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 Fan Works.
Crossovers
- In Child of the Storm, the alliance between Lucius Malfoy and Baron von Strucker comes to a sudden end when Malfoy decides Strucker is a liability and kills him (after drugging him and stealing the secrets of controlling the Winter Soldier), seizing control of HYDRA in the process.
- Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters: Post-Villainous Breakdown, Phobos starts plotting to eliminate all his minions once he succeeds in stealing the Heart of Meridian from Elyon. His first act after doing so is to transform the Whisperers into new Mooks and ordering them to kill the Guards. Literally the only exception to this is Roberta, since he can tell that her ambitions and I Fight for the Strongest Side! mentality mean that she'll stay loyal to him as the most powerful person around.
- Mare of Steel: Brainiac uses Steel Wing in order to gather intelligence on Rainbow Dash/Supermare, but when he decides that Steel Wing's too impulsive, he tips Princess Luna off to his actions and lets him get arrested (and also wipes all memory he has of Brainiac).
- Metal Gear: Green:
- Upon getting the desired results from Akira's research, he kills off Akira to prevent him from telling Madam President what he's really planning.
- When destroying the power plant that was used for dimensional exploration, he kills off Agent Matter, though by this point, it's very much more of a Mercy Kill.
- Upon completion of the genocide of Outer Heaven, Madam President intends to whack two of the warlords who mocked the failure of the heroes from the same organization that axed the Tyrant.
- Upon finding out both Luan Igwe and Razak Langa have pulled out of the fight against the MSF due to heavy losses, Madam President orders Techno to send assassins after the two.
- My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator: Upon giving Volcano the QAH, Volcano melts Samuel Abraham as his reward. When the Slayer finds Abraham's corpse, he views it as no big loss, given Abraham was a backstabbing asshole.
- The Night Unfurls:
- At the climax of the Feoh/Ur Arc, the moles Beasley and the Mortadella brothers are thrown under the bus immediately by the Black Dogs after Kyril successfully infiltrates the Arcturus estate.
- On the flip side, the good guys occasionally off captured mooks or thugs, who are obviously not associated with the heroes, after interrogating them for information to be used against the Black Dogs. For a couple examples, there's Hugh snapping a thug's neck after obtaining the whereabouts of the Gadsden Gang; Kyril leaving a man to bleed out after ripping the info needed out of his head; etc.
- The Pirate's Soldier: When the Kuramitsu family announces that Mihoshi is going to marry Heero Yuy to seal their alliance with the Jurai Empire, Misao mistakenly thinks she's been forced into it and decides to contact Kagato to stop the marriage by kidnapping Heero. It backfires horribly on him as, not only the marriage isn't called off, but his family has already launched an investigation and is close to find out he was involved. When he tries to get Kagato to bail him out, his response is to basically ditch him and leave him to his fate as he'd already fulfilled his end of the bargain. Their last exchange pretty much sums it up:Misao: You're betraying me, then?
Kagato: I've done not such thing, boy. Contrary to popular expressions, political intrigue is not a game; it is survival of the fittest. If you lack the resourcefulness to look out for yourself, then your value to me is limited at best. Good luck, Lord Misao. It looks like you're going to need it. - Tekka Dread: The Harvesters planned to do this with Tekkaman Saber and vice versa once Slade and the Nirvana are dealt with. Then the Harvesters' Paksis Pragma, which had been sentient the entire time, finally had enough power to give rise to Darkon, who then slaughters the Harvesters as they no longer suit his purposes. He only needs to revive the Radam as they are real fighters, not the organ hungry weaklings that he had been pretending to serve under.
- Voltes V Versus Voltron The Godaikin Wars (Voltes V/Voltron): Voltron was this, except they couldn't even fulfill their use to Paul the Imjad. He thinks they're buffoonish and is laughing when Voltes V tears them apart.
- or did it eat the little girl?: During the final trial, The Director makes very clear that they consider Tsumugi to have outlived their usefulness and attempts to paint them as The Scapegoat.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
- Blade of Demon Salvation: In canon, Muzan’s first shown human family is never seen again after Muzan sends them home, leaving their fates unclear. Here, we actually see Muzan subject them to this trope, taking them to the Infinity Castle after deciding they’re now a liability to him at this point and leaving them to be killed by a demon, though the deaths are mercifully not shown.
