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 Comic Books.
- Arawn: The Black Cauldron is constantly trying to pull this on its current owner, seducing a new one and then enticing them to feed it their predecessor's body and soul. Defied in the case of Owen after the Cauldron convinces him to resurrect Arawn as its new vessel: the Cauldron immediately tries to eat him but Arawn's loyalty to his friend forces the Cauldron to back down.
- Astro City: Discussed in "A Little Knowledge", when a small-time crook discovers the secret identity of local crimefighter Jack-In-The-Box. He considers getting rich by selling the information to a local crime lord, then realizes that his life could be forfeit once the deal is complete.
- The Avengers: In Operation: Galactic Storm, the Shi'ar Imperial Guard abduct Rick Jones so they can find Mar-Vell's grave site. Once they've got that info, he's useless to them, so they don't figure he's worth protecting when their plan unleashes a Kree Sentry on them. Fortunately, the Avengers save Rick.
- Subverted in Batman. After interrogating a hapless security guard, Killer Croc declares he doesn't need him anymore... and thanks him before walking off.
- In Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham, Yib-Nogeroth turned Freeze into a monster so that it could provide a fragment of its essence so that Ra's al Ghul could unleash Iou-Sotha into the world. When Ra's al Ghul takes the essence, Freeze melts into a puddle.
- Beast Wars: Uprising:
- The Resistance tries to do this to both Cheetor and Preditron. They always intended to kill the latter (the Tripredacus Council asked for his death in exchange for their allegiance, and the Resistance saw them as more useful in the long term), while the former starts openly criticizing the Resistance leadership for their amorality so much that they decide he'll be more useful as a martyr.
- In the Grand Finale, Galva Convoy has the Vehicons kill the whole Builder Assembly the second he's gotten everything he needs from them; he's secretly an Omnicidal Maniac, so he was always planning to kill them anyways by the end (though this is because he had been influenced and manipulated by the essence of the Destron leader Lord Imperious Delirious).
- A major event in the backstory is the Targetmaster Extirpation, where the Builders banished the Targetmasters to a colony world since the war was over and their powers made them a danger to the peace. By "banished to a colony world", we mean they led the Targetmasters to said colony, then shot them all to death and buried them in shallow graves. Only a tiny few escaped alive.
- Black Moon Chronicles: When The End of the World as We Know It comes knocking, the dragons get rid of all their dragon knight servants/partners/protectors rather spectacularly before getting the hell out of Dodge through the same portal as the humans.
- Blake and Mortimer: Han-Dié helps with the kidnapping of Mortimer and is himself captured to prevent any leaks. Xi-Li orders Han-Dié to translate the scrolls from Sho's diary. It's strongly implied that Xi-Li will dispose of him after his work is finished.
- Cartoon Network Super Secret Crisis War: As the Johnny Bravo one-shot shows, Aku is planning to kill his comrades once they've served their purpose. Later one-shots show that the other villains plan to do this as well.
- Chlorophylle: Anthracite kills his mooks Escalope and Fricandeau so he can pass himself off as a hero. He also gets the mooks who helped him bring two predators into Coquefredouille blown up with a bomb so they can't talk.
- In an old comic called The Comet, the title character may have been the Trope Namer when he shoots one gang member to death
:Comet: Bud, you've outlived your usefulness. - In Conqueror of the Barren Earth, this seems to be at least part of Jinal's motivation for killing Zhengla: once they have succeeded in conquering the world together, she does not need him anymore and decides that she would prefer to rule alone. Of course, she was also motivated by the desire for revenge. This is an unusual example, in that it is the hero of the story doing this.
- In Crisis on Infinite Earths, Brainiac and Lex Luthor are assembling an army of supervillains. Alexei Luthor, the Earth 2 counterpart of Lex Luthor, demands to know why Lex should be in command given he is just as smart. Brainiac responds that Alexei is correct and that the venture does not require two Luthors, then promptly vaporizes Alexei.
