Warning: Often serves as a Death Trope, and frequently involves spoilers.
Times where villains aim to eliminate some no-longer necessary minions or other loose ends in Animated Films.
- Aladdin: After Aladdin gives the Genie's lamp to a disguised Jafar, he reaches up for Jafar to help pull him out of the collapsing Cave of Wonders. Instead, Jafar grabs him by the wrist and, when a panicking Aladdin asks what he's doing, Jafar says, "Giving you your reward! Your eternal reward!" and pulls out a dagger to kill him. It backfires, though—Abu bites Jafar to save Aladdin, causing both of them to fall back down into the cave instead of being stabbed to death. They're apparently eliminated as far as Jafar is concerned, but it turns out that Abu has swiped the lamp, leaving him with nothing.
- Rourke does this to Helga in Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Similarly to the situation in The Great Mouse Detective, they're elevating on an aircraft, their evil scheme almost succeeded, but the aircraft is too heavily loaded to ascend. Rourke throws Helga overboard, but she manages to live for another few seconds and shoots Rourke's zeppelin.
- Batman Unlimited: Mechs Vs. Mutants sees the Penguin try to invoke this on Freeze after the latter creates a serum that can turn Killer Croc, Chemo, Bane, and Clayface into monsters and they freeze over Gotham, though Freeze survives and later helps the heroes.
- Batman: Under the Red Hood has the Joker do this to Black Mask — who hires him to kill the Red Hood. In order to get Hood's attention, he ties up the mobsters of Gotham, both the ones that work for Hood and Black Mask himself, and set them all on fire. Luckily Batman shows up this time. Not so luckily, the Arkham workers who helped Black Mask break Joker out promptly and mysteriously die while in custody.
- Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: after Jordan Pryce helps the Jokerz with their thefts, the Jokerz inform him that he's become a loose end. And loose ends should be tied up...
- A non-fatal version is discussed in Cars. When Lightning McQueen discovers that Doc Hudson was a star in the championship racing scene decades before, Doc brushes it off as a chapter in his life he wants to forget. When Lighting calls him out on quiting in his prime, Doc responds that following a devastating crash, he missed several seasons recovering, when he was ready to return, his sponsors told him to get lost, since they had hired a new racer that brought in the crowds.
- In Cars 3 the racers that McQueen had become accostumed to face on the racing track are all fired and replaced by newer, faster, models, and after McQueen's failed attempt at outperforming the new racers ends in a crash, he too is stripped of his endorsement deals.
- In Despicable Me, a downplayed version occurs where Gru was originally going to leave the girls at an amusement park after they unknowingly helped him steal the Shrink Ray from Vector. After enjoying the day with them, he changes his mind.
- Prince Hans to Anna in Frozen. True, it's Murder by Inaction as she's very sick and he simply chooses to leave her to die, and true he probably knew what she was asking of him would never have worked anyway... but you can see the moment that this trope occurs to him, whereupon he gives her a Break Them by Talking treatment to speed up her decline that's very much this trope.
- The Great Mouse Detective: Professor Ratigan kicks his minion Fidget into the Thames because the aircraft they're flying is too heavy. While falling, Fidget screams about his inability to fly or swim. Kick the Dog, indeed. Though a Disney Adventures comic reveals Fidget survived and pulled a Heel–Face Turn.
- Judge Frollo ordered Captain Phoebus killed in The Hunchback of Notre Dame because Phoebus refused to burn down an innocent family's house — with the family still inside. Doubles as You Have Failed Me. He is saved by Esmeralda, who Frollo is doing this whole thing to try to find.
- In Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, Zoom hires the Rogues to capture Flash. Once they do, Zoom reveals he planted bombs on them all. Only the Justice League's intervention saves them.
- Cappucino does this to Vagan in Killer Bean Forever by firing him. It doesn't end well for him.
- In The LEGO Movie, Lord Business demonstrates how even more evil he is by leaving his lieutenant Bad Cop to die in the Think Tank with the Master Builders after he's set it to self-destruct, because now that his plan's achieving its completion, why would he need him anymore?
- Lucky Luke: Ballad of the Daltons: The Daltons plan to kill Lucky Luke once they no longer need him to collect Henry Dalton's estate. He's also betraying them all along, but they don't know that until the end.
- DOR-15 or "Doris" pulls it on the Bowler Hat Guy in the alternate future climax of Meet the Robinsons.
- Minions: The Rise of Gru: The beginning of the film sees Wild Knuckles steal the Zodiac Stone for his team, the Vicious Six. However, his team than betrays him as they feel he's too old as a leader and let him fall to his death. He later turns out to be Not Quite Dead.
- My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): The Storm King reveals to Tempest Shadow that he only used her, and attempts to blast her away with his new powers after doing so. Justified to some degree, as Tempest wasn't exactly the most trustworthy of individuals and he'd already had one number 2 stab him in the back who was seemingly more trustworthy than she was.
- Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure: King Koo Koo threatens to turn Raggedy Ann and Andy into robotic "idiots" like the rest of his court once they can no longer make him laugh anymore. This implies that all of the "idiots" used to be sentient too, and were transformed when they couldn't make Koo Koo laugh anymore either.
- Backfires in Rango when the mayor attempts to dispose of Rattlesnake Jake, but his gun is empty.
- Medusa tries to pull this on Snoops in The Rescuers. It doesn't work out.
- In The Rescuers Down Under, McLeach tries to do this to Cody by feeding him to crocodiles.
- Steven Universe: The Movie: Spinel thinks this is the case when she sees Steven in possession of her Rejuvenator. This, combined with his poor choice of words when inviting her to start a new life on Earth, convinces her that he only befriended her so she can spare the planet and then use the Rejuvinator to reset her.Spinel: Why do you... have that?
Steven: I-I was just carrying it! I didn't have anywhere else to put it!
Spinel: "We can just forget this ever happened." You mean I can just forget this ever happened! [laughs] Wo-o-o-o-ow! What a plan! I turn off the Injector, and then the moment my back is turned — BAM! PRESTO! CHANGE-O! — PROBLEM SOLVED! Well, think again! You're not getting rid of me that easy! - In Turning Red, Ming believes the character Siu-Jyu in the Jade Palace Diaries to be planning this.Ming: She'll probably stab him on their wedding night.
