Pragmatic Villainy, which this trope is likely to be an instance of.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Ayakashi Triangle: Seeing how Matsuri broke Suzu from her control, Shadow Mei at first concludes she should kill Matsuri. However, Garaku convinces her that would motivate Suzu even more strongly against her, so Shadow Mei instead tries to ruin their friendship.
• In Hunterx Hunter, Shaiapouf refrains himself from killing Komungi, the blind girl who had made the Chimera Ant King become kinder by showing him that even someone without physical power can have value, believed that if he killed her before the King had a chance to beat her in this competitive boardgame they were playing, she would always be a wall the king never overcame, and might cause him to abandon his goals for world domination and take a Heel–Face Turn Which he does .
• Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song: In the timeline that lead to the Bad Future, an assemblyman in favor of passing a law that contributed to a Robot War happening in the long term was murdered. The murder motivated other politicians who were in favor of the law to put much more effort into getting it passed, as to honor him. In the timeline in which the assemblyman stays alive, the law doesn't get passed, but an even more favorable law gets passed instead.

Comic Books

• Avatar: The Last Airbender – Imbalance: One of the reasons why Aang ultimately decides not to take away Liling's bending is that it would only further cement the pro-bender supremacists' hatred and fear of the Avatar, seeing them as somebody capable of inflicting a Fate Worse than Death.
• Batman: The Cult: Batman faces the immortal (via regular Blood Bath) cult leader Deacon Blackfire. Blackfire faces him in a ring of his followers, and actually wants Batman to kill him in front of them. Batman realizes this and instead breaks his pedestal in front of all of them by hitting him in nerve clusters for maximum pain until Blackfire can't handle it anymore. Seeing their messiah as just a man, his cult kills him.
• In the Fall 1152 storyline of Mouse Guard, the traitor Midnight is not killed or executed as the Guard realizes that his death would make him a martyr; he's banished instead.
• Secret Invasion (2008): Way back when, Dorek VII, Emperor of the Skrulls, had a problem with Princess Veranke, a fundamentalist who was an outspoken critic of his who wanted to invade Earth (she felt it was religious prophecy. Dorek thought she was a nutjob.) Since he couldn't kill her because of her popular support, he just had her exiled. Which means when Galactus eats the Skrull homeworld with Dorek on it, that leaves Veranke as the only known Skrull royalty left...
• X-Men: The X-Men have to save Senator Kelly in Days of Future Past because if he dies, other far more unpleasant politicians take up his cause of Mutant registration, and when that gets shut down skip straight to Sentinels, who promptly turn on them. Alive, Kelly's simply an ungrateful pain in the ass.

Fan Works

• How a Street Thug Killed a God: Solomon brings down Olympian via an Engineered Public Confession, tricking the Smug Super into revealing his true nature to the world. When his player is asked why he chose to handle the situation that way, he cites this concept:
  Solomon's Player: When someone sees a hero, they don't care about the man; they care about the faith they have in him, his records. Killing Olympian still left him a hero. So, I did the next best: I killed the city's faith in him.
• Kage: When Queen Elyon announces her intention of putting her overthrown brother Prince Phobos and his minions on trial, "the Mage" (the disguised Nerissa) informs her that several members of his court are still at large and could convince the commoners to view the tyrant as a martyr should he be put on trial either by using their fear of him or even inducing real sympathy towards him, which is why it's best to postpone the trial until all of them are captured.
• The Murder of Lila Rossi: Chloé raises this alongside her alibi and the flaws in the murder when explaining why she didn't kill Lila. Lila's lies were already starting to fall apart and people noticed the inconsistencies. If Lila died she'd remain the victim, masking the inconsistencies.
• My Hero Academia: Entropy: The Syndicate makes a point of sparing Kendo during their disruption of U.A.'s graduation ceremony; instead, they expose her as a Smug Super; when she asks for them to Take Me Instead, they argue that she's just shown that she considers herself to be more valuable and important than others.
• Shadows over Meridian (the Recursive Fanfiction of Kage): Despite being fully capable of doing so, Jade refuses to immediately crush Elyon and the Rebellion with her Shadowkhan armies, because that would only motivate their friends and supporters to rally against Phobos more fiercely than before. She instead decides to destroy the common people's faith in Elyon so that they'd have no choice but to accept Phobos as their ruler.
• The White Wolf of Westeros: Asha thinks about this when Euron returns to challenge Balon for the lordship. Sure, she could put an axe through his head to shut him up, but after he enticed the Ironborn to conquer, pillage, and grow in power, Euron could easily be made a martyr and she'd lose her own standing as a now Kinslayer.

