You Have Outlived Your Usefulness / Western Animation

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 Western Animation.

---

• A non-lethal version occurs in the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "The Last Resort", when Robotnik talks to one of his minions over the phone.
  Fumfer: The hedgehog bought it, your malignancy! He's on his way to the island now!
  Robotnik: Ah, excellent work, Fumfer! You're fired!
  Fumfer: Fired?! Why? I did my job perfectly!
  Robotnik: Exactly! That's why I don't need you anymore!
• Angel Wars: Inverted in terms of what happens in-story, but played straight in terms of the you-only-live-because-I-have-use-for-you attitude: a Sorcerous Overlord demon named Ogrud resurrects his dead son as an undead giant when Ogrud decides he wants to retire, hoping to hand over his job to his son. Note that Ogrud was well aware that his son was suffering torment in The Underworld for the millennium that he'd been dead, and that the magic he used to raise him didn't take much visible effort at all; the one and only reason he resurrected his son was for his own selfish benefit. It's little wonder that his son wanted nothing to do with him.
• Attempted by Long Feng in Avatar: The Last Airbender. After Azula helps him stage a coup against the Earth King, he orders his Dai Li agents to arrest her. However, Azula turns the tables by revealing that the Dai Li work for her now and, in fact, she has no further use for him.
  • Azula herself is subject to a non-fatal but still exceptionally cruel one of these in the finale, by her own father no less. He rewards her for all her loyalty and sheer competence by naming her his successor as Fire Lord, and then immediately crowns himself Phoenix King of the entire planet, rendering her new position totally powerless.
  • From Season 1 of the Sequel Series The Legend of Korra, Amon tells his flunky the Lieutenant this when the latter discovers his boss's secret — Amon himself is actually a bloodbender.
  • In Book 3 of Korra, Zaheer does this to Aiwei for inadvertently leading Team Avatar to them, by tossing him in the Fog of Lost Souls when they meet in the spirit world.
  • In the tie-in novel The Rise of Kyoshi, the previous Avatar Kuruk died at only 33 so his friends are left to find the new Avatar in the Earth Kingdom. Since the Earth Kingdom is the biggest and most populous, the search drags on and on and they ultimately pick the wrong kid, Yun. Kyoshi works in the compound where they're training Yun and ultimately they figure out that she is the Avatar. The master who's been teaching him earth bending, Jianzhu, feeds Yun to a spirit once they prove that he's not the Avatar to protect Kyoshi from said spirit.
• In the Batman Beyond episode "Disappearing Inque", Inque, a powerful shapeshifter whose body was falling apart, was freed from prison, given a place to hide out and helped to have her body's cohesion restored by Aaron Herbst, a slightly stalkerish guy who had worked at the prison. While he WAS annoying and probably creepy to be around it still doesn't forgive Inque taking his request to be given powers similar to hers and twisting it by only giving him half the abilities. In a rather nasty case of Body Horror, the guy now has a body similar to Inque in that its formless and malleable, but he lacks the ability to control it.
• Batman: The Animated Series: In "Feat of Clay: Part 1", Corrupt Corporate Executive Roland Daggett invokes this trope by name after deciding that Matt Hagen failed him for the last time, setting up a series of events that ends up turning Hagen into Clayface.
• In the Musical Episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the Music Meister sings his brainwashed mindslaves into dancing to a fiery grave:
  And now that Batman's been delayed, your usefulness has passed
  A distraction is what I need, so kick into that blast!
• The Batman:
  • The Joker does this twice: first against some big game hunter who hired him to steal an endangered species of leopard for him to hunt. Joker brings him the leopards, receives a pair of hyenas in return, and then immediately gasses the hunter so he can use his range to hunt Batman. Later, he eventually does this to Wrath and Scorn, who fail to realize that just because they think they're helping criminals doesn't mean Joker wants them to do his job for him.
  • In "The Everywhere Man", Batman defeats the titular Everywhere Man by pointing out to his hundreds of clones that they would all be deleted from existence once they win, causing them to turn against Everywhere Man himself.
