Cruel Mercy / Live-Action TV

Moments of Cruel Mercy in Live-Action TV series.

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• The 100: When Clarke is given the chance to kill Emerson for his role in killing 42 Sky People, she instead decides to banish him and force him to live with the knowledge that he'll never get revenge for his son and his people's death. This comes back to bite her in the ass when he returns to kill all her friends personally. Having learned her lesson, she just kills him.
• Angel:
  • In Season 3, Angel's newborn son Connor is kidnapped by his old enemy Holtz, kicking off a series of events that result in Holtz taking Connor to Quor'toth, a hell dimension referred to as "the darkest of the dark worlds." Lilah and Wolfram & Hart were present during the incident, planning to capture Connor for research purposes, but seeing Angel overcome with grief at the loss of Connor, Lilah is perfectly content to just let Angel suffer and drives off.
  • Fred attempted this when she found out exactly who sent her to Pylea, and opened a portal to a far worse hell dimension. However, Gunn couldn't bear to see her do that to somebody else, so he ran up and broke the man's neck before he could get sucked in.
  • Angel himself spent many years as a soulless vampire committing countless atrocities including killing everyone in his village including his own sister. After torturing and killing the favorite daughter of a tribe of Kalderash Gypsies, they curse him by restoring his human soul, thus afflicting him with a conscience and condemning him to an eternity of remorse for the crimes he has committed.
  • Later, Connor locked Angel in a steel coffin and dropped him in the sea, knowing that he would not die, but starve and go mad.
• In the episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? called "The Tale of Cutter's Treasure", a boy’s little brother is kidnapped by the ghost of Jonas Cutter, a pirate captain cursed by the boys’ grandfather to guard a cave filled with treasure but never be able to use it. He rescues his brother and defeats Cutter in battle with a magic dagger, but he quickly realizes that using the dagger on Cutter would put his soul to rest. Rather than allow Cutter to be free from his curse he breaks the dagger and abandons him in the cave, leaving him trapped guarding his treasure, alone forever.
• G’Kar has an unconscious assassin at his mercy in an early episode of Babylon 5. Instead of killing him, G’Kar puts a bunch of money in his bank account and buys him a ticket off the station — which marked him for death by his own group if he was ever found and got G’Kar off the hit list.
• The Barrier: The Police State is prone to using Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness attitude toward people who have coughed up their information, so chances to get out of an interrogation room are relatively slim. Emilia gets threatened with life in prison by a policeman who wants her to disband a meeting group made of people who had their children taken away by the government through deception.
• Parodied in Blackadder Goes Forth. Blackadder and Baldrick crash behind German lines and are captured during World War I. The Red Baron tells them that rather than have them shot, they're going to be sent to a convent to teach home economics to girls. "For a man of action such as yourself, the humiliation will be unbearable!" The punishment doesn't seem like such a bad thing to Blackadder.
• Blake's 7
  • Towards the end of Season 2, Blake calmly refuses to kill his nemesis Travis, now a crippled fugitive. Considering what happens in the season finale, this turns out to be a pretty major head against wall moment, something both Jenna and Travis point out in the scene itself.
  • In "Orbit", a Mad Scientist invents a superweapon and wants to join with Servalan to rule the galaxy. When the weapon is destroyed, Servalan (who's had no problem killing those who've failed her in the past) decides that leaving him alive will be a better punishment, knowing what he might have been. As it turns out, he's killed right after she leaves by an abused underling.
• Subverted in The Boys (2019). After discovering Lamplighter alive in the present day and seeing how wracked with guilt he was after accidentally killing Mallory's grandchildren in the past, Frenchie convinces Mallory to take him alive so he could testify against Vought on their behalf and argues that him living with what he's done is punishment enough. However, Hughie convinces him to help him free Starlight from Vought HQ and he promptly kills himself the moment Hughie leaves him unattended.