Film — Live-Action

• In Avengers: Age of Ultron, when Quicksilver complains that Ultron and Wanda aren't being direct about the Avengers, Ultron rhetorically asks if he wants to make them martyrs.
• In Batman Returns, when Catwoman and Penguin have their team-up, Catwoman shoots down Penguin's initial suggestion of turning the Batmobile into "an H-Bomb on wheels" by pointing out that Batman would have even more power as a martyr, and that the best way to destroy him is to destroy his reputation.
• The Bourne Ultimatum: Jason Bourne confronts Dr. Albert Hirsch, the director of the Treadstone program and the one responsible for turning Bourne into who he is, and learns the whole story of his past. When Hirsch asks if Bourne is going to kill him now, Bourne replies: "You don't deserve the star they give you on the wall at Langley." Hirsch is instead arrested for his role in the program.
• In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, when HYDRA's S.H.I.E.L.D. mole agents manage to capture Captain America and his cohorts, Brock Rumlow tells one of his agents to stand down when he's about to execute Captain America in broad daylight because they know if they're seen doing the deed by anyone, it'll expose them and turn Steve into a martyr.
• Gladiator: The whole point of Commodus's Bread and Circuses act is to keep the people of Rome from realizing how bad a ruler he actually is, so he doesn't kill Maximus, despite him openly defying Commodus, because he's so popular among the people that killing him would make Commodus in turn unpopular.
  Commodus: And now they love Maximus for his mercy. So I can't just kill him, or it makes me even more unmerciful! The whole thing's like some crazed nightmare.
  Falco: He is defying you. His every victory is an act of defiance. The mob sees this, and so does the senate. Every day he lives, they grow bolder. Kill him.
  Commodus: No. I will not make a martyr of him.
• Hercules (2014): King Eurystheus says if he killed Hercules right away, the people would have revolted since Hercules is revered as a hero. So he aims to ruin his reputation by framing him for the death of his family before trying to kill him.
• In the live-action Masters of the Universe movie, Skeletor gives this as his reason for not outright killing He-Man immediately (though it's obvious there's ego involved, too).
  Evil-Lyn: The people wait for He-Man. They believe he will return to lead them. For you to rule completely he must be destroyed.
  Skeletor: If I kill him, I make him a martyr, a saint. No, I want him broken first!
• Inverted in Monty Python's Life of Brian: the People's Front of Judea could have rescued Brian from dying on the cross, but they decide to make him a martyr instead. He doesn't take it well.
• A New Hope: Grand Moff Tarkin demonstrates the Death Star's ability to be a roving Kill Sat on Alderaan, hoping that other systems hoping to join the Rebel Alliance would think twice afterwards. The exact opposite happens; not only did the destruction of Alderaan hasten the defection of those who were already considering doing so, but a whole swath of otherwise neutral systems joined up en masse since they were either sickened by what the Empire did to an otherwise peaceful planet or felt that they had nothing to lose as the Empire showed that they would probably just destroy their planets too.
• Outlaw of Gor sees Queen Lara refusing to have Cabot executed because he would be made a martyr to the people of Gor and with it a threat to the power she'd just gained from the death of her husband.
• In The Postman, General Bethlehem, leader of the Holnists, has captured Ford Lincoln Mercury (it's a person's name) and has decided to execute him and another postman. When the two introduce themselves to each other, he realizes that they don't know each other and that therefore simply killing Ford would create a martyr, and the idea of the postal service and re-established government would spread.
• RRR (2022): After Bheem's public flogging causes a riot, Ram convinces Scott not to execute him in the city, as it would create a martyr for the people to rally around. He's actually exploiting the trope: by convincing Scott to hang Bheem in a secluded area, Ram can better execute his plan to free him.
• Tango & Cash: The reason why Perret manages to convince the other criminal leaders that his plan to set up the eponymous pair of Cowboy Cops is the best (even if they complain about how complicated it is, and instead of just tossing as many assassins as it takes to kill them) is that if they just up and die, while they are still respected by the public and the LAPD as hero cops, the response will be an increase of difficulty in their criminal enterprises courtesy of crusading cops—but if they are disgraced as a set-up for the kill...
• Undercover Brother. Mr. Feather and "The Man" are discussing General Boutwell (who is black) and his possible run for the Presidency of the U.S.
  The Man: Now Boutwell might be President?!... I want the White House to stay white. Eliminate him!
  Mr. Feather: But, sir, if we kill him, we'll only be making him a hero.
• Explained to the Cigarette Smoking Man in The X-Files: Fight the Future to explain why Agent Mulder is not just shot by the Government Conspiracy. As long as he's alive, he's just seen as a crazy FBI agent Reassigned to Antarctica. If he dies (especially in a "mysterious" fashion, as the Cigarette Smoking Man wants to do), he'll become a martyr to the Conspiracy Theorist circle, which could give them some problems down the road.
• In X-Men: Days of Future Past, the plot is driven by the need to stop Mystique from killing Bolivar Trask, creator of the Sentinel program, because his death at the hands of a mutant will only drive others to finish his work. In addition, since Mystique is captured when she does it, they are able to adapt her mutation to give the Sentinels Adaptive Ability, which made them unstoppable.