• Ben 10: Omniverse: Vilgax does this to Eon and his army of evil Bens by activating a Chronosapien Time Bomb that destroys them along with every other Ben Tennyson in the multiverse and their respective timelines (minus No Watch Ben).
• NOS-4-A2 in an episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command makes it very clear that he's going to dispose of XL after he's no longer needed for his plan of conquering the galaxy. He even says these exact words to XL after he says he killed both Buzz Lightyear and XR. Unfortunately for NOS-4-A2, XL had a Heel–Face Turn and was lying about killing the space rangers.
  NOS-4-A2: Excellent. You've served me well. But You Have Outlived Your Usefulness.
  Buzz Lightyear: For evil, maybe. But not for good!
• Danger Mouse: in "Where There's A Well, There's A Way," a hooded figure named Copper-Conk Cassidy trails DM and Penfold in their quest to find the mystic inkwell of Merlin the Magician. As they traverse the Cave of Coffins, Copper-Conk, with mallet in hand sneaks in and quips "Goodbye, Danger Mouse. You have served your purpose." Subverted immediately as he falls into a hole.
• Danny Phantom: In "Public Enemies", Walker says this in verbatim as he activates Wulf's shock collar to electrocute him when he no longer needs him.
• In The Dreamstone, Zordrak recurrently fired Urpgor and thrown him out of Viltheed whenever he found a resource that made his wacky inventions redundant, holding a grudge against him for his failure rate and conniving attitude. In one case, Urpgor helps him get the aforementioned trinket with the assurance this trope won't happen this time and he will be "suitably rewarded". As expected, Zordrak lied, his "reward" being he won't play the trope full on and execute him as he'd prefer. Pretty much all these instances end up with a vengeful Urpgor sabotaging Zordrak's plan or helping the heroes ruin it so he is forced to rehire him again.
• DuckTales (1987): "Your usefulness is at an end!", said by El Capitan to Flinheart Glomgold at the end of "Wrongway in Ronguay", threatening him with a cannon. An unfazed Glomgold reverses the cannon back onto him however...with El Capitan doing likewise...and Glomgold again... leading to a "No, You Have Outlived Your Usefulness" argument until the cannon fires and thwarts them both.
• In the Elmer Fudd cartoon "A Mutt in a Rut", Elmer Fudd — in a rare cartoon where he stars as the hero, not the sympathetic villain — loves his dog, Rover, and has no plans to kill him. However, Rover – having just watched "The Dog-Lover's Hour" and host Carlton Canine speak about how some dog-owners shoot and kill their dogs once they've grown old, becomes paranoid after hearing Canine ominously editorialize, "Two go out ... but only one comes back!" Rover, annoyed at not always getting his way, is convinced Elmer has him marked for death but — since he is a dog — is unable to tell Elmer specifically what is bothering him, and is set off when Elmer suggests a good hunting trip will do him good. Rover, thinking he's saving himself, decides to kill Elmer off himself and makes several attempts to off his unwary master; however, Rover gets the worst end of things. Only at the end of the cartoon, when he sees Rover somehow limp to the studio to attack the host of "The Dog-Lover's Hour" does Elmer even start to get an idea of what is bothering his beloved pet; Rover had finally become convinced that his place in the Fudd household was secure after his last attempt went awry, and was now determined to make Canine pay for needlessly stressing him out.
• Exo Squad: Typhonus lays it out fairly openly when asked about Barca, a traitor Pirate helping the Neosapiens in return for Pirate dominion over Venus: "All of Venus Barca will ever see is a six-foot hole in the ground." Ironically, Typhonus himself had been on the receiving end of such earlier (He got better because of cloning).
• Xanatos tries this on the Gargoyles in the series' opening after his initial plan has succeeded. It doesn't work.
• White Knight, a good guy (relatively), in the series Generator Rex implies to Agent Six that he will do this to Rex if the teenager refuses to obey orders.