• Breaking Bad
  • Gus Fring does this to Hector Salamanca, keeping him alive and visiting him every time he kills someone related to Salamanca. Made worse by the fact that Salamanca can only move his finger. This backfires spectacularly when Hector, with Walt's help, manages to kill Gus via suicide bomb.
  • This started even earlier with Better Call Saul when Gus pays for a hotshot neurologist to come rehabilitate Hector after his stroke — but only just until he's sure that Hector is really still in there, and no more.
  • Near the end of the series, before the neo-Nazis kill Jesse, Todd argues to keep him alive so they can continue making meth. Walt, who originally called in the neo-Nazis to kill Jesse, agrees, thus forcing Jesse into a life of slavery and telling him that he watched Jane die just to break his spirit. Jesse returns the favor in the Grand Finale; after Walt kills Todd & the Nazis and frees him, he offers Jesse the chance to shoot him. Jesse notices that he's already mortally wounded and leaves him to bleed out and die alone.
• D'Hoffryn pulls one of these on Anya in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Overwhelmed with guilt over slaughtering a fraternity for a vengeance wish, Anya begs D'Hoffryn to undo it. He tells her the price is the life of a vengeance demon; to atone for her actions, she is all too happy to accept death. He then summons Anya's friend Halfrek and kills her instead.
  D'Hoffryn: Haven't I taught you anything, Anya? Never go for the kill when you can go for the pain.
• Used quite often on Burn Notice. Though some of his opponents do get killed as a result of Michael Weston's machinations, just as often they are left alive, in the burning wreckage of their lives, holding the match as the police sirens close in.
  • Special mention has to go to the episode where Agent Pierce learned that the man who killed her fiance years ago has become a CIA asset due to his status as a Knowledge Broker, and because he keeps turning over his information piece by piece, the CIA has been forced to allow him to continue living like a king. She makes the man think he's about to die from a rare and lethal virus, so the man calls his son so the son can take all the information the father was using and continue to live large off of it. When that happens the team she has following the son takes him and the information into custody, meaning that now both the man and the son have officially outlived their usefulness. Everything is then summed up in the following quote.
    There is no virus. We have the information you murdered Gene for. We have your son. And we have you. I'm not killing you, Ahmad, but believe me, your life is over.
• Chernobyl: The ultimate fate the KGB has in store for Legasov when he exposes the lies and incompetence of the Soviet government during their handling of the Chernobyl disaster in front of the world, as explained by KGB Deputy Chairman Aleksandr Charkov. Thankfully, Charkov underestimated Legasov.
  Charkov: You're one of us, Legasov. I can do anything I want with you. But what I want the most is for you to know that I know. You're not brave. You're not heroic. You're just a dying man who forgot himself. [...] No one's getting shot, Legasov. The whole world saw you in Vienna; it would be embarrassing to kill you now. And for what? Your testimony today will not be accepted by the State. It will not be disseminated in the press. It never happened. No, you will live. However long you have. But not as a scientist. Not anymore. You'll keep your title and your office, but no duties. No authority. No friends. No one will talk to you. No one will listen to you. Other men, lesser men, will receive credit for the things you have done. Your legacy is now their legacy; you will live long enough to see that. You will not communicate with anyone about Chernobyl ever again. You will remain so immaterial to the world around you that when you finally do die, it will be exceedingly hard to know that you ever lived at all.
• This happens in Cobra Kai, when Terry Silver gives Daniel a savage beating but backs off rather than crushing Daniel's throat under his foot. The episode is called Extreme Measures for a reason:
  Terry: Don't look at this as an act of mercy. On the contrary. I want you alive and well for what's about to happen. Well, alive at least. Because the real pain... is about to begin.
• Hotch explicitly cites this idea on Criminal Minds when he explains to Haley why he doesn't think that Foyet will make an explicit attempt on his life.