- Digimon Adventure 02: The Story We Never Told: This is part of the reason why Oikawa killed Ken. Arukenimon later realizes that this also applies to her and Mummymon, and starts plotting against their master in hopes of avoiding a similar fate. Ultimately, Oikawa forcefully fuses the pair into a monstrously deformed digimon, both to punish them for their plotting and to distract the Digidestined.
- Said almost verbatim by Evil!Alice to Arawn in the second sequel to Disney's War — A Crossover Story, titled The Final Adventure, after Arawn has let the heroes sneak into her bedroom to try to assassinate her.Evil!Alice: "While you’ve been ever so helpful to me, Arawn, so loyal, I’m afraid your usefulness has ended."
- The Lion King Adventures: Scar, having gone completely Ax-Crazy following the conquest of the Pride Lands, slaughters his hyena minions, figuring he doesn't need them anymore. This is what convinces his partner Hago to kill him in preemptive self-defense.
- In Dragon Ball Z: Dynasty, King Vegeta II had his mate executed immediately after his son was born.
- Epiphany: Once Sephiroth and Leslie decide Corneo is of no further use, they feed him to his own monster.
- A Brighter Dark: A rare (somewhat) heroic example. Unlike the original story, Garon gives his permission to Corrin to kill Hans in revenge for stabbing her friend, Lilith, in the back with his ax, stating that he no longer has need for him anymore.
- In Expelled-iarmus
, Snape manages to convince Lucius Malfoy, who in turn convinces Cornelius Fudge, to not only get Harry and Ron expelled for flying the Ford Anglia to Hogwarts and breaking the Statute of Secrecy, but to get them arrested. When Dumbledore finds out, he is furious and decides that Harry's presence at Hogwarts is more important than Snape's and changes the latter's memories to think that he had framed the two boys and then sics the aurors on him so that he'll be imprisoned instead of Harry and Ron. - In Harry Potter and the Last Chance, Harry invokes this trope as a threat to Rita Skeeter. At the Weighing of the Wands, he used his future knowledge to blackmail her into behaving in exchange for a few choice exclusives. But in February, she took revenge by crashing his first date for an interview. He tolerated it until their food arrived, but warned her afterward:Harry: Next time you try to hijack one of our dates, I shall become acutely disinterested in our little arrangement. As you pointed out: you are not the only reporter out there, so you'd better give me a reason to keep you around.
- Witching Hour: As we find out at the end of the story, after he was done interrogating Nick for information about the witchcraft superstitions that the kingdom believed in, as part of his plan to frame Gaz for being a witch, Zim murdered him and hid his remains somewhere nobody would ever find them.
- Ages of Shadow:
- After Brenner loses his duel to Trace, Jade/Yade Khan doesn't hesitate to step in and rip out his Sun Soul, leaving Brenner comatose. While there is certainly a bit of You Have Failed Me at work, it's mostly this trope — Brenner was needed to reconnect Jade with her Shadow Walkers, and to create both the Yade Khan game as a means of collecting soul energy and the technology to track down the other Sun Souls. With all that done, the presence of both the Walkers and Jade's pact with Alonso to act on the resources and information provided by Brenner leaves Brenner himself redundant and no longer needed.
- Just before the Final Battle, Jade disbands the Shadow Walkers, since she no longer needs servants on Earth if she's going to be free to roam it. To her credit, however, she gives them all a chance to try and waylay Trace and his friends, though really this just means reducing them to cannon fodder.
- In An Alternate Keitaro Urashima, Ryuichi runs headlong into this after failing to sabotage Keitaro and Miyabi's relationship. Word gets back to his boss and he loses his job, but he clings to the hope Granny Hina will help him out. When he finally gets a chance to tell her what's happened, however, she completely blows him off, letting him know she doesn't give a damn what happens to him now that he's no longer useful to her.
- For His Own Sake: Once Chisato gets what she wants out of Mutsumi, she decides that she's so annoyed by their naivete that she orders them to be killed as well.
- letmetellyouaboutmyfeels' MCU Rewrites: In Avengers: Civil War, Zemo kills the woman he had impersonate Wanda Maximoff to leave her body for the Avengers to find as part of his Taking You with Me gambit.
- Agent Carter: Phantom Pain: Its revealed in that the Soviet government decided to purge Leviathan. It's alluded that they grew far beyond their mandate for Stalin's liking, and their failure to steal Howard Stark's technology was the final nail in the coffin. Further, Fennhoff's work is already in NKVD hands, so they don't need him for further work.