• Inch High, Private Eye: A scientist working for Mr. Finkerton developed a mechanical flea that could make detectives unnecessary. When it was stolen, Finkerton tasked Inch High with finding it, claiming Inch High would be fired if he failed and that, if he succeeded, he'd fired anyway because Finkerton would no longer need him.
• In Jackie Chan Adventures, Shendu did this to Valmont and the Enforcers after getting all of his talismans. Later in Season 2, he no longer needed Finn, Ratso, and Chow to carry the Pan'Ku box and sends them out (it is notable, though, that he lets them live at all, presumably because they actually did what they were supposed to do). Shendu tries to do this to Hak Foo, but Valmont wouldn't allow him. However, Shendu soon figured out he had invoked the trope too soon, as he still needed the box, even if just to delay his sibling's wrath.
• In the Jonny Quest episode "The Riddle of the Gold", a villainous maharaja working with Dr. Zin on a fake gold mine makes the big mistake of mentioning that he will be sharing the ill-gotten gains with Zin. At that statement, Zin casually orders his lackey to implement Phase 2 of his plan. When the Maharajah asks for a light and asks what Zin is referring to, the lackey suddenly hits the Maharajah with a hidden spring-loaded poison needle in his lighter to kill him since he is not needed anymore.
• Justice League Unlimited:
  • In "The Doomsday Sanction", Doomsday manipulates an increasingly disgruntled and unstable Professor Milo into releasing him from his bonds in Cadmus HQ. The very first thing he does upon being freed is summarily kill Milo because he's useless now.
  • In "Alive!", following Tala's failed revolt against Lex Luthor, she realizes that Lex was planning on using her to revive Brainiac all along, even though it would kill her. When it finally happens, Tala tampers with the process in a final act of defiance by reviving Darkseid instead. The evil alien then kills almost all of the remaining rogues for their efforts, with the caveat that, being a God of cruelty and tyranny, he genuinely considers a quick death a great reward.
    Darkseid: It would appear that I have you to thank for my resurrection. Though your planet will suffer slowly, I grant you the mercy of a quick death.
• Subverted in The Little Drummer Boy, Ben Haramad sells Aaron's camel after one of those used by the Three Kings falls under the load it's carrying. A disgusted Aaron rejects the final pay from that sale and storms off. When Ali tries to go after him, Ben Haramad tells him that Aaron is free to go because he had outlived his usefulness.
  Ben Haramad: Let him go. We're done with him.
• In the one-hour special of Metalocalypse, the Metal-Masked Assassin does this to Magnus Hammersmith after the latter objects to the former's murder of the innocent Ishneafus Meaddle. Unusually, Magnus actually survives the attempt on his life, but swiftly realizes how horrible his complicity in the Assassin's other evil deeds was and commits suicide.
  Magnus: What have you done? You've murdered him! This wasn't part of my plan!
  Metal-Masked Assassin: This was never your plan.
• Done by Tirek in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode Twilight's Kingdom Part 2 to Discord. Tirek doesn't kill Discord, but he does drain him of all his magic and power and all but quotes this trope.
• In The Owl House, this is standard practice of Emperor Belos.
  • He resorts to this two times in "Hollow Mind" when he tries to kill Luz, since the Stable Time Loop he needed her alive for has already been completed, and when he buries Hunter in his mind once he starts questioning Belos. He has also done this to every Golden Guard before Hunter, which Belos sees as Expendable Clones, and it's implied that part of the reason he makes them is his enjoyment at getting to kill them once they aren't usable for him.
  • New heights are reached in "King's Tide" when Belos not only betrays the Collector and attempts to leave him to rot in his prison, but he tries to pull this on every single person in the Boiling Isles who has ever served him, willingly or not, as an effect of the draining spell. When Kikimora asks what she could possibly do to gain his favour, he coldly tells her to "go find a hole to wither away in". This backfires hard when the Collector gets loose anyways thanks to making a deal with King, and then proceeds to turn him into a literal smear on the wall.