- Djinn opens with this trope when the Sultan orders his favorite harem girl to get rid of her predecessor, saying that "her touch holds no more mystery for him". She does as he ordered, but also murders the previous favorite's little daughter which disturbs the Sultan.
- G.I. Joe (IDW): Cobra Commander eventually decides that Xamot has outlived his usefulness and orders one of his more loyal henchmen to shoot him. Unfortunately for the Commander, the henchman in question is Chuckles, a G.I. Joe spy who has not pulled a Face–Heel Turn like the Commander thinks and has, in fact, been waiting for an excuse to blow the Commander’s head off. He figures this is as good an excuse as any. Cue Cobra Commander's head getting blown off.
- Green Lantern: The Star Sapphire gem once possessed a girl named Krystal so it could have a temporary body while it searched for its preferred host, Carol Ferris. It breaks into Carol's jet, Body Surfs into Carol, mocks Krystal as an inferior specimen unworthy of Hal Jordan's love, then flies away. Sadly, the confused, naked girl barely has enough time to ask what is going on before the jet crashes.
- In the comic of The Incredibles, this is what happens to Underminer when he objects to Xerek using him and the Incredibles-decorated mecha as a punching bag in a large scheme to discredit the supers.
- Batman:
- The Joker often does this with his henchmen after he feels they have fulfilled their purpose. Or even if they haven't, really.
- Joker also repeatedly tries to do this to Harley Quinn — in part because he does have feelings for her and hates having those feelings. He regularly fails and she regularly comes back to him, and as time went on he stopped doing it... so often.
- In Death of the Family, The Joker reveals that he has done this to a long chain of Harley Quinns before the present one. He tries to do the same to her. However, she subverts it by escaping him and letting herself be put in prison.
- He also does this often to allies, teammates and partners he doesn't particularly like — adaptations have made this a character trait: after getting what he wanted he tends to screw over the poor fools who thought it would be a good idea to work with him. Or are merely desperate enough to do so.
- Jonah Hex: In #10 of the original series, el Papagayo has his men transport the stolen gold across a rickety rope bridge. When they have carried the majority of of it across, he cuts the bridge down while they are on it so he will not have to share the gold.
- Judge Dredd: Standard operating procedure for the Dark Judges. Since there are only four of them, they are fond of recruiting the regular Judge force to assist them in their mission to wipe out all life. Of course, this only means the Judges have bought themselves a temporary reprieve...Judge Fire: Slaves should not turn on their masters!
- In Jupiter's Legacy, when it becomes clear that Brandon is spiralling out of his control, Walter makes plans to eliminate him.
- In Les Légendaires, the Shaki warns General Rasga about this concerning his alliance with Darkhell. His warning almost immediately proves correct when Darkhell indeed betrays Rasga two pages later:General Rasga: Darkhell, what are you doing? We are allies!
Darkhell: You should have listened the warrior Shaki... I have no ally. Just tools I throw out when they are of no more use to me. - Maus: Vladek notes that in Auschwitz he saw the Polish smugglers who ratted him and Anja out to the Nazis once more. The smugglers had eventually been deported to the death camp as well, because the Nazis had no use for them anymore. He never saw them again.
- Once the Mane Six reach her castle in issue #4 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW), Queen Chrysalis decides she doesn't need to keep the CMC around anymore, mainly just to spare herself any more grief from their chattering. And no, she doesn't intend to just let them go either...
- Nemesis the Warlock: After he's overthrown, Torquemada is rescued by a group of die-hard Terminators. Torquemada decides to leave Earth for good, deeming humanity as a whole to have failed him, and drives his sword through his last follower because he had no more use for him.
- Robin (1993): When Strader Pharmaceuticals is having everyone that can implicate them in their illegal human experimentation killed the targets include low level employees and former employees who helped them find and target the lower class Gothamites the initial experimentation was meant to kill. These people knew they were targeting people for painful deaths, which makes it seem they shouldn't be too surprised by their own executions.