- On the other side, Cassandra Romulus declares that the Council of Nine have served their purpose and her new vision of HYDRA doesn't require all of them, so she gasses them to death. She later states a similar sentiment for the Arena Club before blowing it up.
- In A Prize for Three Empires, Carol Danvers warns Iva Kann sooner or later her superiors will find a better soldier and get rid of her.Warbird: The Kree are very functionalistic. You're only good to them until they can get somebody better. Once they do, or they think they do, they'll see you as nothing but meat for the grinder. And somebody else will be using you as a hamburger.
- BURN THE WITCH!: Despite Lila's belief that she's irreplaceable, Hawkmoth decides that he has no further use for her after her true nature is exposed to all of Paris by Witch Hunter. After all, what good is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing whom everybody knows can't be trusted?
- In the CONSEQUENCES series, Hawk Moth typically abandons Lila after her exposure.
- MAMA BEAR has him actively aiming to kill her by sending several akumas her way. The first informs her that in Hawk Moth's own words, "You've outlived your usefulness, exposed yourself as a willing agent, and generally been a self-important, egotistical pain in the ass."
- Crumbling Down: After Lila has been exposed on live TV and is about to be arrested, Hawk Moth sends an akumatizing butterfly her way, knowing that she'll grab it. He does this not to give her any power or a chance to free herself, but solely so he can gloat about how he's discarding her now that she's no longer useful.
- The Karma of Lies has Lila pull a non-lethal variant on Adrien after Ladybug and Hawkmoth unmask each other and the latter is arrested. Realizing the delicacy of her position, she decides to cut her losses and get out while the getting's good, setting Adrien up as her fall-guy.
- Downplayed in Truth and Consequences by Hawk Moth's backers; having gotten what they need from him, they make no effort to help either side of the conflict. Although, they do briefly discuss killing him once he's been transformed into an Eldritch Abomination by the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous, though it's treated as nothing but a passing thought, and is rendered moot since Ladybug and Chat Noir kill him anyway.
- Weight Off Your Shoulder: After the new Ladybug voids Chloé's Karma Houdini Warranty by publicly reminding Paris of the full extent of Chloé’s crimes, Ms. Bustier offers her full support... only for Chloé to dismiss her efforts. While she sincerely thanks her for all the times she helped her deal with her classmates by making them apologize to her and forgive all her bullying, she's still "just a teacher" and doesn't have the resources Chloé needs to deal with her legal woes. This forces Ms. Bustier to realize how much she enabled a completely unapologetic Spoiled Brat.
- Cheat Code: Support Strategist: All For One takes Stain's Quirk, then declares that they're no longer useful to him and has them disposed of.
- Failure to Explode has a non-fatal example when Katsuki doesn't pass U.A.'s Entrance Exam. Since their plan to leech off his future fame and success is clearly a bust, the staff at Aldera Middle School stop ignoring his Barbaric Bullying. In fact, since Izuku made it in, and they all recognize just how screwed they'll be if he exposes the years of torment he suffered under their watch, they come down HARD on Katsuki, as his Karma Houdini Warranty completely expires.
- In the Peggy Sue work Flashback, Eri of all people intends to deal with any villains that they feel are worth the effort of redeeming or negotiating with in this fashion, ultimately stripping them of their Quirks before having them executed.
- In Viridian: The Green Guide, after multiple failures, culminating in the destruction of her entire hive, All For One decides that Queen Bee is no longer useful to him, and orders them killed.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- The Longingverse: As soon as Bloodwing becomes an Alicorn, he steals the energy of his minion, Black. He got better... In a manner of speaking...
- Loved and Lost:
- Prince Jewelius convinces Queen Chrysalis to join forces with him in order to take over Equestria on Princess Cadance and Shining Armor's wedding day. However, when he decides he has more to win by painting himself and Twilight Sparkle as the heroes who stopped the invaders, he betrays the Changelings by helping Twilight defeat and imprison them while turning everypony against the other heroes, becoming Equestria's king. He announces one week later that the Changelings will be harnessed as slaves, but Chrysalis (whom he mocks for believing that there was an Unholy Matrimony going on between them) will have to be "put down" for being far too dangerous.
- When Jewelius tells the corrupted Twilight's imprisoned loved ones that he'll marry her and father through her a powerful line of heirs, he offhandedly mentions that if he happens to discover an even more powerful unicorn mare, he'll likely stage an accident for Twilight. When he reveals his true colors to her, he gloats that excluding her, nearly all his pawns have outlived their usefulness to him.
