History Main / TechnicalPacifist

* Jesus generally preached pacifism and tolerance ("Turn the other cheek", "Love thy neighbour", etc). Of course, [[BewareTheNiceOnes pacifists usually don't]] scatter crowds of merchants with whips on [[GoodIsNotSoft account of their greedy ways]].

* Jesus. Pacifists usually don't scatter crowds of merchants with whips on account of their greedy ways.
** Except that the scriptures never actually identify Jesus as a pacifist. It's just there wasn't much call for a traveling preacher to assert himself physically.

** Except that the scriptures never actually identify Jesus as a pacifist.

* Jesus. Pacifists usually don't scatter crowds of merchants with whips on account of their greedy ways.

* Some would say GreenArrow started as this. He also made it into a form of art, with stunning arrows, sleep/cough gas arrows, electronic disturbance arrows, and his trademark [[RocketPunch boxing glove arrows]]. After his long-time lover got kidnapped and brutally tortured, though, he got over it.

** A much later issue of Comicbook/TheAvengers find themselves stranded in the dimension where ROM keeps sending all those Dire Wraiths. They force the Avengers ''to kill them'' rather than continue to exist there.

* Throughout ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles', Donatello has been shown to be the most peaceful of the Turtles, but he still needed to be a kickass fighter. So this personality trait was cemented with him fighting with the rather less lethal Bo, instead of something sharp.

* Haru Glory, TheHero of the manga ''RaveMaster'' believes it's [[ThouShaltNotKill morally wrong to kill other people]]. Apparently, beating the ever living daylights out of them is perfectly fine, so long as they deserve it (which, of course, they always do). Then again, since anything short of death or dismemberment in ''Rave Master'' can be shrugged off within a day or two, this makes some sense. He also uses a sword even though guns do exist in his world, but that's because swords are more romantic.
** And his particular sword, ''Ten Commandments'', happens to be a magical weapon with ten distinct and unique forms. Let's see a gun ''cut through magic''.
*** The first main villain, and the final one-the originals son, both had to opt for suicide to be defeated. Never mind that the first [[spoiler: killed Haru's mom in cold blood]] and the second was trying to destroy the world even though he already massacred about half of it. Haru wouldn't kill them. He avoided this with Lucia ''twice'' and even tried to convince both of them to live.

** MacGuyver is the worst kind of pretentious pacifist who pretends violence is not the answer until such time that someone pushes his buttons, such as the time when he is so angry with a publisher of a racist newspaper that he threatens to shoot the publisher in the face in a fit of rage.

* Batman in ''Film/BatmanBegins'' most definitely counts. He refuses to execute a murderer, opting instead to blow up the whole building he is in, let the leader get crushed under a pile of debris, and then rush out, leaving a great many ninjas, as well as the guy he originally refused to kill, in the building, presumably to die in the fire. [[hottip:*:Also, he was Bruce Wayne at that point, not Batman, and implicitly killed people travelling around the world, likely in self-defense.]] Later on, he traps Ducard on a train, after demolishing the supports to its track, and shorting out the controls so it can't stop. Then, just as the train is heading over the edge, he jumps out, telling Ducard, "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you," leaving him to fall to his death. Yeah, definitely never does any killing.

* In ''{{Ultraman}} Cosmos'', Ultraman Cosmos is a pacifist and normally makes a token effort to subdue and calm down the monster he's fighting to the point his Luna Form has no real {{Finishing Move}}s that can kill. If faced with a monster he cannot subdue peacefully, or is truly evil, he has to switch to his more combat able Corona Mode, which can still calm monsters down if needed. His [[SuperMode Eclipse Mode]] reflects this as well, with a finishing beam that only kills evil beings, passing through everything else. His support team, EYES, also tend to take this perspective on monsters, trying to subdue them, while the military tries to kill them, which often ends up re-enraging said monster EYES took care of. This actually comes back to help as on several occasions, the monsters and aliens they've spared or helped do come back to help out humanity, leading to a rather epic GondorCallsForAid moment in the third [[TheMovie movie]] after Cosmos is [[spoiler: killed by Ultraman Justice]].

