Basic Trope: A villain gets rid of minions when they're not useful anymore.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz kills Lord Bad after Lord Bad finished carrying out an order.
- Exaggerated:
- Everyone who works for Emperor Evulz will be killed after completing a task, even the janitors who clean the secret hideout.
- Emperor Evulz is a necromancer who kills his minions when he no longer has use for them, then makes them into zombies if he changes his mind later.
- Emperor Evulz's subordinates are of the Hive Mind type, their altered physiology prevents them from opposing him. He kills them when he has no use for them, even if they carry out all of his orders flawlessly and without complaints, and brings them back to life later if he needs them again.
- Downplayed:
- You Have Failed Me — Emperor Evulz kills Lord Bad, but only because he's become murderously exasperated after Bad's many, many failures.
- Emperor Evulz demotes or fires Lord Bad after he carries out an order.
- Emperor Evulz reassigns Lord Bad to a menial position.
- Emperor Evulz respects permanent members of his organization, but gets rid of people working for him on short term contracts especially if they betrayed their previous loyalties.
- Justified:
- Every minion still working for Emperor Evulz costs money; since he's that cheap, he decides to just get rid of minions when they're not useful anymore.
- The minions are so dangerous and/or depraved that Evulz kills them out of self-preservation or disgust.
- Evulz is fully aware that Lord Bad is planning to usurp him.
- Evulz is paranoid about his minions becoming a Spanner in the Works.
- Lord Bad was the only one other than Evulz who knew their plan's only weakness; he was killed to safeguard said secret.
- Evulz just can't resist screwing people over, even his own minions.
- Lord Bad is
a rebellious type who may be useful to Evulz during his rise to power, but a potential liability once Evulz becomes one of the authority figures that Lord Bad despises. - Evulz has fundamentally changed his plans or objectives in a way that Lord Bad would refuse to follow, thus making it better to get rid of him before getting started on the new plan.
- Lord Bad is a Death Seeker who cannot self-terminate. Evulz killing him is the reward.
- Bad Boss
- Inverted:
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You
- Every time Emperor Evulz needs a new minion for something, he arranges for one to be born and raised specifically to do that job.
- Emperor Evulz kills a minion and binds his ghost because he needs him to remain useful post-mortem.
- You Have Failed Me
- Emperor Evulz dies, but the minion remains and continues serving a new villain.
- The minion turns on Emperor Evulz.
- The minion wants to quit, but Emperor Evulz threatens to kill him if he leaves because he's still useful.
- Emperor Evulz rewards the minion for failing the mission.
- Subverted:
- Emperor Evulz's advisor recommends Evulz to kill Lord Bad now that he is not useful; Evulz states that he will find use for him.
- Emperor Evulz kills Lord Bad, and one of the mooks asks if Lord Bad had lost his usefulness: turns out Evulz killed Lord Bad for either incompetence or treachery.
- Emperor Evulz gives thought to killing Lord Bad once he has completed his task, but doesn't go through with it.
- Emperor Evulz kills Lord Bad, telling him to "serve me in the afterlife". Lord Bad then discovers that he is being sent to an even more powerful and prestigious job serving Evulz's true master, the God of the Underworld.
- After Lord Bad does Evulz's bidding, everyone expects Evulz to kill him. Evulz, however, sets up Lord Bad with a cushy retirement package to encourage good performance from other minions.
- Double Subverted:
- Except when Emperor Evulz comes back and kills Lord Bad.
- Emperor Evulz sends Lord Bad on another mission; after that, he kills him.
- Emperor Evulz sends his underling on another mission... One which he expects Lord Bad won't be coming back from.
- Emperor Evulz was lying/changes his mind and has Lord Bad killed.
- After setting up Lord Bad's retirement, Evulz arranges for him to suffer an "accident" and reclaims that retirement package.
- While Evulz still has use for Lord Bad, Drake kills him because he has his own plans. Plans that Lord Bad would get in the way of.
- Parodied:
- Emperor Evulz fires Lord Bad after doing an order for him: the latter likes it because he never really liked working for the former; Lord Bad even gives Emperor Evulz a box of chocolates and some flowers.
- Evulz orders his assistant to get him coffee; once he has it, he shoots the assistant.
- Zig Zagged:
- Emperor Evulz fires Lord Bad after doing an order for him. Lord Bad comes back, however, and Emperor Evulz reluctantly hires him again. Then Emperor Evulz fires Lord Bad again after doing an order for him. Repeat over and over again.