• In the CSI episode "Living Legend", Mickey Dunn, a legendary mob boss thought dead for decades, goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge on the people who tried to kill him. The reason why he waited this long is revealed when he goes into cardiac arrest: the bullet in his chest moved and he was told that he only had a week to live. When he wakes up, he brags about how this will go public and his legend will be revived only for Catherine to show him the bullet: the hospital doctors (much more competent than "mob doctors") removed the bullet with no problems, and estimate Dunn now has about 20 years to live, all of which he will spend in a prison filled with a generation of criminals who don't know who he is and eventually fade to obscurity.
• Defiance: In "The Serpent's Egg", Irisa lets Daigo live despite him being responsible for the abuse she suffered as a child because being forced to live a normal life is far greater a punishment than any torture or execution she could give him.
• Doctor Who:
  • The end of "The Family of Blood": "We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure that we did." In fact, an earlier warning that he may be forced to kill the Family is revealed to actually have been an offer of kindness in comparison (though what he had really been pushing for up to that point was to help the whole family find a planet they can live on peacefully without harming any intelligent creatures).
  • In "Last of the Time Lords", "I forgive you" is almost certainly as devastating to its target, but the Doctor probably didn't mean it to be. But then, what could possibly be more devastating to the Master than being at someone's mercy, i.e., being under another's mastery? So much so that when Lucy shoots him, he REFUSES to regenerate, despite having spent the entire classic series descending to progressively lower depths just to keep himself alive.
  • "Planet of the Ood": Mr. Halpen is the head of a company that has enslaved the Ood for decades, perhaps centuries. The fate he receives for his crimes is far more fitting than just death.
    The Doctor: Funny thing, the subconscious. Takes all sorts of shapes. It came out in the red eye as revenge, it came out in the rabid Ood as anger, and then there was patience. All that intelligence and mercy focused on Ood Sigma... how's that hair loss, Mr. Halpen?
  • "A Good Man Goes to War": The Doctor shows his cruel mercy by making the man who plotted to kill him instead get known as "Colonel Runaway".
    Strax: Colonel Manton, you will give the order for your men to withdraw.
    The Doctor: No. Colonel Manton, I want you to tell your men to run away.
    Colonel Manton: What?
    The Doctor: Those words. "Run away." I want you to be famous for those exact words. I want people to call you Colonel Runaway. [getting angrier] I want children laughing outside your door, 'cause they've found the house of Colonel Runaway. And when people come to you and ask if trying to get to me through the people I love! [composes himself]... is in any way a good idea, I want you to tell them your name. Look, I'm angry, that's new. I'm not really sure what's going to happen now.
    Madame Kovarian: The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules.
    The Doctor: Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.
    Madame Kovarian: Give the order. Give the order, Colonel Runaway.
  • The fate of Strax is a case of this. The Doctor sentenced him to become a nurse. Problem being, Strax is a Sontaran, a fanatic cloned warrior race who consider dying on the battlefield the ultimate act of honor (to the extent that they only have three fingers, since that's all that's necessary to hold a weapon and pull the trigger.) To not only deny him the ability to die on the field of battle, but be forced to prevent others, often his enemies, from dying on the field of battle, is Cruel Mercy bordering on Ironic Hell. This is, however, mostly glanced over, and Strax has taken to his new duties surprisingly well.
  • "The Day of the Doctor": The War Doctor had every intention of dying with the Gallifreyans and Daleks when he activated the Moment, a sentient superweapon, as he believed he didn't deserve to live. The Moment understood just how much this trope would hurt him.
    The Moment: Then that's your punishment. If you do this, if you kill them all, then that's the consequence. You. Live.
  • In "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos", Graham initially advocates killing the villain Tzim-Sha (AKA Tim Shaw), but eventually opts to seal him in a stasis pod that preserves its inhabitant in a state somewhere between life and death, in a display of both this trope and A Taste of Their Own Medicine.
• In episode 5 of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, John Walker is stripped of the title of Captain America and given an Other Than Honorable Discharge^note effectively losing all of his titles and benefits while not getting tossed in jail for the brutal death of a Flag-Smasher that went viral.