If you live in an action-adventure show-universe (or perhaps a {{videogame}}), violence is one of those things that you just can't escape. This can be a real problem if you want your leading man to be a new-agey tree-hugging intellectual, because, now that HunterSThompson is dead, how many gun-toting [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippies]] do you know? [[note]]Takaya from {{Persona 3}} does not count.[[/note]]

So you end up with the TechnicalPacifist. The TechnicalPacifist is willing to beat people up as much as he wants. He may even get a few fatalities through the [[FridgeLogic fridge]]. However, once it comes down to [[SwordOverHead a choice]] between killing the villain and not killing the villain, the TechnicalPacifist will [[SaveTheVillain not kill]] the villain.

Sometimes, a TechnicalPacifist may have an aversion to certain weapons due to their lethality ([[DoesntLikeGuns most often guns]]), preferring to fight [[GoodOldFisticuffs with his fists]] and other [[DropTheHammer blunt weapons]] that are less likely to kill someone. Other times, he employs [[ImplausibleFencingPowers swords]] or even [[ImprobableAimingSkills bullets]] in ways designed to subdue his opponents in a non-lethal manner. Not only that but most other rules regarding ThouShaltNotKill are usually thrown out the window in the case of dealing with [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman aliens, robots, zombies and/or monsters]].

There is a villainous variant of the TechnicalPacifist, often seen with the CorruptCorporateExecutive and the WorthyOpponent. In the former case, this is a BigBad who has no qualms about killing people, but doesn't like to get his hands dirty (or at least to [[SlaveToPR be seen getting his hands dirty]]). So he has someone else do it instead. This invariably leads to the hero being locked in an Easily Escapable {{Deathtrap}} so that the villain won't get bloodstains on his suit. This tends to drop away when he's backed into a corner. In the latter case, the WorthyOpponent just refuses to use a gun because it's "not fair".

** The GundamWing Team becomes {{Technical Pacifist}}s in TheMovie, primarily because [[spoiler:the enemy soldiers have been lied to by their leader and think they're fighting for a noble cause when, in fact, it's all about said leader's mad desire for revenge. As soon as the deception is revealed, every single pilot surrenders willingly.]] In the series itself, only Quatre is like this from the start as he's from a family of [[ActualPacifist Actual Pacifists]] rather than ChildSoldiers. While he will kill when necessary, he's the only one of the five who will call for surrender first.

*** Kira's girlfriend, Lacus, is another TechnicalPacifist. While she doesn't do any fighting herself, she shares Kira's ideals, and willingly uses him as a bludgeon to deal with those who try to prolong the war.

* Traditionally, and very unrealistically for a military commander with hundreds of millennia of experience, [[{{Transformers}} Optimus Prime]] has been a TechnicalPacifist or close to it. (More accurately, it is unrealistic that a technical pacifist would survive military command that long, though he might certainly ''want to be'' a technical pacifist after so much death and combat.) This is likely because the original series were [[MoralGuardians aimed at children]]. More recent comics produced by IDW make Prime willing not only to kill enemy soldiers, but when absolutely necessary accept collateral damage, though it eats at him.

** Along with a number of other Pacifism variants, ranging from [[TechnicalPacifist Cannot Kill]] to [[ActualPacifist Total Nonviolence]].

* [[LegendOfTheGalacticHeroes Yang Wen-Li]] would love to live in a universe in peace and claims to be totally inept when it comes to guns and actual fighting. He is also directly responsible for the death of tens of millions of imperial soldiers and is quite aware of the contradiction.

* [[VinlandSaga Thors]] becomes one of these after his desertion from the Jomsviking.

*** The biggest scene that can be said to argue for Trigun deconstructing Vash's pacifist stance is the story of what happened ''after'' the July 5th incident. Yes, Vash somehow managed to redirect his Angel Arm so that nobody was killed, but the city itself was destroyed... leaving the entire populace stranded in the middle of the desert with no food, water or shelter. Hundreds of thousands of people died a slow, agonising death, or were murdered over meager supplies, all because Vash regard CollateralDamage as meaningless compared to human lives.

