You Have Outlived Your Usefulness / Live-Action Films

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 Live-Action Films.

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• In 30 Days of Night, "the Stranger" is a Quisling who sabotages every means of communication and transport in the town to allow the vampires to freely prey on the townsfolk, on the condition that they turn him into one of them once they're done. After slaughtering most of the townsfolk (bar the protagonists), the vampires find him locked up in the local sheriff's office. Of course, they refuse to uphold their end of the bargain. They also do this in a more sympathetic example to a young girl; they injure her and use her as bait to draw out other people. The plan fails, and they promptly dispose of her afterwards.
• In 30 Minutes or Less, Dwayne and Travis kidnap a pizza boy, strap a bomb to his chest, and threaten to blow him up unless he robs a bank. When he succeeds, Dwayne reveals that he never had any intention of letting him live, and attempts to detonate the bomb, but Travis stops him.
• In The Accountant (2016), this is one of two ways for a client of the titular Accountant to prompt him to pass a damning tip off to Director Ray King, his Friend on the Force in the IRS's enforcement division, FinCEN. The Accountant is quite eager to outlive his usefulness to criminal operations, and also has the martial skills to survive such attempts. The other way is their business being offensive to his autistic Blue-and-Orange Morality. The antagonist of the film, the Living Robotics CEO, manages to do both when he orders a hit on both the Accountant and people he considers important to him.
• Played in an interesting way in American Ultra. Yates is killed in part because he denies that his massively illegal operation to kill one former assassin on US territory, that has repeatedly failed and cost the CIA many good agents was at all, in any way, a bad idea, and that he intended to continue pushing for more attempts at this particular stupid idea if released. One of the few cases of a more or less "Good Guy" pulling this, due to the sheer incompetence, stupidity and malice displayed by the victim. Lasseter manages to avoid by pointing out that she hasn't outlived her usefulness, and is in fact still needed.
• In Angels & Demons, The Dragon is retired with prejudice after having dealt with or tried to kill, in the fourth case anyway the four cardinals. This is especially conspicuous after it was revealed his client institution was a long-term repeat customer.
  You know, when they call me, and they all call me, it is so important to them that I know what they ask is the Lord's will.
• Annie (2014):
  • A Lighter and Softer take on the trope. Guy shrugs off telling Hannigan that after the election, the "real parents" will just "dump her back in the system", but he isn't even certain that's true. Nobody actually says they're going to kill Annie, but once she leaves with her "real parents" and the truth comes out, it is treated as though she is in grave danger.
  • Also Guy does this to Hannigan by hiring the fake parents himself, and cutting Hannigan out of the deal, leading to her Heel–Face Turn.
• In Antigang, Waked uses his girlfriend to scope out the jewellery store. He then shoots her in the neack as he leaves the store after the robbery.
• The Avengers (1998). After Sir August's Weather-Control Machine is finished he murders the scientists who helped him build it.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Lex Luthor has Anatoli kill the key witness to the Nairomi incident, who Lex had threatened into lying to the Senate to frame Superman for a massacre in Africa. She's smart enough to realise what's happening after seeing Anatoli and some Mooks waiting at her house for her, and tries to avert this trope by confessing to June Finch what she's done, without success. Also, once Wallace Keefe and the Senate sub-committee headed by June Finch have done their job helping turn public opinion against the Man of Steel, Lex has them all killed in an explosion.
• At the end of Battle Royale, Shuya, Noriko and Shogo are the last three standing in the Deadly Game in which There Can Only Be One. Shogo then admits to the other two that he had been lying to their faces the entire time, that they were Unwitting Pawns for his chance to win, that his dead girlfriend didn't exist, and that he has no need for them anymore before shooting them both dead. Subverted; Shuya and Noriko agreed to fake their deaths as part of Shogo's plan to end the Battle Royale program.
• Blood Fest: When he decides he doesn't need them anymore, Walsh kills all the gamers remote-controlling the zombies by means of grenade. Later, when the situation is reaching his climax, he lets his subordinates get wiped out by the Hate Plague being used to finish off the survivors. And then he himself is killed by his partner Dr. Conway when the latter decides to end things and make him The Scapegoat.