Literature

By Author:

• George R. R. Martin:
  • In the early short story "And Death His Legacy" (collected in Dream Songs) the protagonist assassinates a right-wing demagogue during one of his sermons, which inspires his already fanatical followers to continue his work and the movement grows. "My God, What Have I Done?."
  • In The Mystery Knight, a Blackfyre usurper is allowed to live for this reason, though also because if they cut off his head, the next-in-line of succession will take over the role. This way the current Blackfyre is their hostage, hampering any future attempts by the Blackfyre rebels to take the Iron Throne.
    Bloodraven: Should I be so foolish as to remove his pretty head, his mother will mourn, his friends will curse me for a kinslayer, and Bittersteel will crown his brother Haegon. Dead, young Daemon is a hero. Alive, he is an obstacle in my half-brother's path. He can hardly make a third Blackfyre king whilst the second remains so inconveniently alive. Besides, such a noble captive will be an ornament to our court, and a living testament to the mercy and benevolence of His Grace, King Aerys.
  • Fire & Blood: After the Dance of the Dragons, Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower is kept alive by what's left of her son's supporters, who've turned sides and killed said son just to end the fighting, because if she's dead, she's a martyr. Alive, she's just a miserable old woman.

By Title:

• In Abaddon's Gate, Clarissa Mao wants to get revenge on James Holden for his responsibility in bringing her father to justice for his crimes made for profiting off the protomolecule, but knowing that simply killing Holden would make him a less controversial figure^note You see, Holden may be partly responsible for igniting the war between Mars and the Asteroid Belt because he didn't consider that a difference between saying the unknown culprit used Martian emitters to fake a Distress Call and outright accusing Mars of doing so is mostly academic., she opts for a ploy to sabotage a few spaceships congregating in one place and make it look like Holden's work so he will look like he's gone off the deep end.
• Alex Rider: In Snakehead, the criminal syndicate Scorpia has been tasked with assassinating the attendees at a peace conference; however, if they are seen to be victims of violence, it will make them martyrs for their cause. Instead, Scorpia seeks to engineer a "natural" disaster that will destroy the conference without any suspicion.
• In The Death of Achilles, General Sobolev is preparing a military coup in Russia, so his enemies require him dead and his death to be a shameful one because otherwise his aides would have turned him into a martyr and carried out his plans even without him, so they contract Achimas, one of the world's top Professional Killers.
• Isaac Asimov's "In a Good Cause—": Altmayer is arrested for attempting to kill the alien ambassadors from Diaboli (he hoped to unite the human factions through an Enemy Mine situation), he asks whether he's going to be shot without a trial. Instead, he's told that he'll only get a few years... they don't need a martyr. But all of his immediate co-conspirators will be shot, creating the impression of him being a state witness.
• James Bond:
  • In From Russia with Love Bond is aware that the Soviets are plotting something but doesn't think they're planning murder because they could just assassinate him. Turns out they are planning to kill him, but in a way that will create a public scandal. In this case, the scandal is the object though, rather than Bond's death. Bond is a nuisance, but the real object is to discredit British Intelligence.