* Unlike other action movies dealing with terrorists, Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger never uses a firearm at all to kill anyone in ''Collateral Damage''. Even in the scene when escaping from a police roadblock in Colombia and disarming an officer's AR-15, he just throws it away the instant he gets shot at.

* Hawkeye Pierce in ''Series/{{Mash}}'' is supposedly a pacifist (owning to his Hippocratic oath as a doctor,) but he is known to punch people who disagree with his moral and ethical views of the world.
** Hawkeye even removed the (perfectly fine) appendix of a gung-ho Lieutenant to keep him from causing more casualties by continuing to attempt to take an objective even after being ordered to stand down. He felt horrible about it afterward, though. It was a genuine (and acknowledged) ethical grey area for him.
** Another episode has Hawkeye and Potter driving a jeep after getting drunk, when they come under enemy fire. They get out of the jeep and take cover, and Potter hands Hawkeye his sidearm and tells him to use it. Hawkeye protests that he will carry burdens, and even [[{{Seppuku}} hara]][[{{Pun}} kiri]] if desperate enough, but he will not carry a gun. Potter tells him to think of it not as a weapon, but as an angry noise-maker, and convinces Hawkeye to fire it in the air to at least give them some covering fire.

** While not a problem for most of the game, because it's always a lot more safer to run away than to get close enough to enemies to allow them to get a good shot at you, this can be incredibly difficult when you have to face mercenaries in full riot gear with machine guns who block the tiny door that is the only exit from the room you are in. And with your bare hands! Fortunately, this game is LeParcour pure, but you still have to get quite creative get close enough for a kick in the head without being shredded by bullets from 10 meters away.

** . Andy also uses a rifle, pistol, or shotgun when he sees fit. At one point, he recklessly points a shotgun at a shyster handyman in a ploy to scare the handyman away.

* Hawkeye Pierce in ''{{MASH}}'' is supposedly a pacifist (owning to his Hippocratic oath as a doctor,) but he is known to punch people who disagree with his moral and ethical views of the world.

** Averted in ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': Sheppard (hero) fights Michael (villain) on the roof-tops. Michael falls, and before Sheppard can rescue Michael, along comes Teyla. Michael had threatened Teyla's baby. [[MamaBear Teyla stamps on one hand, then the other.]] Michael falls to his doom. Awesome!

* Homeless hippie hitchhiker Kai, famous for using an axe to stop a madman on a rampage, is definitely a good example. He is a peaceful guy with a lackadaisical attitude who wanders aimlessly through the country- yet he is willing to raise an axe for the good of others.

** Funny you write that, considering how hard cockroaches are to kill. Simply stamping them may not suffice.

* In ''TheZetaProject'', the titular robot goes from being an assassin to having a strict no-kill policy. Unfortunately, everyone is after him and his human friend, so he is forced to use his badass fighting skills to crash cars, destroy buildings, and lots more in the 'CLEARLY DANGEROUS' category, though he makes sure that nobody actually dies.

* Goku in ''Manga/DragonBall'' becomes an example of this after CharacterDevelopment. While he loves fighting and training to become stronger, he doesn't kill his opponent if he can help it, giving even his worst enemies a LastSecondChance. Throughout the entire ''Z'' series, he is directly responsible for the deaths of only two villains: Yakon, who blew up after gorging himself on too much of Goku's energy, and Buu, the series' final BigBad.
** And he even wished for Buu to reincarnate as a good being. [[spoiler:And he does, though it's more of a cameo barring the anime-only Dragon Ball GT.]]

[[folder:Film]]

* Genies in the ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'' universe are forbidden to kill, but [[IronicEcho you'd be surprised what you can live through]]. They also are allowed to, for instance, turn someone into a cockroach to make it easier for their master to kill them.
** Funny you write that, considering how hard cockroaches are to kill. Simply stamping them may not suffice.