• A rare heroic example happens in Blood Red Sky. Nadja kills Bastian, the hijacking crew's pilot and their last surviving member, once he tells her that it's possible for Farid to make an emergency landing even with only one hand. Once she and Farid hear that, she realizes that he's no longer needed to land the plane, but drinking his blood will help Nadja recover her strength, and his corpse will also make for good bait for the other vampires, so there's no more reason to keep up the Enemy Mine.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lothos to Amilyn when Buffy's ready to stake him, without a word. Lothos plays a violin, then gives Amilyn a very unsympathetic smile. Amilyn only has enough time to realize the implications of that before Buffy stakes him... though it takes awhile for him to actually die. And he actually lasts longer than Lothos himself!
• Bumblebee: Shatter and Dropkick exploit the oblivious Dr. Powell to ingratiate themselves with the US military while passing themselves off as lawmen. Once they decide the facade is no longer necessary, Dropkick casually shoots Powell dead, right as he's realizing his mistake and trying to alert his bosses.
• In Casino, the Chicago bosses order The Purge because of a combination of this and He Knows Too Much.
• In The Castle of Fu Manchu, this happens twice. When the bad guys capture the titular castle, Fu Manchu graciously thanks the mercenaries he's hired to help him overthrow it — just before ordering their execution. Later on, a messenger delivers some news to the leader of the mercenaries. His "reward" is to get murdered off-camera. Given how stoned the mercenary leader looks while he's receiving the news, one can only hope that he didn't immediately forget it.
• Clear and Present Danger has the drug cartel spy Felix Cortez snap Moira Wolfe's neck after getting from her the information his employer desired.^note This is in contrast to the book, in which she's left alive, but made unavailable due to Escobedo using the information that Cortez had collected for an attack on a US delegation visiting Colombia. After the US discovers the source of the leak and gets her cooperation in capturing him, his returning to the US would result in being arrested.
• Circle:
  • Rich Man, Bearded Man, and Black Guy form an alliance to eliminate either the Little Girl or the Pregnant Woman to increase their own chances of survival, but when it comes down to a tie between the Little Girl and Rich Man, both of his allies immediately turn on him, offering to kill them both.
  • The Fake Wife is convinced to join the pragmatic camp by the Bearded Man, but he later trades her life with Eric for the Little Girl.
• Cliffhanger
  • When one of his men gets injured during the mid-air robbery, Qualen says he'll take him to the nearest hospital and throws him out of the airplane.
  • Averted during the mid-air robbery when their inside man Travers decides to rope across to the jet before the money, out of a gut-feeling that Qualen would leave him behind if he sent across the money first.
  • Qualen orders Walker "retired" once he comes down with the first case of money, only for Tucker to shout a warning and Walker escape.
  • When Travers threatens to turn against him, Qualen shoots dead his pilot Kristel (up till then the most useful member of his team) so he'll be the only remaining pilot, and so Travers can't afford to kill him.
• Cloud Atlas: Joe Napier attempts to convince Bill Smoke he'll be treated to this after he gets paid. Smoke shrugs it off as a "risk of the job".
• Cold Pursuit: When Dexter makes one joke too many, Viking shoots him and orders Sly to cut off his head and present it to White Bull as a peace offering.
• The Con is On: Irina is interrogating one of Harry's gambling buddies in London, attempting to ascertain her whereabouts, when she receives a phone call from Sidney informing her that Harry is in LA. On receiving this news, Irina casually throws a knife into the gambler's chest.
• Constantine (2005): The Big Bad Gabriel disposes of his ally Balthasar after he completes his mission to draw out Angela Dodson.
• Cube 2: Hypercube: Kate was really a government agent all along sent inside the Hypercube to retrieve Alex Trusk's memory disk, but when she gets back to the real world, she's killed by her superior the moment she has completed her mission.
• Cypher: People keep warning the protagonist that his current employer will do this to him. Then when he decides to betray that employer and work with the one who warned him about it, someone else warns him that his new employers will do the same. Doesn't actually happen to him, but it does happen with Finster and Callaway and their Mooks who, after being used to help retrieve the MacGuffin, are blown up by Rooks as he makes his escape.
• In The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • In Batman Begins, Scarecrow does this to Carmine Falcone not only because he isn't useful anymore, but also because He Knows Too Much and threatens to blackmail Scarecrow with it.
  • The Dark Knight:
    • The Joker does this to the entire mob, who hire him to take out Batman only to wish they hadn't as Joker's machinations ruin and eventually kill them— the only one who doesn't get killed by Joker is Maroni, who gets Two-Face set on him instead.