- Baked into the system for Scud the Disposable Assassin. Scuds are robot assassins purchased from vending machines; they're bought, pointed at a target, and when the target's dead they self-destruct. The Scud unit the series follows works out what's going to happen to him and instead incapacitates his target, leaving her on life support; the bulk of the series is the jobs he takes to pay the resulting hospital bills.
- Secret Six: Junior offers a $20 million bounty for the ultimate get out of jail free card (as well as the heads of the people hiding it). Junior's henchmen were shocked at the amount:Junior: Money is nothing. Card is only thing that matters. Plus, will kill whoever brings it to me. Substantial savings.
- In Sin City, Manute had a mole spying on the girls of Old Town for him. Once she gave him the information he needed, he ordered her killed. The mole does die, though not at the hands of the bad guys, but at the hands of Dwight and the girls of Old Town after they rescue their leader Gail, who the mole sold out.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): In Sonic Universe's "30 Years Later" storyline, King Shadow breaks Lien-Da's armband, causing her to fade into the time-line after she rescues him from stasis. This seems to be because she questioned releasing Tikhaos.
- Spider-Man: Roderick Kingsley kills Jason Macendale Jr., mostly because Jason gave the name Hobgoblin a bad rep and he was coming back to show everyone how it was done.
- Star Trek: Untold Voyages: In "Past Imperfect", Jahn kills the Starfleet officer who brought him to Starbase 11 in a shuttle after she determines that the Enterprise arrived several hours earlier. He no longer needs her as he has figured out how to work several controls and can use the autopilot for the rest.
- Star Wars: The twisted relationship between Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress and the warlord Osika Kirske who killed her parents and her Jedi Master. After becoming a powerful dark sider and conquering her war-torn planet, she killed most of the warlords but spared Kirske and locked him in the deepest part of her dungeons. When Obi-Wan and the ARC trooper Alpha escaped the prison, they encountered Kirske, who accompanied them and explained his relationship to Asajj. He added that the most likely reason that he was alive was that Ventress needed an archnemesis, otherwise she would have no one to hate. Unfortunately for Kirske, Obi-Wan had messed with Ventress enough by this point that he seemed to have taken Kirske's place as most hated enemy, and when the trio encountered her she beheaded the warlord without a second thought.
- Supergirl:
- In Starfire's Revenge, the titular villain's henchman Derek Ames succeeds at nullifying Supergirl's powers, but his boss has him shot anyway when she fears he will expose her operation.
- It happens at the end of Red Daughter of Krypton. After meeting Supergirl, Worldkiller-1 decides that he doesn't need its old host body anymore because the Kryptonian girl would make for a better container, and destroys its host.
- In Supergirl (1982), Supergirl faces down to a clone of super-villain Parasite programmed to self-destruct after carrying out his creator's goals.
- In The Unknown Supergirl, Lesla-Lar plans to kill Lex Luthor once he has helped her kill Superman.
- In The Killers of Krypton, Harry Hokum manages to capture Supergirl and take tissue samples for cloning. Then he wonders what he should do with her now she is not longer useful to him, since executing such a pretty girl would be a waste...Harry Hokum: Now, what do I do with you? Technically, your usefulness is over. And to simply execute you now would be a tragic waste of such a pretty frame...
- In The Hunt for Reactron, General Lane orders Reactron to work alongside Perseus Hazard's K-Squad to hunt Supergirl, Nightwing and Flamebird down, giving him secret instructions to kill Hazard and his men as soon as they have succeeded in capturing the Kryptonian trio.
- In The Girl with the X-Ray Mind, the Phantom Zone criminals kill Lesla-Lar off when they decide they don't need her anymore.
- Way of the World, villain Aftermath does not need Empress anymore after she has used her magic to put Supergirl under his control, so he orders Kara kill her.
- Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom: The titular villain ruthlessly kills Hadrok after her unlucky minion steals a Boom Tube for her.
- Supergirl (1984): After Nigel has helped her trap Ethan, Selena decides she does not need him anymore and uses a quick aging spell on him.