- The Pony POV Series plays this interestingly in the Dark World, as Rancor/Disruption pulls this on her weapon, the Concept Killing Spear, destroying it as soon as it's fulfilled its purpose of allowing her to steal Destruction's power from Discord. And this is justified, since she's aware that the Spear could be used against her, so disposes of it as soon as she doesn't need it anymore. It was also later explained that the gods had been wanting to destroy the dang thing for thousands of years.
- The Powers of Harmony: Awareness of this trope and the fact that Cetus will probably enact it the moment she stops being useful is why Eclipse begins to plot against her.
- The Stars Ascendant has Luna call out Discord for being an idiot; his betrayal of Equestria was inevitable, but it was stupid of him to betray Equestria to someone who was going to pull this trope on him the moment he didn't need Discord's help anymore.
- Parodied and subverted in Tealove's Steamy Adventure. The Duchess tells Colt Skylark that he has failed her, and that the time has come to terminate him. Skylark, clearly familiar with this trope, checks to make sure he isn't standing on a trap door and looks around to see who's pointing a weapon at him. Instead, the Duchess hands him a stack of papers and explains that it's his notice of termination of employment, and now he just needs to sign the non-disclosure clause, the non-compete clause, etc etc.
- Echoes (Kagaseo):
- The Madara of Izunami's world attempted to dispose of her after finding a new apprentice that wasn't a woman. She made her displeasure with that decision quite clear.
- Ironically enough, Alpha was struck by this before suffering a Fate Worse than Death.
- Kage no Naruto takes this to an almost idiotic extreme. Naruto kills off several of his minions because they're no longer necessary. They're still very useful; just not necessary. Of course, given how his modus operandi seems to be For the Evulz, this is hardly surprising.
- Naru-Hina Chronicles: Evil Sasuke says this to Karin after she steps in front of Sasuke to prevent him from getting stabbed by his evil clone.
- Son of the Sannin:
- Danzo Shimura, of all people, is on the receiving end of this. For several arcs, he'd been leaking out to Akatsuki intel on the jinchuriki's whereabouts, undermining Konoha's efforts to retrieve them. Come Chapter 90, it's revealed that Obito Uchiha used Kotoamatsukami to implant the idea in Danzo's head, playing up on his personal ambitions to do the rest. However, just in case, he had implanted a mental trigger to activate full mind control on Danzo, and once he fulfilled his purpose (of retrieving one of Pain's Rinnegan eyes), Obito ordered him to commit suicide via Reverse Tetragram Sealing.
- Much like his canon counterpart, Orochimaru doesn't think twice about disposing of minions once they're no longer useful to him or if they become a liablity. This comes back to bite him hard when Hebiko ends up defecting over anger at him abandoning her brother, and her leaking intel about his whereabouts to the Allied Shinobi Forces directly leads to his death at the hands of Jiraiya and Tsunade.
- Space to Breathe: While the Mountain Daimyo Riku seems like a Reasonable Authority Figure at first, it eventually becomes clear that his willingness to aid Sakura and her team only goes so far, and he eventually requests that she assassinate the Fire Daimyo in order to secure a comfortable position for himself. Sakura consequently turns the tables and pulls this on him, working with Ginmaru to assassinate him and fake his slow decline.
- Team 7's Ascension: Komon says this word-for-word to Naruto after Naruto decides that he'll go rogue in order to save Kakashi.
- Advice and Trust: Shinji and Asuka — together with Rei — had won victory after victory against giant alien monsters. Still, when they disobeyed a direct order Commander Gendo fired them even though they had defeated the enemy, stating that he had no need of pilots that disobeyed his orders now that he had the dummy plug system to control the Evas.
- A Crown of Stars: Jinnai declared that Asuka and Shinji would be useless to him after the dummy plug system was ready and he would sell her into slavery.
- The Child of Love: Gendo planned to get Asuka killed after getting her to carry his scheme forward because he would have not use for her afterwards. In chapter 5:Gendo: Each Child has one use and only one. The Second will soon be useless when everything is finished.
Fuyutsuki: You mean... she'll be killed.
Gendo: You know she's the only one capable of giving birth. And that's one of the reasons she has been designated as the Second Child. Her death is only a detail. I'm sure she'll be proud of her role in humankind's evolution.