    • In the opening bank robbery, nonetheless, the Joker walks away with the entire $68 million haul for himself, tricking his clowns into shooting each other, and only needing to kill one person himself (the bus driver). This seemingly relies on a degree of stupidity and/or Genre Blindness from the clowns: all but the one told to deal with the silent alarm (who dies first) has secret orders to kill someone once he's done his part... and don't realize the same will happen to them. One guy does catch on when he learns another clown (the one he was ordered to kill) was told to do this to the alarm guy (right before shooting him himself for finishing his task of opening the vault), but is wrong in who kills him.
  • In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane does this to Daggett. Earlier, he does this to the two men who capture Gordon and deliver him to Bane. Bane breaks the first guy's neck, then tells the second one he'll kill him as soon as he searches Gordon's pockets. The henchman follows orders up to the end. After Gordon escapes, Bane shoots the henchman and drops his body in the storm drain outflow.
• As soon as Francis reveals to Deadpool that he can't fix Wade's face, his minutes are numbered.
• Near the end of Demolition Man, the main villain Simon Phoenix tries to unfreeze all the criminals held in the cryo-prison at once to kickstart his new dystopia. He thanks the prison's cryo-stasis technicians for their help, before gunning them all down because he no longer has any use for them.
• Die Hard:
  • Die Hard: Hans Gruber's willingness to blow up the Nakatomi building's roof when Karl was up there chasing McClane might have been an earlier example of this trope, as the original film's Dragon had become so obsessed with avenging his brother that he was becoming an unmanagable liability to Gruber's plans.
  • The villains of Live Free or Die Hard are quite fond of this trope. They execute everyone they have contact with once they're through with them. This actually works to their detriment because John McClane is sent to pick up one of their targets early in the film and manages to rescue him, screwing up their plan in the long run.
• Subverted in the only clever moment in the Dungeons & Dragons (2000) film. Damodar begs Profion to take out the parasite in his head as promised, and the spell Profion casts knocks him away and to the floor, apparently killing him. However, Damodar then gets right back up as the parasite leaves.
• Inverted in End of Days. Satan resurrects several of his minions after Jericho kills them because they still might prove useful to him.
• In The Enforcer, when the girlfriend of one of the terrorists is gravely wounded by a police officer during a robbery, he asks Bobby to help him carry her back to the van. Bobby tells him she's dead and taking her with them would slow them down. Her boyrfiend says she isn't dead. Bobby reiterates his opinion she's dead by emptying his revolver into her.
• In A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, Hugh J. Magnate does this to Mr. Crocker.
• A Fairly Odd Summer: Foop intends to kill Crocker after the Abra-Cadabrium is destroyed.
• In Firestorm (1998), Randall Alexander Shaye systematically kills each of the convicts who helped him escape once they's stopped being useful/become a liability.
• The Funhouse Massacre: Manual "Mental Manny" Dyer has the park overseer killed after revealing to him he'd been building the front for the Serial Killers' front to gain a slew of new victims.
• A nonfatal example in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Cobra Commander leaves Destro to rot in prison (where he was more than likely blown up), telling him he's "out of the band". An earlier script draft had Cobra Commander shoot him after delivering the line.
• In Goodfellas, Jimmy murders all of his cohorts in the Lufthansa heist (except Henry and Tommy) so he won't have to split the loot with them or risk them constantly blabbing about it.
• In Grand Slam, Weiss betrays the Caper Crew, murders Jean-Paul, and steals the case containing the diamonds. After he delivers the case to his boss Mark Milford, Milford immediately shoots him several times.
• Grosse Pointe Blank has a rather touching subversion. Martin Blank has, throughout the film, been set up as a ruthless and highly efficient hitman. Towards the end of the film, when he realizes he has to go on the run and possibly abandon his career, he orders his assistant/secretary Marcella to cover their traces, and then tells her to look under her desk. She immediately freezes up, expecting this trope to be in force, and looks under the desk. There is a package duct taped there... but it turns out to be a huge bundle of cash.
• Jackie Brown: Just before killing him, Ordell tells Louis, “The reason is, your ass ain’t worth a shit no more.”
• The Hangover Part III:
  • Chow does this to the Wolfpack after they help him steal the gold from the Mexican villa. He then proceeds to reactivate the alarm and snaps the necks of the guard dogs before leaving them to their fate.