  • In the first novel Casino Royale, M is reading the dossier on Le Chiffre, where it's noted that they can't just assassinate him as that would make him a martyr for the French Communists. In this case, Bond is sent to bankrupt Le Chiffre in a high-stakes gambling match.
• In Legends of Dune, Serena Butler travels to a machine planet, ostensibly in order to negotiate peace with Omnius, with only her loyal bodyguard for protection. However, she does her best to try to get the machines to kill her, specifically to rally humanity behind her death, just like it happened before when Erasmus killed her infant son. However, Omnius is no idiot and keeps his machines at bay. Unbeknownst to Serena, her bodyguard is actually loyal to Iblis Ginjo and has secret orders to kill Serena in order to turn her into a martyr. The bodyguard snaps Serena's neck with a well-placed kick before being gunned down by the robots, thus ensuring that the Army of Humanity has another martyr.
• Olga Dies Dreaming: After the Time Skip to September 23, 2025, Olga is about to call an anonymous tip on her mother to the FBI about the airport bombing in Puerto Rico, but changes her mind when she thinks it through:
  What do you think happens next? She goes quietly? Nah. It'll be guns blazing and she'll be a hero and for the rest of your life you'll have to see her fucking face on murals and T-shirts and have people talk about what a martyr this puta was, and do you really need that shit?
  No, she decided. She did not.
• The Stormlight Archive:
  • The Way of Kings (2010): Discussed. Kaladin organizes the bridgemen, turning them from slaves waiting to die into real, professional soldiers. Gaz promises to assassinate him, but his superior says that is a terrible idea, as it will just turn Kaladin into a martyr. Bridgemen have the most dangerous job in the army, so it's better to just let him die on the field. Of course, they are both unaware that Kaladin has magical powers that haven't been seen in centuries, and thus is extremely unlikely to fall to something as minor as arrows.
  • Words of Radiance: Sadeas knows better than to assassinate Dalinar; even though Dalinar's reputation is at an ebb, he is still a respected general and leader. Killing him out of the blue would just make people flock to the ideals he's been espousing, which Sadeas hates. Instead, his wife's spies find the written records of Dalinar's visions and release them to the public (edited slightly to seem more ridiculous). Then he tries to assassinate Dalinar since no one will care if a madman dies. This backfires when Dalinar survives the assassination, wins the war, and proves everything he's been saying is true. Sadeas still plans to politically undermine him, however. He makes the mistake of telling Dalinar's son, Adolin, this while they're alone. Adolin snaps and kills him.
• As part of his lessons on effective propaganda as he leads his insurrection in Victoria, John Rumford emphasizes that martyring enemies is extremely bad optics. If someone must be executed, it should be done in such a way that he gets no chance to become one: either by vilifying or humiliating him as appropriate so no one will sympathize with him, or else just merely having him disappear quietly, without attribution. Also, less ruthlessly, he prefers a convert to a victim and pardons several enemies who are genuinely contrite and willing to switch sides.
• In The Wheel of Time, the Aes Sedai Magical Society deals with leaders who have to be deposed by permanently de-powering them and putting them to low, menial work. People might be inspired by the memory of someone who's been executed or work to free someone who's imprisoned or exiled, but nobody rallies behind a scullery maid, no matter who they used to be.

