Basic Trope: Killing someone for them to escape a Fate Worse than Death.
- Straight: Alice has suffered a terrible illness ever since the day she was born. When she reaches a point where the pain and misery it inflicts on her is beyond unbearable, her best friend Bob kills her off to spare her from more suffering.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice wants to die to end the pain caused by a paper cut. Bob kills her.
- Bob kills most of his friends to end their suffering.
- A race of aliens see that the Crapsack World is polluted and corrupted beyond repair and decide to blow it up just to put the natives out of their misery.
- Bob, a Well-Intentioned Extremist, believes that life itself is a Fate Worse than Death for everybody still alive, and that's the reason he wants to kill them all.
- Downplayed: Alice is going to die anyway, but Bob quickly shoots her in the head to keep her from suffering a much slower and more painful death.
- Justified:
- Alice's suffering is so severe that she has no more desire to live. While reluctant about killing her, Bob understands how she feels.
- Continued from Exaggerated #4; Bob believes in Negative Utilitarianism.
- Inverted:
- Bob plans to murder Alice, but instead lets her live so she can suffer a Fate Worse than Death.
- Alice ends her own suffering by killing herself.
- Subverted:
- Alice asks Bob to kill her. Bob tells her that violence is against his religion.
- Alice asks Bob to kill her. Bob manages to find a way to end her suffering without killing her.
- Double Subverted: Charles kills Alice instead.
- Parodied: Alice has a horrible illness that causes all nearby sharp objects to fly towards her at mach speeds. Bob brings a chainsaw to finish her off.
- Zig Zagged: Everyone backs down from, is unable to, or botches the killing, drawing out the death a very long and painful time. Maybe throw in distractions and a failed suicide.
- Averted:
- All murders are for reasons other than mercy.
- No character is murdered.
- Enforced: "We need to show that Bob is a very faithful friend to Alice. Let's have him kill her to end her suffering."
- Lampshaded: "Yes, I killed Alice. But only because she was miserable."
- Invoked:
- Bob knows that Alice is suffering, and decides to do her a favor by killing her.
- Alice gives Bob instructions to kill her if her suffering becomes too extreme.
- Exploited:
- Bob wants Alice dead and he finds her horribly wounded, he takes her out just before she can give him away. While it may have been a mercy, he did the deed for the wrong reasons.
- Same thing, but a villain leaves Alice horribly wounded and expects Bob to finish the job as a mercy playing as The Chessmaster.
- Defied: Bob refuses to kill Alice because he stands against the act of killing someone.
- Discussed: "You insulted my mother? I'm going to kill you, Alice!" "Thank you very much. I want to die."
- Conversed: "Those horror movies are silly. Like we would willingly let ourselves be shot because we were bitten. How hammy."
- Implied: Alice is depressed for several episodes, and then dies. The cause of her death is never mentioned, but Bob's guilt implies that he killed her.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob didn't just kill Alice because she was miserable, he killed her because she was making him miserable with her suffering and mood swings.
- Immediately after killing Alice, Bob is rescued by a group that would have been able to treat Alice if he had simply refrained from taking drastic action. As a result, Bob suffers from the guilt of killing his loved one for the rest of his life.
- Merciful or not, Bob still broke the law by killing Alice and is put on trial for murder.
- Reconstructed:
- In the end, Alice is grateful for what happened and wants Bob to move on. Bob's good intentions are highlighted and magnified while his bad intentions were never as big a factor as he feared.
- Bob is tried for murder, but the jury refuses to convict him since Alice was clearly gonna die anyway
- Played For Laughs: Some time after the fact, Alice's ghost visits Bob and thanks him for ending her misery.
- Played For Drama:
- The wound and the mercy kill are so sudden that literally none of the characters saw it coming. It takes a good while before someone snaps out of it long enough to work up the courage to pull the trigger. All the while, Alice is gasping in horrible pain on the ground as her companions watch her in horror, anger, and sadness.
- Alice's loved ones are horrified when they find out that Bob killed her, and he has difficulty explaining that he only killed her because she was suffering.
- Played For Horror: The idea of some injury being so painful that killing Bob, especially in a brutal fashion like blowing his brains out, is actually a good thing is supposed to be horrifying. Hence why many people who do this usually need to be talked into it In-Universe.
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