  • Marshall does this to Black Doug after he frees the Wolfpack from the Mexican authorities. He claims that his head of security isn't doing his job if the three guys break into his villa and steal the gold.
• In Hellboy (2019), Nimue does this to Gruagach during the final battle by shrinking him down to size until he pops like a zit.
• Hercules (2014): Spoken word for word by Cotys, but ultimately averted. Despite Hercules and his comrades confronting him about the truth behind the civil war, Cotys still elects to pay them for their services and send them on their way rather than kill them (at first). He later views his own daughter this way, and orders her killed, but Hercules stops it.
• Highlander III: The Sorcerer: When Kane and his two companions are released from their entombment, he almost immediately kills one to weed out his remaining opposition.
• James Bond villains are fond of this trope.
  • Stated by Red Grant to Bond on the train scene in From Russia with Love. The only reason SPECTRE kept Bond alive up to that point was for him to get the Lektor, and with it within their grasp, Bond and Tatiana are now expendable. Unfortunately for SPECTRE, things don't go as planned.
  • Auric Goldfinger thanks his various criminal counterparts for helping him smuggle in all the necessary bits and pieces for his nefarious scheme, then proceeds to kill them all. Well, all except the one who wanted out. He kills him, too, but that's a different trope.
  • In Thunderball, Angelo Palazzi, the impersonator, demanded a raise immediately before his mission of stealing the nuclear warhead. He smugly points out that with so much time and effort already spent on the plot, there's no way SPECTRE would walk away from it now, certainly not over a pay dispute. His boss, Emilio Largo, was not pleased and kills him right after he delivers the goods. Whether or not this was always the plan, or only done because he demanded more money is unclear.
    • In the book and in Never Say Never Again, the impersonator is Domino's brother, and is killed because he was a direct link to the Big Bad (his sister being the Big Bad's mistress) and the chance he might start blabbing to someone.
  • Diamonds Are Forever. After Blofeld gets enough diamonds to create his Laser Kill Sat, he sends his assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd to execute the members of his diamond smuggling ring.
  • The Spy Who Loved Me. After Dr. Bechmann and Professor Markovitz completed the submarine tracking system for Stromberg, he called them in, congratulated them, and told them he was transferring $20 million to their Swiss bank accounts. After he sent them off in a helicopter, he blew it up by remote control and sent a message cancelling the money transfer.
  • For Your Eyes Only: Blofeld fatally electrocutes the helicopter pilot who delivered Bond into his trap. Blofeld tells Bond, "Don't concern yourself with the pilot... one of my less useful people."
  • A View to a Kill: After his workers finish setting up a plan, Max Zorin not only detonates the explosives early while people are still in the caves, but then proceeds to take out an assault rifle and gun down all the survivors. While laughing the entire time.
  • However, Licence to Kill averted it: When The Dragon asks why they don't just kill the corrupt cop they bribed, the Big Bad insists that loyalty is important to him, and pays up the bribe as promised. The guy does die, but at Bond's hands.
    • But later in the film, when being chided by a lackey about the cost of losing two tanker trucks full of heroin dissolved in gasoline to Bond's actions, he declares that "...it's time to start cutting overhead", and guns down the lackey with an Uzi. However he's clearly undergoing a Villainous Breakdown by this stage.
  • Tomorrow Never Dies: During the standoff on Carver's ship, James Bond is holding Big Bad Elliot Carver's tech genius, Gupta, hostage at gunpoint in order to get him to release Wai Lin, who Carver himself has taken hostage. After Gupta confirms that Carver's stolen missiles are ready to fire on Beijing, Carver promptly kills him, declaring, "Then it seems you have outlived your contract."
  • In Casino Royale, LeChiffre himself is killed by his superior Mr. White for not being reliable enough.
    Mr. White: Money isn't as valuable to our organization as knowing who to trust.
• Parodied in J-Men Forever. The Lightning Bug kills a Reluctant Mad Scientist for trying to contact the J-Men and says, "Now that you're dead, your usefulness to me has ended!"
• Jonah Hex (2010): Quentin Turnbull does this to Adleman Lusk. Lusk says that he will hang if Turnbull's scheme fails and Turnbull promises him that he will not hang.
• Jurassic Park 3: The raptors try to lure the party into an ambush by wounding Udesky and leaving him in a clearing. When the others stay up in the trees instead of taking the bait, the raptors give up and start running off... but not before one of them casually reaches down and snaps Udesky's neck with it's jaws.
• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: Wheatley and his mercenaries work with Claire, Owen, and their team to capture the raptor Blue. Once they have Blue, they shoot Owen with a tranquilizer dart and leave his body in the path of an approaching lava flow, and lock Claire and Franklin in a building threatened by lava. They were about to dispose of Zia, but she points out she's the only one among them who can treat Blue's injuries. Fortunately for the others, Owen wakes up in time to evade the lava, and Claire and Franklin manage to escape the building.
• Karate a Muerte en Torremolinos: Jocántaro kills Malvedades during the end credits.
• In The Last Starfighter "Emperor" Xur is discarded by his allies in the Ko'dan armada the second he's no longer useful to them. It's telegraphed to the audience well in advance and it's only his own arrogance that keeps him from seeing it coming; the flagship officers are openly asking their commander how much longer they have to put up with his bizarre personality and delusion that he's in charge while he's in the room.
• Logan: In Gabriela's videotape, it is revealed that the Mexican women who were kidnapped and impregnated by Transigen were murdered after they gave birth to the mutant children.
  Gabriela: They were raised in the bellies of Mexican girls. Girls no one can find anymore.
• Played with in the ending to Lord of War. Villain Protagonist Yuri goes free when he should be heading to jail due to his illegal gunrunning because of his connections with US government, revealing for the first time in the film that at least some of his gunrunning is actually him acting as a middleman for the government, which allows them to supply various unsavory forces around the world while maintaining Plausible Deniability. However, Yuri grimly notes that while he hasn't outlived his usefulness yet, that day might well be coming, and when it does there'll be nothing he can do about it.
  Yuri: [narrating] I'm not a fool. I knew that just because they needed me that day didn't mean that they wouldn't make me a scapegoat the next.
• In the first scene of Machete, Machete attempts to rescue an apparent kidnap victim. When he finds her, she's totally naked and flirts with him, then stabs him when he lets his guard down, as she's actually working for the Big Bad Torrez. Torrez tells her she did excellent, then has his sidekick shoot her in the head.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man, Obadiah Stane has Raza and his men killed after getting Tony's first armor suit and its plans.
    Raza: I hope you'll repay me with the gift of iron soldiers.
    (Stane paralyzes Raza)
    Stane: (in Urdu) This is the only gift you shall receive.
    • He later almost kills Pepper Potts after getting the Iron Monger suit, realizing that the person in question has betrayed him.
  • Captain America: The First Avenger:
    • Subverted as a minor Pet the Dog moment for the villain. When Dr. Zola notices that there's only enough room in the escape craft for one, it seems as though Red Skull is leaving him to die in the self-destructing base. But nope, Red Skull hands him the keys to his personal Cool Car and tells him not to scratch the paint job. Oh, but surely there's a bomb in the car. Right? Again, nope; Zola just starts the car and drives off to safety. As Red Skull's top scientist, Zola is a bit harder to replace than Mooks or even Elite Mooks and this way, Zola will be able to deliver the Skull's favorite car to him while he's at it.
    • It's also invoked by Col. Phillips to Dr. Zola after he's been captured by the SSR.
  • In Spider-Man: Homecoming The Vulture takes care of the first Shocker of his crew this way, after firing the man because his aloof and careless behavior has become a liability and Shocker attempts to blow the crew's cover as payback. Granted, Vulture only attempted to hit him with the Antigravity Gun but accidentally grabbed a Disintegration Ray...
  • Black Panther (2018): Killmonger has many allies in his plan to overthrow Wakanda, but no qualms in killing any of them if they get in the way of those plans. The entire plan revolved around eventually killing Ulysses Klaue, as Wakanda is a notoriously secretive nation, and bringing in the corpse of their most prominent enemy is the only way Killmonger could gain access. Once Klaue takes Killmonger's girlfriend Linda hostage, he kills her too.
• In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, Ivan Ooze commands the brainwashed citizens of Angel Grove to return to the construction site he was freed from and leap off the tall cliff there after construction of his Ecto-Morphicon Titans is done. It's implied he did this to the last group of people to do the same when the machines were built. It's subverted, though, since the kids of Angel Grove are able to hold them back long enough for the Rangers to defeat Ooze and break the trance.
• Various examples in Momentum. All involve the anti-heroine Alex in some way.