Live-Action Television

• Altered Carbon: Takeshi Kovacs is the last surviving member of Quellcrist Falconer's Envoys who fought a rebellion over 250 years ago against the United Nations Protectorate Forces. In season 2, he is back on Harlan's World, the place Quellcrist based her operations, and is still home to rebels fighting the government's forces. When Kovacs is captured at the site of a slaughter of rich and influential people, he is sentenced to public execution. Once the officer who captures him realizes who Kovacs is, he strenuously advises they forgo the public one and just quietly shoot Kovacs in the stack. Rather than lose face for stopping the public execution, the governor goes through with it. Her actions end up with Takeshi not only alive but reveal that Quellcrist is alive when she comes to rescue him. The entire planet witnesses this before a mole cuts power to the prison, allowing both Quellcrist and Kovacs to escape.
• In Blake's 7 episode "The Way Back", Rebel Leader Roj Blake is captured, brainwashed into denouncing his own revolution, then has his memories erased. A resurgent rebel group tries to awaken his memories so he can be a figurehead, only to be massacred and Blake captured again. But this time the brainwashing doesn't hold, so the Terran Federation decide to frame Blake as a child molester and deport him to a penal planet. This tactic of ruthlessly massacring rebels while keeping their leader alive is later shown to be a standard tactic of the Federation.
• An episode of Earth: Final Conflict has a computer virus infiltrate Taelon systems and spread across the world. This causes the shuttle piloted by Lili, with Da'an as the passenger, to crash in the wilderness. Worried about Lili, who's secretly a member of La Résistance, Jonathan Doors sends his men to find her. Despite Lili leaving her tracking beacon behind, the soldiers manage to find them. They level their weapon at Da'an but tell him that they're only here to offer medical aid to his human companion (since they don't want to jeopardize Lili's cover). Da'an asks if they are planning on shooting him, but the soldiers lower their weapons and say they have no intention of turning Da'an into a martyr. It's a moot point, though, since all they have regular firearms, which are harmless to the Taelons.
• In Flash Gordon (2007), Ming has captured Barin, the leader of one of the cantons on Mongo, and plans to execute him publicly for defiance. Knowing that Ming heeds the prophecies spoken by a fringe cult on Mongo, Flash and his friends infiltrate the cult, knock out the real members, disguise themselves, and fake the ritual (involving a cult member being stung by a scorpion-like creature, mumbling something that sounds like gibberish before expiring, and another member translating it). The chosen message is vague, but Ming immediately realizes that it warns him that, by killing Barin, he would be creating a martyr for the other cantons to rally behind. Instead, he opts to keep Barin imprisoned until he can find another solution. Interestingly, his Dragon turns out to be a secret member of the cult and is aware that the "prophecy" is fake. However, he is secretly working to bring Ming down.
• Game of Thrones has Roose Bolton object to Ramsay's suggestion of killing Jon Snow because of a potential claim on the North. After all, killing the Lord Commander of an extremely well-known and politically neutral organization over a tenuous claim that's against his vows anyway may not be the best way to pacify an already very pissed-off North. Of course, that doesn't stop Ramsay from trying it anyway. Twice. And guess who was right? Nice Job Fixing It, Villain.
• House, M.D.: In "The Tyrant", Chase says Foreman shouldn't reveal that he faked a test to kill genocidal African dictator Dibala by treating him for the wrong disease because Dibala's followers will use it as an excuse to continue his plans.
• The Professionals:
  • Inverted in "Discovered in a Graveyard", when a female terrorist shoots several CI5 officers (including Doyle), gets wounded, and takes sanctuary in her embassy where even Bodie can't pursue her. However, the embassy officials hand her back to Bodie, pointing out that she's dying anyway and will be held up as a martyr for the cause. It really doesn't matter where she dies, so handing her over avoids a diplomatic incident.
  • Likewise in "Look After Annie". The conspirators planning to kill controversial politician Annie Irvine turn out to be members of her own staff, seeking to increase the power of their cause by turning her into a martyr.
• At the end of the Stargate SG-1 episode "Icon", Rand Protectorate loyalist leader Jared Kane guns down the religious extremist leader Soren. Daniel Jackson tells him he may have just created a martyr.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Angel One", the ruler of a matriarchal society sentences a male former member of the Federation named Ramsey and two accomplices to death for revolutionary activities. The crew of the Enterprise can do nothing to help them as far as legalities are concerned (a rare case where they abide by the Prime Directive), but Riker advises Mistress Beata of the possible consequences, saying her actions are trying to hold back evolution, which can't be done, and warns her that she'll make a martyr out of Ramsey. At the last minute, Beata relents and simply chooses to have Ramsey exiled.
• In Star Trek: Discovery, Michael Burnham warns Captain Georgiou that if T'Kuvma is killed, he'll become a martyr for the Klingons. Instead, she suggests capturing and imprisoning him so he'll be discredited and dishonoured. Ironically, Burnham is the one to cause the problem in the end when she kills T'Kuvma in anger after he kills Georgiou.
• In Season 4 of Supergirl (2015), Agent Liberty warns Mercy Graves not to kill Supergirl, when she shows him she has kryptonite, since that would create a martyr and undermine their efforts to spread anti-alien sentiment.
• Tyrant (2014): Jamal, the new dictator of Abbudin after his father's death, is so careful about dealing with liberal protestors in the capital's public square because he knows full well that using violence to crack down on political dissenters will simply rally more people to their cause.
• The Syndicate in The X-Files lets Mulder repeatedly get away with poking his nose into their various ventures because Mulder has a reputation in the worldwide community of conspiracy nutters and killing him would just serve as a message to everyone that he was digging in the right direction. By letting him live, the conspirators are basically Keeping the Enemy Close, preferring one they already know to the hundreds to thousands that would replace him if something happened to him.

