Basic Trope: A villain makes it look as if they intend to kill a subordinate who disappointed them, but instead they kill a different subordinate.
- Straight: Lord Vile, The Dragon to Big Bad Emperor Evulz, failed to defeat the hero. Evulz draws a gun and shoots Vile’s right-hand man, warning Vile not to fail him again.
- Exaggerated: After Vile’s failure, Evulz kills every one of his subordinates except for Vile.
- Downplayed: Two of Evulz’s subordinates failed an important task and both are equally at fault, but Evulz only shoots one of them, believing the other will work all the harder to avoid failing him again.
- Justified:
- Lord Vile has valuable skills that are difficult to replace, and Evulz doesn’t think killing him is worth losing those skills yet. However, if he continues to fail, it will be, so Evulz needs to motivate him to succeed.
- Lord Vile is Evulz’s Only Friend, and Evulz doesn’t want to kill him, but he feels the need to kill someone for the failure.
- Lord Vile’s right-hand man was a close friend of his, and Evulz killed him because he knew that would be more painful to Vile than anything he could do to Vile himself.
- Evulz knew that Vile's right-hand man was attempting an indirect Klingon Promotion and needed him to believe he was safe enough to not need to keep his guard up, in order to make an example out of him.
- Inverted: Lord Vile failed solely because of the incompetence of his minions, but Evulz kills him anyway because as their leader, “Everything is your fault.”
- Subverted:
- Evulz threatens Vile, then shoots his right-hand man. However, he then reveals that he knew the right-hand man was actually responsible for the mission’s failure.
- Evulz points his gun at Vile’s right-hand man, but then shoots Vile and promotes the right-hand man to Vile’s position, with a warning to make sure he doesn’t make the same mistakes his predecessor did.
- Double Subverted:
- Evulz goes on to warn Vile that his right-hand man’s incompetence speaks ill of Vile’s ability to command, and that the next time one of his subordinates displays a similar level of incompetence, Vile will pay the price alongside his subordinate.
- Averted:
- Evulz simply insults his subordinates when they fail and doesn’t try to kill anyone.
- Evulz is very particular about only punishing subordinates who actually fail.
- Enforced: "We need to show that Emperor Evulz doesn't tolerate failure, but we can't kill off Lord Vile yet." "Eh, just have him kill one of Lord Vile's minions."
- Exploited: Lord Vile knows Evulz can't or won't kill him, so he puts no effort into his job when he's assigned to work with someone he doesn't like, hoping Evulz will kill them if they fail.
- Defied: "You think I killed that guy for your failure? No, he was embezzling money from me. I killed him for that."
- Deconstructed: Evulz's tendency to kill his minions not just for their failure but for other people's as well makes it hard for him to find loyal subordinates. Very few people are willing to join up with him, and the underlings he already has are making plans to overthrow him before he decides to kill them.