• Farscape:
  • At the end of Season 2, John is strapped to an operating table to remove the neural chip Scorpius had implanted in his brain. Partway through, Scorpius comes in, incapacitates the doctor, takes the chip, and... lets John live, strapped to the table and unable to speak. It's especially fitting given what drives Scorpius.
    Scorpius: I condemn you, John Crichton... to live. So that your thirst for unfulfilled revenge will consume you! Goodbye.
  • In the Season 4 episode "Mental as Anything" Macton (the man who killed D'Argo's wife) attempts to break D'Argo's mind by trapping him in a mental recreation of his cell on Moya. Luckily, D'Argo prevails and ends up breaking Macton instead by trapping him in a mental recreation of his worst memory — disfiguring his sister's corpse to make it look like D'Argo killed her. When asked why he didn't kill Macton, D'Argo can only say he wasn't enlightened enough to give the man a Mercy Kill.
• Played with in Firefly episode "Shindig" when Mal is informed that not killing a beaten foe in an honor duel indelibly stains their honor, as they've been marked as Not Worth Killing. Mal considers this as Atherton is lying on the ground.
  Mal: I bet. It would be humiliating, having to lie there while the better man refuses to spill your blood. Mercy is the mark of a great man. [stab] Guess I'm just a good man. [stab] Well, I'm alright. [throws down his sword and walks away from his more-wounded-than-necessary opponent]
• Forever: In "The Last Death of Henry Morgan" Henry is faced with a seemingly impossible choice. He can't allow Adam to go free because the fellow immortal would simply continue his sociopathic murder spree and continue attacking those Henry cares about. At the same time, he can't kill him because Adam would just resurrect somewhere nearby. He has the pugio dagger that Adam thinks may be able to kill him permanently, but there's no guarantee he could take out Adam in a fight, and Henry is an Actual Pacifist who finds the idea abhorrent, plus it would prove Adam's argument that Henry will eventually become a killer just like him. But Henry is a doctor, and therefore knows exactly where to inject a bolus of air to cause Locked-In Syndrome, leaving Adam fully awake but paralyzed and unable to communicate so he can't kill himself and can't tell someone else to kill him. With modern medical technology and regular payments of the bills, he can be kept alive in that state indefinitely, which could be a very long time when you can't age. Henry does softly tell Adam that they'll figure out a way out of this stalemate eventually — "After all, we have eternity together."
• Game of Thrones:
  • Sandor Clegane Mercy Kills a farmer slowly dying of a gut wound while Arya Stark looks on. After he's severely injured with a broken leg miles from aid, he begs Arya to kill him as she's been threatening to do since Sandor cut down her friend Mycah on the orders of his sadistic master Prince Joffrey back in Season 1. Instead, Arya robs him and walks off leaving Sandor to die slowly, an act that comes across as much more cold-blooded than in the novel.
  • Littlefinger seems to see being spared by Brandon Stark like this when he says "In the end, she wouldn't even let him kill me," in "You Win or You Die".
  • Cersei Lannister doesn't execute Ellaria Sand, the woman who poisoned her beloved daughter Princess Myrcella, for the sake of petty revenge for her lover's death (who would certainly not approve of such tactics). Instead, Cersei poisons Ellaria's beloved daughter Tyene Sand with the same toxin used to kill Myrcella, before leaving Ellaria bound and gagged to a wall opposite her daughter who's in the same predicament, so Ellaria can't touch, hold or even comfort her daughter during Tyene's final hours before Cersei promises Ellaria that after her daughter dies, she will be kept alive in the cell, even if her guards have to force-feed her, so she can watch every second of her daughter's body decomposing.
    Cersei: Your daughter will die here in this cell, and you will be here watching when she does. You'll be here the rest of your days. If you refuse to eat, we'll force food down your throat. You will live to watch your daughter rot. To watch that beautiful face collapse to bone and dust. All the while contemplating the choices you've made. Make sure the guards change the torches every few hours. I don't want her to miss a thing.