- Deconstructed in Superman story The K-Metal from Krypton. Aware that the map to a gold mine is hidden behind the "Hidden Gold" painting , arc critic Daryl Bronson makes a pact with crime lord "Rocks" Gordon to steal the painting in exchange for 50% of the mine's profits. As soon as his gang has stolen the picture, though, Gordon attempts to get Bronson killed. Nonetheless, Gordon's henchman fails and get Bronson enough mad to kill Gordon and his entire gang.
- Tintin's archnemesis, Roberto Rastapopoulos, shows his worst in Tintin: Flight 714. Along with his enemies/victims, he had plans to kill every one of his minions (with the possible exception of Allan, his dragon) before his master plan was through. He doesn't get to carry out said plans, though. Rastapopoulos reveals this under Truth Serum that's he's been accidentally injected with, even telling the doctor who invented the serum that he was also meant to be killed instead of being paid off. The alarmed doctor promptly does a Heel–Face Turn, aiding Tintin in his efforts.
- Transformers:
- In The Transformers (Marvel), Ratbat decided to indulge in some Evil Gloating about his plans to steal the power of The Underbase for himself. Unfortunately, he decided to do this right in front of Scorponok, who was co-leader of the Decepticons. Since Scorponok got the position because Asskicking Leads to Leadership while Ratbat had gotten it due to his skill with logistics, and the Decepticons were known for issues with disloyal members, Scorponok promptly blasted Ratbat into scrap metal.
- In The Transformers (IDW) Autocracy Megatron and Orion Pax join forces against Zeta Prime's oppressive rule. After Zeta Prime was shot by Megatron, he soon shoots Orion Pax, stating he has served his purpose.
- In The Transformers Megaseries, Decepticon Facsimiles are decommissioned once they’ve fulfilled their intended purpose. The Facsimiles themselves don’t seem to mind, and will go to great lengths to "self-decommission" if ordered to do so.
- Given a twist in The Transformers: Robots in Disguise; in the backstory, Onyx Prime killed his loyal henchman, Megatronus, not just because he outlived his usefulness, but also because Onyx was fulfilling a Stable Time Loop. “Onyx” is actually a time-displaced Shockwave, who manipulated history based on his own memories of how it all happened; Megatronus was recorded as dying that day, so he had to die to keep the timeline intact.Megatronus: Master... I did everything you asked. I followed your guidance for all these eons... And this is my reward...?
Onyx: You were never more than a means to an end. And as for your reward... Cybertron shall remember your name. After a fashion.
- The Ultimates (2002): Black Widow kills all the Chitauri guarding their solar-system-destroying bomb, except one that looks like the smart guy. He has to deactivate it. He openly refuses, preferring death to letting the Chitauri's enemies win. So Nat kill him too, and moves on to another plan.
- In the Vampirella story "... And be a Bride of Chaos" Dracula was going to feed on Pendragon. Fortunately, he was distracted.
- Warlock (1967): Thanos gives one of these to Adam Warlock's friend Pip right before he kills him.Pip: I thought we was pals!
Thanos: True, there was a time when my plans required that I be on good terms with Warlock. Which, in turn, required that I be civil with you. But now? Well, let's just say... things have changed. - Watchmen: The Big Bad does this to the people who helped him with various parts of his master plan, so they won't be able to piece together what really happened. If it helps, he feels really, really sorry about having to do it. Honest. Applies to the movie, too, though the elimination of certain story elements due to the Revised Ending also cuts an entire ocean liner's worth of people that died for the cause in the comic.
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): Paula mixes in a bit of Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves when she murders "Swipe" after he steals Wonder Woman's lasso for her. She's working for the Nazis only because they have her daughter captive, though her experiences have made her so nihilistic and fatalistic that she's started enjoying torturing people, whereas he happily sold out his county to the Nazis for a bit of cash.
- Wonder Woman (1987): Dr. Zeul, otherwise known as Giganta, tosses her assistant from the roof while trying to escape the authorities after they uploaded her mind, thereby fulfilling the reason she was working with them. The assistant was rescued by Wonder Girl (Cassie).