- The villains of Prophecies of the Morphing Grid dish these out as a matter of course. One particular instance is in the third story, where at what is otherwise a perfectly normal villain meeting, The Dragon, Dark Venom, who had been elected President of the United States and has more than a little of The Antichrist about him, suddenly and utterly nonchalantly executes two of the United Alliance of Evil's human collaborators, paramilitary leader Colonel Wyman and robber-baron Sal Muldoon. Even the other villains are shocked at Venom's brutality, but he just shrugs and explains that he's already nationalized the two men's respective organizations, rendering them loose ends.
- Cinderella And Prince Charming: Ironwood orders Cinder's execution after her interrogation, once they're sure they've gotten everything they can out of her. While he tries to dress it up as justice, it's blatantly obvious to everyone that it's more about disposing of a useless asset.
- The Soulmate Timeline: This is Kyubey's opinion on any Magical Girl that survives for too long. Ideally, in Kyubey's mind, no Magical Girl should be active for more than two or three years without turning into a Witch. Part of this is pragmatic, as the system requires a constant stream of Witches to be created, and partially this is for the sake of avoiding trouble, as on other planets large groups of long lived Magical Girls have gotten together and started to severely interfere with Incubator operations. The Earth is a very valuable source of energy for the Incubators, and they don't want it screwed with. Kyubey has found that Magical Girls who against all odds make it to six years tend to really start become problematic since they've likely lasted long enough to figure out the Awful Truth of the business and become rather hostile to him. The Magical Girls that Kyubey prefers to last longer are those who are good at getting other Magical Girls to contract, like Mami, who inspired many other girls to become Magical Girls who ultimately were unable to match her image as The Paragon and fell into despair over it, or Akasuki Suzembachi, whose been active for decades tricking girls into contracting to harvest them for Grief Seeds, which in turn provides Kyubey with a steady supply of energy.
- Deliver Us from Evil Series: In Mortality, Culverton Smith tortures Holmes with an inch of his life and gloats over the guy while he's dying. This, in turn, trips off Watson's protective instincts and really pisses him off. It doesn't help Smith that Watson most likely kills Smith with his medical skills.
- In What You Already Know: Lost City, after Kinsey attempts to have Daniel Jackson killed because he believes Daniel's new psychic abilities threaten his personal agenda, he is shot by an assassin hired by the Trust. A Trust operative is later shown reflecting that Kinsey's attempt to have Daniel killed in defiance of their orders proved to their organisation that Kinsey couldn't be trusted to follow their preferred agenda, as they felt that Daniel's abilities were currently useful in the continued war against the Goa'uld while Kinsey could be replaced eventually.
- Hellsister Trilogy: Satan Girl is worried about the possibility of Mordru obliterating her once her work is done. Hoping to avoid this scenario, she seduces him.She might have to watch out for him, as well. If she were viewed as a tool, he might intend to simply use her and destroy her once the job was finished. How could she guard against that?
- Thomas Abridged: The Malevolance kills all his followers after he’s been freed.
- Becoming the Mask: When the Changeling protagonist finds out Gunmar's plan to bring Eternal Night wasn't just a metaphor for trolls taking over the surface, he anticipates this because Changelings' immunity to sunlight is the main reason Gunmar keeps them around. This is one of the motivations for his Heel–Face Turn.
- Luminosity:
- After turning Pera, the Volturi cut away her bond with Brady via Chelsea's power and kill him, since allowing her to maintain a relationship to him would make her a less effective Super-Soldier, and he's not otherwise useful to them.
- When Caius first set out to Take Over the World, he and Athenodora started turning people more-or-less at random hoping they'd develop powers. Many of the ones who turned out not to be useful they simply killed.
- Nobledark Imperium: The ancient Mon-Keigh, viciously predatory ogre-like aliens whose name would remain as an Eldar insult for perceived barbarians, used to serve as the Old Ones' Unwitting Pawns as a sort of engineered trial by fire — the Old Ones would subtly steer them towards an inhabited planet, and judge the locals' worthiness for uplifting based on whether they survived the Mon-Keigh's visit. Over time, as the War in Heaven grew increasingly fierce, the Mon-Keigh grew increasingly difficult to control and the Old Ones' shifting priorities during the War in Heaven made the indirect manipulations that the Mon-Keigh had been central to less and less important. The final straw came in the form of the creation of the Krork, which made the older species entirely obsolete; the Old Ones' first test for their new creations was to set them on the Mon-Keigh, who were nearly entirely eradicated.