Music

• The theme of Hero by Heather Dale.
  You think that when I'm up upon
  That pike you'll win
  They'll say that I was fighting
  For the spirit of the law
  What will they say about you
  When I'm gone?

Stand-Up Comedy

• Ron White did a stand-up bit about how he didn't believe Osama bin Laden should be executed (before the Navy SEALS went and killed him) because Osama was prepared to die for his beliefs; Ron then followed this up with a rather profane description of what he thought Osama would likely endure in prison.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000: A Deathleaper, a Tyranid special unit, managed to infiltrate the world of St. Caspalen, and knew that killing its leader, Cardinal Salem, would make him a martyr to the Imperials, stiffening their resolve. So it continually attacked the Cardinal's bodyguard, brutally slaughtering them but leaving him untouched, until the man finally snapped and committed suicide. Left leaderless, the planet was an easy win for the Hive Fleet.

Video Games

• In Batman: Arkham Knight, Scarecrow does not want to kill Batman right out of the gate because killing him as he currently is would only solidify his status as a symbol of hope to people, whereas breaking him and holding him up for all the world to see before killing him would turn him into just another man and destroy that legendary status. This leads to friction between Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, who doesn't care what Batman's legacy will be after he's gone, he just wants him dead.
• In one of the alternate timelines Booker and Elizabeth visit in BioShock Infinite, the alternate Booker never found Liz but instead joined Vox Populi, died fighting, and was posthumously turned into a martyr by the Vox Populi leaders. Moreover, when Booker Prime suddenly appears and everyone thinks he is Back from the Dead, said leaders actively try to off him again, because he is more useful to them dead than alive.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, when the Civil War questline is completed for the Imperials, Tulius says that by killing Ulfric they may have just created a martyr for rebellion against the Empire and the worship of Talos.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, NCR's President Kimball's seven-year stalemate, militarily against Caesar's Legion and politically against House in the Mojave has ruined his public image, so when Mr. House takes over the Mojave and ousts both the NCR and the Legion from the region, Kimball will take the blame from NCR's people. But if Caesar's assassins kill Kimball, he'll become a martyr for the Mojave once House takes over the region, which is why House wants him kept alive so that when he takes over, he can negotiate peace with NCR.
• Injustice: In Injustice: Gods Among Us, Regime Superman accidentally makes Lex Luthor a martyr after killing him for his betrayal, which causes the populace to wonder if Superman has gone off the deep end for good. Superman learns his lesson in Injustice 2 in his story mode ending, where he doesn't kill Batman outright, knowing that people would turn against him. Superman decides to make Batman Brainwashed and Crazy to serve under him.
• In Legacy of Kain, to prevent a tyrannous king called The Nemesis from taking over Nosgoth, Kain travels back in time to kill him as a young boy, William the Just. However, Moebius the Timestreamer uses the death of a young and beloved king to galvanize the humans of Nosgoth into exterminating the vampires, and when Kain returns to the present, he finds his race almost extinct thanks to Moebius's crusade.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: At the end of Jaal's Loyalty Mission, Aksul —leader of the fanatically anti-alien Roekaar— is holding Jaal at gunpoint, and Ryder is holding him at gunpoint. Aksul tries to goad them into shooting him in front of his followers. If Ryder does shoot him, Jaal is horrified, and the angaran leaders scold Ryder for making Aksul into a martyr, noting it'll make the political situation worse. Note that the leader of the resistance doesn't object to the death, just the means by which it was done.
• In Starcraft II, Raynor tells Tosh that Arcturus Mengsk chooses to marginalize him with the media and paint him as a fanatical terrorist because he knows just killing Raynor will make him a martyr for rebellious sentiment. Tosh agrees but points out that if Raynor causes enough trouble/becomes a big enough threat Mengsk will risk it and simply kill Raynor.
• In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the Emperor and Vader end up killing Starkiller, while he's covering the escape of the future La Résistance leaders. The Emperor instantly realizes their mistake and orders Vader to relentlessly root out the rebellion, lest this mistake doom them both. The rebels end up adopting Starkiller's family crest as their symbol.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Queen Ga'ran Sigatar Khura'in could have sent assassins to kill Dhurke Sahdmadhi during her reign but considering he was racking up a reputation beyond a terrorist, she schemes to frame him and paint him as a murderer to kill the spirit of rebellion. When he does get killed by her husband Inga, it only messed up her plan so she has to keep up the facade that Dhurke's still alive for a while.