  • Nicely subverted by The Dragon who understands it's a good idea to keep as many underlings alive as possible when dealing with someone as dangerous and resourceful as Alex. Even when she takes a hitman as a Human Shield, he refuses to Shoot the Hostage.
  • Alex herself eliminates her dangerously psychotic crew member Wayne during the opening bank heist. Justified since he would have killed her otherwise.
  • Inverted by Alex. She's smart enough to keep a valuable data drive hidden as a bargaining chip, knowing the bad guys will be reluctant to kill her until it's recovered.
• In the movie Mystery Men, Casanova Frankenstein kills his own men for no other reason than to show that he is so evil. That and he wasn't willing to wait for them to get out of the way before activating the booby trap that would prevent the advancing heroes from reaching him.
• In The Mystery of the Hooded Horsemen, the Man Behind the Man Riders guns down Norton once the Riders' power has been broken and he has no further use for him.
• From The Omen (1976), Damien (aka The Antichrist) is given to the Thorn family in order to secure financial and political power and will dispose of them once it is certain that he will inherit their wealth.
• In Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Mike has his mercenaries kill Arnold, Trent, and their bodyguards when John manages to hack into their systems. The plan backfires when the ensuing shooting kills everyone but Mike.
• Perfect Assassins: The assassins are programmed to kill themselves after getting their targets.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Lord Beckett orders the execution of Elizabeth's father because he hasn't got any use for him anymore now that he gained full authority and the ex-governor got too curious about the MacGuffin.
• In Pitch Black, Johns constantly warns the others that if they give Riddick the opportunity to betray them and escape the planet by himself, he'll leave them all behind to die. They delay bringing all the power cells to the skiff until the last minute, but they held off too long and the aliens wake up. He's proven right, since as soon as Riddick gets the chance, he steals the cells and traps the other survivors in a cave, planning to take off alone. Carolyn's willingness to sacrifice herself for the other two motivates him to go back and rescue them.
• In Power of the Press, the investigation into the newsie's death eventually turns up Trent as the prime suspect, and Rankin, fearing that his conspiracy will be exposed by Trent, has him murdered.
• Replicas: Jones kills Ed, after he gets him to confess that he stole the cloning technology from Bionyne.
• In Ring of Fear, Twitchy develops a guilty conscience and decides to go to Beatty and confess about the sabotage. However, he decides to tell O'Malley first and give him the opportunity to come clean as well. On hearing Twitchy's plans, O'Malley drowns him in the animal trough.
• In RoboCop (1987), when Murphy and Lewis are chasing Clarence Boddicker and his gang, Boddicker sacrifices one of his henchmen because the henchman is injured and has just bumbled their robbery by inadvertently burning the money. Boddicker throws him from through the cop car's windshield from the villains getaway vehicle while uttering the immortal line, "Can you fly, Bobby?"
• In Scream 4, the killer's accomplice thought that he was a part of a plan to stage a killing spree, frame somebody else for the murders, and pose as the survivors who took down Ghostface, becoming celebrities in the process. Unfortunately for Charlie, Jill Roberts was planning on being the Final Girl — with emphasis on Final. She then stabs Charlie in the heart and tries to make him look like the mastermind of the murders.
• Scream and Scream Again: After Keith's crimes attract the attention of the authorities, Kornatz decides to shut down Dr. Browning's research by killing Dr. Browning and all of his staff.
• Seven (1979): When the Kahuna's faithful driver Charlie is wounded during their getaway, the Kahuna shoots him and shoves him off the side of the boat.
• In Sherlock Holmes (2009), Lord Blackwood has Luke Reardon killed and placed in Blackwood's coffin after the ginger midget created the various ways to implement magic tricks that Blackwood uses.
• In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Professor Moriarty makes it a habit of killing employees who are no longer useful so they can't be traced back to him.
  • In the film's Action Prologue, Moriarty attempts to have Doctor Hoffmanstahl blown up with a bomb. When Holmes foils that attempt, Moriarty's henchman Sebastian Moran shoots Hoffmanstahl with a poisoned dart.
  • Irene Adler is poisoned after it becomes obvious to Moriarty that she's succumbed to her feelings for Holmes.
  • Moriarty, under a false name, buys a large amount of shares in the munitions company headed by Alfred Meinhard. Moran kills Meinhard while the building he's in is in the middle of a bombing, with the pretense that nobody's going to look any further for a cause of death other than the bombing.