• Hemlock Grove: Norman finds out that his lover Olivia murdered his wife, so he plans on murdering her in revenge. He relents when he discovers that she's already dying from cancer and goes on a "The Reason You Suck" Speech describing the deleterious effects all the various drugs will have on her withering beauty. She doesn't take it well, ultimately murdering him as well.
• Heroes:
  • In the second season, Hiro buries Adam Monroe alive after his plan to wipe out humanity with a virus is thwarted. What makes it worse is that due to Adam's healing ability, he would be trapped, unconscious but fully healthy, in that coffin forever. Beware the Nice Ones indeed.
  • In the fifth season, Peter and Hiro don't kill Samuel Sullivan. They reveal his crimes to his fellow super carnies and teleport them away, taking away Samuel's surrogate family and powers in one stroke. Samuel has a Villainous Breakdown as he stumbles around the empty carnival, alone and powerless.
• The Hexer: Geralt leaves remnants of the witcher's council alive, finding their miserable state a punishment by itself. Plus he himself is in the process of getting over his own life and past hatred.
• Highlander:
  • In the episode "The Colonel", during a flashback set in World War I, Immortal Simon Killian ignores an order that the war has ended and orders his men to attack, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of many soldiers on both sides. At his trial, he is initially convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad, but Duncan testifies that Killian was insane at the time and didn't deserve execution. Killian has his sentence commuted to life in prison, spending 70 years locked up.
  • In another episode, the crew of a ship mutinies against their uncaring captain, an Immortal. Duncan convinces the crew to leave him on a deserted island, rather than shoot him. When the captain pleaded with Duncan not to leave him there, Duncan told him he brought it on himself and to be thankful he still had his head attached. The Immortal captain spent over 100 years on that island, dying of hunger and thirst every few days, only to revive.
• Horatio Hornblower: Horatio attempted this on Simpson, after being given a free shot at him when he cheated in their duel. After hearing Simpson beg for his life, Horatio spares him, declaring that he's not worth the gunpowder. Ultimately subverted in that Captain Pellew disagreed, and also didn't take kindly to Simpson trying to backstab Horatio after that declaration.
• Kamen Rider: If someone is left alive after getting beaten within an inch of their life, it's usually because the dead don't suffer and whoever had the upper hand was a sadist.
• A Law & Order episode ended with the wife of a man who blew up a helicopter (killing all six passengers, including his wife's alleged paramour) begging the court to not impose the death penalty. When it was revealed that the wife was the Chessmaster who set the whole thing in motion by faking the affair, the attorneys asked why she begged for mercy for her husband. The answer: she wanted him to live a long life knowing he was powerless and trapped.
• In the Legends of Tomorrow episode "Compromised", Sara, who's been trying to kill Damian Darhk all season, decides to spare his life — before telling him of his own future, where the grand plan he's been preparing for all his long life is doomed to failure, letting him live the knowledge that everything he's working for will come to nothing. Unfortunately, Darhk knows an evil time traveller, and decides to Screw Destiny.
• On Luther, the title character gives this to Ian Reed, refusing to kill him and insisting he is punished for his crimes despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he's transparently trying to commit Suicide by Cop. He's very unhappy when Alice Morgan then decides just to kill him anyway.
• In the Married... with Children episode where Al owes $100,000s after his harebrained scheme to start a "shoe hotline" fails, he's taken to court by both Steve and Marcie's banks, who respectively fire and demote them. Al pleaded that he be given the death penalty, but the judge ruled that he needed to be taught a lesson and the debt he accrued would be paid off by extending his mortgage payments, which would be paid off in about one hundred years.
• A villainous example is seen in the Merlin (1998) TV miniseries. After he turns against her, Mab removes Frik's powers, but doesn't kill him, instead leaving him to wander the world in his misery, not a magical being but not quite human either. Luckily for him, he turns out to be quite happy as a human.
• Murdoch Mysteries: In "Midnight Train to Kingston", Murdoch and Dr. Ogden are among those on the train taking James Gillies to be hanged. At one point, they're discussing the situation, and Julia speculates that it might be better for Gillies to rot in prison instead, suggesting that a life sentence would be "crueler".