- Emperor Evulz sends Lord Bad on a suicide mission once he has no more use for him; once Lord Bad survives that, however, Evulz is genuinely impressed and decides to keep him around.
- Averted: Evulz just rewards Bad for a job well done, and then fires him once he doesn't have a use anymore.
- Enforced:
- The writer received large amounts of fanmail wishing Lord Bad would be killed off for being relentlessly annoying.
- "What better way to show how ruthless Evulz is when he does something as cold as killing his minions once they've served their purpose?"
- The writer finishes their first draft and realizes they forgot about Lord Bad after he finished carrying out Evulz's orders. Not wanting to give Lord Bad a Karma Houdini, the writer opts to simply have Evulz shoot him.
- Lampshaded: "Why do you want to kill me? You just invited me to a top secret meeting yesterday!"
- Invoked: Sergeant Worse hates Lord Bad, so he lies to Evulz and tells him that Bad is planning a betrayal, provoking Evulz to kill Bad after he finishes a job.
- Exploited:
- Sergeant Worse hears of Lord Bad's death and takes the opportunity to voluntarily promote himself to the empty spot Lord Bad left behind.
- A pragmatically villainous rival emperor invades Evulz's domain and convinces many of Evulz's minions to desert their posts because "He will just kill you after the war is over anyways".
- Defied:
- "You seriously thought I was going to kill Lord Bad? After he just completed that mission for me? I honestly don't know which offends me more, you thinking I'd be that ungrateful or you thinking I'd be that paranoid."
- Lord Bad sees the betrayal coming and kills Evulz first.
- Lord Bad does a background check on one of the minions assigned to help him and realizes they're a world class assassin. This causes Lord Bad to reveal all he knows to the heroes in exchange for protection.
- Lord Bad realizes that Emperor Evulz plans to have him killed him so the more competent Duke Vile can take his position as lieutenant. In response, Bad has Vile and every other potential candidate discreetly assassinated, deliberately making himself the only available lieutenant Emepror Evulz can rely upon in order to force Evulz to spare him.
- Discussed: "Of course he's not going to kill you. Why do you think he would do that after he invited you to that top secret meeting yesterday?"
- Conversed: "So I heard Emperor Evulz was killing off some of his minions straight after their missions." "Oh, I always wondered where that extra life insurance money was coming from..."
- Deconstructed:
- Four words: Lonely at the Top. Also two more, Mook Depletion.
- Word gets out about this little habit, and Evulz's minions stop trusting him. Some even begin to conspire against him and/or help the heroes defeat him. After all, what’s the point of working under a death threat if you’re just going to get killed anyway? For doing what you were supposed to do no less?
- Lord Bad is no pushover; he succeeded in his initial work for a reason after all. The Emperor either uses up valuable manpower and resources in the process of killing Bad, or Bad escapes and swears revenge.
- Later on, another situation comes up in which Lord Bad's skills would be very helpful. But he's dead now. Oops.
- Evulz's minions all start trying to get Vetinari Job Security in order to never have their usefulness end. Nobody will allow their personal skills/resources/whatever to be replicated, which encourages infighting and makes everything Evulz does a Keystone Army. Alice is able to cripple Evulz by targeting these "essential" minions, who are easier to get to and will take a large part of the empire's warmaking capacity with them when they die.
- Reconstructed:
- Emperor Evulz is not only willing to dispose of his minions as soon as they aren't useful, he's seems overly eager to do so; it's the only time we see him smile. It turns out the position of Evil Overlord is a matter of You Kill It, You Bought It, and he's rebelling against his appointment by killing off his minions as much as he can; Hence, having his minions rebel against him or be too weak to conquer the world is to his benefit.
- Emperor Evulz doesn't kill off his minions directly. Rather, he cuts off loose ends through UriahGambits or carefully-crafted infighting. The targets never realise what's going on until it's too late. As a result, his (surviving) minions remain loyal to the end as they never realise this trope is in play.
- Played For Drama: Emperor Evulz turns Bob into a Tortured Monster and forces him to kill his family and friends; Bob returns to Evulz asking if "he is done" and when Evulz points a weapon at him Bob sighs in relief glad that his miserable existence is finally over.
- Implied: After Lord Bad has finished his mission, there is a scene where Evulz is hosting a meeting. Strangely, Lord Bad is not present.
I am done with you, so go to You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, and you will find an... explosive reward.