Web Animation

• RWBY: In "Necessary Sacrifice," Adam, obsessed with destroying everything Blake loves to spite her for leaving him, orders his men, the Albain brothers, to assassinate Blake's parents. While the Albains believe this will Make an Example of Them by showing the people of Menagerie what happens to those who question the White Fang, they don't dismiss the possibility that doing so will create martyrs; Blake's parents are the beloved leaders of Menagerie, and they fear it could rally Menagerie against the White Fang. In "True Colors," while the assassination attempt fails, the fact that they attacked Blake's parents in the first place is enough to turn all of Menagerie against the White Fang.

Webcomics

• AntiBunny: The mayor's robot has Nailbat broken and defeated... only for the mayor to order the robot to take him alive. The robot questions this until the mayor explains that new Nailbats can be created out of ordinary citizens who witness a martyr. The robot can kill Mors... but to kill Nailbat, he has to arrest him and have him judged by court and paraded by media until no one wants to be Nailbat anymore.
• In The Order of the Stick, Tarquin, an absolute slave to the idea of Genre Savvy, knows that the only good story is one that ends with the villain defeated in a grand final battle, making them immortal. Elan defeats him, and then drops him on a rock in a desert, refusing to kill him — and thus ruining the story. Instead of a grand death at the hands of a hero, Tarquin is a bad joke, a pathetic loser defeated and left to wallow in his own pity.

Western Animation

• Action Man (2000): There is a peace conference/athletic competition that two high-ranking officials and their families are attending. Dr. X's mercenary drugs the officials with knockout gas, but asks him why he isn't killing them instead of just broadcasting fake news footage of a reporter saying they appear to have died. His answer is that he wants to create confusion and fear, not martyrs to a peace process.
• Ducktales 2017: In the series finale, Bradford Buzzard (the founder and leader of FOWL) has succeeded in obtaining all the lost artifacts and detained Scrooge and the Ducks (along with their friends, allies, and even their rivals and enemies) in his true plot to rid the world of all adventure. However, while he intends to erase all those who were detained by sending them into a black hole, he refuses to subject Scrooge to the same fate because he knows that doing so will make Scrooge a martyr for others who were inspired by Scrooge's stories of adventures to take a stand against FOWL; plus, he knows damn well that Scrooge is capable of, certain that even if Scrooge was erased, he would still somehow find himself a way back into existence.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures: When Magneto tries to kill Senator Kelly, he won't do it in a way that makes it clear to everyone that Kelly was killed by a mutant because it'd turn Kelly into a martyr for other mutant haters to rally around.
• In The Legend of Korra, when Korra challenges Amon to a duel and he ambushes her with a group of chi-blockers and has her at his mercy, he actually tells Korra that taking her powers at this point would only make her a martyr, so he lets her go unharmed (albeit terrified).