• The Perils of Penelope Pitstop finale "London Town Treachery" has the Ant Hill Mob turned into miniature Mr. Hydes after drinking a tea that the Hooded Claw spiked with a Jekyll-Hyde formula. The Mob puts Penelope in a Claw-type death trap and the Claw subsequently tells his henchmen the Bully Brothers they won't be needed anymore. The Bully Brothers have no recourse but to rescue Penelope to save their jobs.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In the episode "Aspirations", Sedusa ditches the Gangreen Gang after they steal for her the Egyptian artifacts that transformed her into a giant with snakes for hair (making her even closer to her mythological name Medusa) admitting that she never loved them. Naturally, this leads to her downfall.
• Hack and Slash of ReBoot get this treatment during Season 3, despite never having been useful in the first place. Megabyte is sick of their incompetence and sends them to the front lines solely to get rid of them.
• In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Frog's Best Friend", Earl's fairy dogmother releases him from a cage, believing he had learned his lesson and will reform now. Next thing we know, Earl's picking his teeth with her wand.
• Professor Pericles on Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated stoops this low in episode 50 when he orders the death of all the citizens in Crystal Cove once they have found the door to the Nibiru Entity's tomb He's on the receiving end shortly there after after freeing the Nibiru Entity from its prison. The Entity replies by possessing and killing him to take his body as its own. It then follows up by eating the rest of the the original Mystery Inc. alive.
• Implied in the SilverHawks pilot when Mon*Star begs the prison guards to release him, promising them "wealth beyond wealth" in return. They simply state that they remember what happened to the last guy who fell for that.
• Zig-zagged with Toffee from Star vs. the Forces of Evil. He doesn't kill his henchmen, but he immediately stops caring about them once they cease to be relevant to his plans and is perfectly fine with letting them be killed by others at that point; when he finally gets Star to break her wand, he lets all of Ludo's underlings die in the massive explosion that ensues because he won't be needing them afterwards. Later, when he possesses Ludo himself, he tosses his avatar aside the second he's able to regenerate his real body and just barely acknowledges Ludo's existence.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: This happens a few times, mostly by the Separatists. A good example occurs at the end of the Onderon arc, in which the Jedi covertly help a group of rebels overthrow the Separatist puppet king, Sanjay Rash, to install the rightful one back to his throne. After the climax of the whole conflict, super tactical droid and Separatist advisor to Rash, General Kalani, informs Count Dooku that they could defeat the rebels, but it would take a lot of time, effort, and resources to do so. Dooku decides to cut his losses and has the Separatists pull out, considering Onderon to not be worth it. Rash is in the middle of asking what's going to happen to him, now that the rebels will be taking over, when Kalani shoots him dead.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Twilight of the Apprentice", Maul makes clear that he'll only let the Ghost crew live as long as he needs them, and orders them killed the second he has Ezra and the holocrons.
• Superman: The Animated Series:
  • "World's Finest" has the Joker do this to Lex Luthor — granted, Luthor tried to kill him, but it's implied that Joker knew that would happen and had been planning this: this being stealing Luthor's prototype flying wing and blow up half of Metropolis.
  • In "Knight Time", Bruce Wayne narrowly avoids this trope with Brainiac thanks to Superman disguised as Batman. Bruno Mannheim didn't turn out so lucky with Darkseid.
    Mannheim: You promised you'd make me a king!
    Darkseid: And so you are: King of Fools.
• Trigon does this to Slade during the fourth season finale of Teen Titans (2003). Slade saw it coming, acquired a magical artifact that protected him from the worst of Trigon's wrath, and managed to survive. He spends the rest of the finale helping the Titans take Trigon down.
• Total Drama
  • In the first season, Heather does pulls this trope on Lindsay when the latter is eliminated after being the last contestant to get to the finish line in the bike race. Heather was the only one that could save her supposed friend from elimination and she chose to not do it.