• Shotgun (1955): Bentley decides that killing U.S. Marshal Mark Fletcher was a mistake and has made things too hot for them, especially now that Deputy Marshal Clay Hardin is dogging their trail. He tells Ben Thompson that he is quitting their gunrunning scheme and heading out to California. Thompson politely lets him go, but then sends Delgadito and the renegades to kill him after her has left.
  Ben Thompson: When you know you're goin' to have to kill a man, Perez, it costs nothing to be polite.
• The 1995 Venezuelan film Sicario 1995 has a group of Columbian street kids being trained for an assassination by a cartel boss. The protagonist is chosen as the best shooter and taken away by the cartel boss in his limousine, whereupon cartel soldiers gun down the others. The protagonist doesn't see this, but is smart enough to know his mentor has been ordered to kill him after he's committed the murder. He tries to talk him out of it, but has to shoot his mentor anyway.
• Non-fatal example in Spy Kids: After Alexander Minion gets the third brain, and reveals himself to be the film's real Big Bad, he has Floop (the guy who thought he was controlling everything) locked up in a virtual prison.
• In Stahlnetz PSI, two brothers kidnap a little girl for ransom. Then, once they record her voice to prove she is alive, one brother, Larry, reveals that he intends to kill the girl, as she had seen them. And when the other brother objects, Larry beats him up and locks him together with the girl to die.
• Star Wars:
  • It sounds strange, but it's part of the Sith doctrine: kill the other if you can form a stronger duo without him. A Sith apprentice is fully aware that their master may replace them someday… Reciprocally, as a master, if your apprentice doesn't plan to kill you, you are not doing your master's job.
  • Big Bad Darth Sidious / Emperor Palpatine is a repeat offender:
    • Sidious did this to his master, Darth Plagueis, after his election to the chancellorship was secured. The Legends Expanded Universe establishes that this was done with force lightning and a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
    • He does this to pretty much everyone in the Republic and the Separatists in Revenge of the Sith. He sends Obi-Wan to kill Grievous, and would have killed Grievous if he had won; slaughters the Jedi once their role in the war and attacking him has been fulfilled; dissolves the Republic itself to create THE FIRST! GALACTIC! EMPIRE!. Count Dooku doesn't realize how expendable he is until Sidious orders his replacement, the future Darth Vader, to execute him. Then, once the Separatist leaders have done their job, Sidious informs them that he is sending Vader to "take care of them." Naturally, this means Vader locks the door and slaughters them. Vader's sweetheart Padmé probably would've also been discarded by Sidious, if Vader hadn't accidentally done that himself.
    • In A New Hope, he dissolves the Galactic Senate the moment that the Death Star is fully operational and he no longer needs to pretend he needs them.
    • In Return of the Jedi, when he urges Luke to finish off Vader and take his place at the Emperor's side.
    • He also likely would have arranged to have Darth Maul disposed of at some point during the Clone Wars, had he not been defeated by Obi-Wan Kenobi's hands earlier.
  • In The Force Awakens, Han brings this up while trying to convince Kylo Ren to rejoin the good guys; he fully expects Supreme Leader Snoke will kill Ren the moment he's fulfilled his purpose. We'll never know whether Han was right or not, as Kylo kills Snoke to seize power in the next movie.
• In Suicide Squad (2016) we get a rare example of a (supposed) good guy going this when Amanda Waller murders an entire room full of her own personnel on the pretense that they were no longer useful and did not have sufficiently high security clearance to retain the information they had obtained.
• In Superman II, Lex Luthor aids the Kryptonian supervillains by giving them information on Superman and is rewarded twice with the threat of death.
  • First he leads them to Perry White's office and Lois Lane, with the expectation that where she is, Superman will soon show up (and he does). Zod then says "Kill the rest. Starting with him (Luthor)". After the fight with Superman is over, Luthor gives Zod "Superman's address" (the Fortress of Solitude, which Luthor discovered earlier).
  • After Superman surrenders to Zod to save Lois' life, Zod says "We have no more use for this one. Kill him. (Luthor)" However, this is a ploy to let Luthor gain useful information from Superman (Non is about to kill Luthor as Zod commanded but stops at a quiet word from Zod).
• Attempted in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, where after protagonists manage to steal the titular Pick of Destiny from the Rock and Roll Museum the mysterious stranger that tipped them off towards it tries to kill them for it. However, since he's a paraplegic with a tiny knife our heroes simply run off and leave him for the cops.