Real Life

• Most historians believe that Abraham Lincoln's assassination was the worst mistake pro-Confederacy John Wilkes Booth could have ever made, not only because it ruined any chance of a peaceful reconstruction, but because it made Lincoln a martyr to his cause.
• One thing the conspirators didn't seem to factor in after assassinating Julius Caesar was that the guy was incredibly popular, and that no amount of slander or smear campaigns could change the fact that Caesar's pro-plebian laws were incredibly benign and appealed to the average Roman. As a result, his assassination allowed Marc Antony and Octavian to spark another civil war, this time over whether or not the conspirators would be punished for their actions.
• When Erwin Rommel began conspiring against Adolf Hitler near the end of World War II, he stated to his rebel group that he was against the plots to assassinate Hitler because that would make him a martyr. He instead pitched the idea of arresting him and putting him on trial. Allied authorities have also cited similar concerns when they balked at the idea of assassinating Hitler outright as it may further inspire the Nazis to press on with their cause, and that someone else just as evil e.g. Heinrich Himmler could've taken Hitler's place anyway, should Hitler be assassinated.
• One of the tenets of Neo-Liberalism is that society should not persecute anyone for their beliefs, no matter how twisted the latter may be. The practical hope behind this mindset is that fringe movements will fade away when they have no martyrs to rally behind.
• During The French Revolution, Charlotte Corday assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, a member of the radical Jacobin faction that had a leading role in the Reign of Terror, hoping his death would stop the killings and bring peace. After she was caught and executed for the deed, killing him had the opposite effect; the Jacobins treated Jean-Paul as a martyr, and the killings intensified.
• In May of 1431, the English illegally rigged Joan of Arc's trial to ensure she was executed, as she had already cost the English dearly, lifting the siege of Orleans, destroying their army in the battle of Patay, and coronating the Dauphin as Charles VII of France. However, executing the woman who had saved all of France in a clearly rigged trial merely wound up turning what had ordinarily been a war of succession into a war of liberation against a foreign occupier. The French peasantry flocked to the banner, Charles VII repeatedly tried to get Joan acquitted, and the English would ultimately suffer shocking disaster after disaster, not only losing nearly all their lands on the continent (the Pale of Calais famously being one of the few territories they kept) but also creating conditions for the Civil War that is the Wars of the Roses. Historians widely agree that executing Joan was the worst mistake the English made.
• The 1415 execution of the popular Czech religious dissenter Jan Hus for heresy led to the outbreak of the Hussite Wars, in which the armed forces of his followers repeatedly beat the armies sent to pacify them. Ultimately, Czechia was the first country in Western-to-Central Europe to (at least partially) split from the universal hegemony of the Roman Catholic church, paving the way for the rest of the Reformation. And to this day, some non-Roman Catholic churches consider Hus a saint.
• After more than 3 centuries of carefully assimilating and colonizing the Philippines, the Spanish Colonial Government chose to execute a Filipino writer by the name of Jose Rizal for crimes of sedition due to the content of his novels Noli Me Tangere (1887) and its sequel El Filibusterismo (1891), which were narratives entailing a man who wanted revenge against the Spaniard colonists. His execution would incite rebellion and liberation movements that would lead to the Philippine revolution that caused the eventual armistice and coalition that would endeavor to emancipate the country.
• Napoléon Bonaparte was exiled after his defeat rather than executed because the monarchies of Europe knew that despite his losses near the end of The Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon was still incredibly popular not only in France but in the rest of Europe where revolutionary sentiments still ran high. If they killed him, his popularity would skyrocket, resulting in revolutionaries and anti-monarchists continuing their rebellious campaigns and potentially succeeding in overthrowing more monarchs. Instead, they chose to exile him to an island far away from Europe, in the hopes that his influence and popularity would waver and diminish over time. Their plan ended up failing regardless, as Napoleon's popularity continued, thanks in part to writing his own memoirs and whatnot, and despite their best efforts, revolutionary ideals and underground rebel groups would continue to rise and cause problems for the remainder of the 19th Century.
• The "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia was supposed to be a victory for white supremacists and the alt-right. While much of the nation was distracted by talks about nuclear warfare between the U.S and North Korea and investigations into Russian election hacking, this could have been an easy first amendment victory for keeping a statue of Civil War general Robert E. Lee up, and at worst a minor fracas similar to the recent brawls at UC Berkeley. Unfortunately, at around 1:45 PM that afternoon, one of the alt-rightists, 20-year-old James Alex Fields of Ohio, drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. Heyer quickly became a martyr for both anti-Nazism and the anti-Trump movement as a whole, while the alt-right was badly damaged by the incident, with many of its members being kicked off the internet and getting fired from their jobs; not helping was their picking the worst possible way to respond (by taking reports of Heyer suffering chest injuries and trying to claim she actually died of an obesity-related heart attack, which just made them look like they were posthumously fat-shaming her on top of everything else). Trump's response was widely condemned, with him getting Bush-after-Katrina level polling on it and several people resigning in protest. To cap it all off, the anti-Confederate commemoration movement that the alt-right was trying to oppose got new life breathed into it. An attempt to hold a second "Unite the Right" rally in 2018 in Washington DC was an overwhelming failure, as only 30 alt-rightists showed up, and were drowned out by thousands of counterprotesters.
  Susan Bro (Heyer's mother): They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her.
• 1916 saw Irish rebel forces launch the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection against British rule. The Irish public was largely not supportive of the rebels at first, but when several rebel leaders were quickly executed after a series of controversial court-martials that Crown law officers later deemed illegal, the Irish grew increasingly sympathetic to the rebels and hostile towards the British. The resulting change in public opinion led to the victory of Sinn Féin in the 1918 Irish elections, a war of independence and civil war, and Ireland's independence shortly thereafter.
• During the Glorious Revolution, James II was allowed to escape captivity by William, Prince of Orange (the future William III), on December 23rd, 1688. James fled to France, where he was received by his cousin, King Louis XIV.

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