  • Chris McLean says the stock phrase verbatim to Owen in Season 4 (Total Drama Revenge of the Island) when the latter asks why he and the cast of the first three seasons aren't competing this time. Chris then has Chef stick an explosive charge on Owen's face and detonates it.^note Being a toon in a comedy, Owen survives none the worse.
  • Also in Season 4, Jo says a variation of the stock phrase about Lightning.
  • In the same season, this trope is inverted (in which the underling does this to their boss) when Cameron does this to Jo by blowing up her smoke machine and getting her voted out. He gets out of trouble by saying that he "learned from the best,".
• Transformers:
  • Megatron uses this trope on a regular basis — the 'cons all know it and he has said it word for word on more than one occasion. He is so notorious for this that in G1, the Insecticons once rationalised he can't have been the one to betray them because he still had a use for them — they added right to his face that they wouldn't be surprised if he did so later, and he didn't bother to deny it.
  • This sums up Megatron's working relationship with Starscream in Transformers: Animated from Season 3 onward. For most of the season he was the only few individuals Megatron had at his disposal. However, as soon as he completes his plan to create living superweapons, he terminates their alliance.
  • In Transformers: Prime, when Silas is critically injured, a team of MECH scientists saves him by connecting him to Breakdown's lifeless body. He thanks them for their dedication and service... then kills them and leaves to join with the Decepticons. Which makes it all the more ironic and satisfying, when in the same episode, the tactical advantage which Silas offered to Megatron goes up in smoke, and he is handed over to Knock-Out's dissection table for further study.
• In the T.U.F.F. Puppy episode "Bored of Education", a group of kids from Petropolis Elementary School decide to join the Chameleon in raiding a bunch of stores, but the second they play with all the stuff they raided, he sees them as deceiving him since all the stuff is only for him, thus he denounces them as his friends and decides to eat them.
• The Venture Bros.: Subverted in the pilot episode "The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay". The Big Bad is getting some acupuncture when his mook comes in and tells him that Doctor Venture is unveiling a new invention. Having received this information, the Big Bad grabs some acupuncture needles out of his body and throws them at the mook, seemingly killing him. As the Big Bad is reading the newspaper article about Doctor Venture, the mook speaks up and the Big Bad looks up from the paper to see the mook thanking him for curing his shoulder pain and also his smoking habit.
• Winx Club:
  • Season 1: After stealing Bloom's Dragon Flame, the Trix give this to Riven in true Break the Haughty fashion once they don't need him as The Dragon anymore.
  • Season 2: Once Darkar has the four pieces of the codex and Dark Bloom at his side, he makes clear that he doesn't need the Trix anymore by tossing them into a black hole (back to Lightrock Monastery in the Nickelodeon version). That decision bites him in the ass not much later...
  • The Trix get hit with this from Valtor and Tritannus as well.
• X-Men: The Animated Series:
  • Bishop is introduced working for the Sentinels, but once he delivers Wolverine to them they decide he's no longer needed, and will be executed as well.
    Wolverine: So, what do you think of their retirement plan?
  • Zaladane says exactly this to Sauron in the episode "Savage Land, Strange Heart Part 2." It doesn't work out well for her.
  • During the Apocalypse arc, the villain tries to do this to Magneto, but he sees through it, and with Mystique, had a back up plan just in case. "I never trusted you, Apocalypse. I'm not a fool."
• Young Justice (2010):
  • Kroloteans who are under The Lights employ are killed off by them, in favor of their new partner The Reach.
  • Averted with Dr. Rouquette. After their Evil Plan of the week has been foiled, the League of Shadows refrain from killing her on principle, pointing out to Rouquette that they might need her skills in the future, implying they can just snatch her again at any time.
• Young Samson and Goliath episode "Moon Rendezvous". After Kunev Khan delivers the Graviton ship to the Moon Leader, the Leader tells Khan that he is no longer necessary to his plans and pulls out a weapon with the intent of murdering him. Luckily for Khan, Samson and Goliath show up to interfere.

---