• In The Thieves, Wei Hong shoots the Korean detective in the head once he has disposed of the Hong Kong police inspector.
• Thirteen Women: Once the last horoscope has been sent, Ursula has no further use for the swami and coerces him into throwing himself in front of a subway train
• In Time Bandits, Kevin demands that Evil call off his skull-headed monsters or he'll destroy the map. Evil replies, "Very well. I have no more need of them," and destroys all the monsters, then goes a step further and kills all his remaining minions.
• A non-fatal version is used in Trading Places. Millionaire brothers, Mortimer and Randolph Duke, owners of a prestigious trading company make a bet centering around the Nature Versus Nurture debate, and bring in Billy Ray Valentine, a black two bit hustler, and train him to be a stock broker, while they ruin the life of Louis Winthrope III, one of their best traders, by framing him for robbery, drug-dealing, and embezzlement, alienating his fiancee, freezing his accounts, and kicking him out of his mansion. After Winthrope unsuccessfully tries tries to frame Valentine and flees into the night after crashing the Christmas party, the Duke brothers settle their one dollar bet in a bathroom, and discuss how they will switch back Valentine and Winthorpe's lives. They instead agree that they don't Winthorpe working for them anymore, and when the topic of Valentine comes up, they also agree that they don't want him (using a racial slur in their description) in their company, and they'll keep him on until soon after New Year's day when they plan on making a fortune through insider trading. This would come back to bite them, since Valentine was in a stall and heard everything.
• Happens in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Megatron orders Soundwave and Laserbeak to kill their human workers who have served their purpose (I.E. Keeping the Ark's existence on the moon a secret). One notable example is when Laserbeak murders one worker's family, including his daughter who may not have even known her dad was working for the Decepticons.
  Megatron: The human collaborators have served their purpose, Soundwave. It's time to eliminate loose ends.
  Soundwave: (As newspaper clippings of dead NASA employees from the past decades appear onscreen.) Laserbeak, Kill them all.
• After ambushing the armoured car at the start of Transit, Marek shoots the driver. When the driver's partner, who is the Inside Man on the Armed Blag, objects, Marek calmly kills him as well.
  Man: Nobody's supposed to die! You said that nobody's supposed to die.
  Marek: I Lied.
  [shoots him]
• In The Transporter, the three bank robbers at the beginning of the film are quietly reminded by protagonist Frank Martin that the conditions to using his car as a getaway car is that there is to be 3 people in the car at one time....they failed to realize he meant the driver as well. So, one of the bank robbers shoots another in the head and tosses him out the door. They get caught anyway, but only some time after Martin has successfully evaded the police and delivered them to their drop-off point.
• In Trespass (2011), Kyle refuses to cooperate, because he is afraid the robbers will kill them once he does.
• Clu does this to Castor and Gem in TRON: Legacy.
• In Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, the Big Bad interrogates two lovers by threatening to shove a red-hot needle into the woman's eye. After they panic and tell him the codes he wants, he thanks them and emotionlessly has them thrown out the train to their deaths.
• In Weekend at Bernie's, the mob boss Bernie contacted to kill Richard and Larry for stumbling upon his insurance fraud scheme has the hitman kill Bernie instead, becuase Bernie's greed had led him to get sloppy, putting his organization at risk. Oh, and Bernie was having an affair with the mob boss's girlfriend.
• The Wild Geese: the mercenaries recruited by Matheson to rescue Limbani become redundant once Matheson concludes his mining contract. Rather than recall the mercenaries — who would need to be paid! — Matheson recalls their escape plane, leaving them stranded in hostile territory.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • Downplayed in X-Men: The Last Stand when Magneto leaves Mystique behind when her mutation is removed and genuinely feels bad about it. She repays him in kind by working against him.
    • It makes a bit more sense when you consider the original ending of the movie. When Magneto is at the park bench at the end, Mystique was supposed to be sitting next to him, implying that Magneto's rejection of her and her subsequent betrayal were both actually staged to lower the defenses of Alcatraz Island later.
  • In X-Men: First Class, after Bob Hendry helps place missiles in Turkey, Shaw no longer needs him. He takes the energy from an exploded grenade and sinks it all into Hendry.
• In xXx, the villains test out a deadly nerve gas on the scientists who developed it for them.

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