• In Once Upon a Time, Snow White is in a major Heroic BSoD and shows signs of being a Death Seeker. She goes to Regina and asks her to end the feud (and her misery) and just kill her. Regina is at first happy to oblige, but then notices a dark spot in Snow's heart. Regina gleefully explains that that spot will grow, and darkness and evil will consume her. It will destroy her and her family. So Regina decides to let Snow live, despite her now begging for death, knowing that this will be her revenge.
  • In a later season The Evil Queen, separated from a reformed Regina, threatens to unleash the water from The River of Lost Souls on the whole town of Storybrooke, unless Snow White and Prince Charming come to her to be executed. After not finding a proper solution, they agree, since they will be Together in Death. Realizing this, The Evil Queen instead infects their hearts with a modified sleeping curse: one of them will be asleep, if they are woken up by True Love's Kiss, the other one will fall asleep in their place, making them live unable to be together.
• The Originals: After Tyler tries to get his revenge on Klaus, Klaus lets him live after realizing Tyler wanted to die.
• In Penny Dreadful, the Putney family try to imprison and enslave Caliban as the first exhibit in an abusive freakshow, not realising his physical strength. He kills Mr and Mrs Putney, but deliberately leaves their daughter Lavinia, who had particularly callously pretended to befriend him while being in on the plan, as a blind^note He didn't blind her, she always was orphan about to stumble on her parents' gruesomely wounded corpses.
• Power Rangers Super Megaforce: In the episode "Vrak is Back, Part 1", the returned villain Vrak shows the Megaforce Rangers cruel mercy not once, but twice. At the end of their first battle, he tells the Rangers he wants them to suffer in the humiliation of their defeat. At the end of their second battle, he once AGAIN says he won't destroy the Rangers, instead leaving them alive so they are Forced to Watch his Drills destroy the Earth.
• The Punisher (2017): After horribly disfiguring Billy Russo's handsome face by dragging it across a broken mirror, Frank decides to let him live so he can learn how Frank himself feels every day after the deaths of his family.
  "Dying's easy. You're gonna learn about pain. You're gonna learn about loss. Every morning, I look for them, Bill. I look for them. But then I remember. It's gonna be the same for you. When you look at your ugly, mangled face, you'll remember what you did."
• There's a particularly vicious example in La reina del sur where Teresa, a drug trafficker in Spain, captures and tortures one of her many enemies, a French heroin trafficker who also uses the drug to keep women high and under his control in his brothel. She has him savagely beat with a bat to the point where his spinal cord is damaged beyond repair, yet she leaves him alive so that he can "drag himself at the feet of others like the animal that he is," as Teresa stated (she had major issues against someone using drugs to force women into prostitution). He is killed in the following episode for telling the cops about it, though.
• In the Season 2 finale of The Righteous Gemstones, assassins are sent after rival televangelist couple Lyle and Lindy Lissons in retaliation for their earlier attempt to kill Eli Gemstone. Lindy is shot and killed almost immediately, after which Lyle attempts to make a run for it. The assassins point their guns at him, but ultimately allow Lyle (who is wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underwear) to escape into the Alaskan wilderness. He freezes to death and his corpse is eaten by wolves.
• In Robin Hood, Robin spares Gisborne's life after he has killed Marian, the woman they both loved, and Robin's wife. Gisborne begs Robin to end his life; instead, Robin spares him and forces him to live with his guilt (though by the next episode Guy is terrorising the village of Locksley and ends up killing the new regular's kid brother, so letting him live probably wasn't such a good idea after all). They do end up reconciling by the end of Season 2, especially after finding out that they share a half-brother (by Robin's father and Gisborne's mother), only for both to be killed in the Grand Finale.
• Scream: The TV Series: Emma chose to send Kieran to be murdered in jail vs shooting him on the spot and killing him quickly. That's unnaturally cruel action for a final girl, and that's even without regarding her implied Start of Darkness.
• The Shield:
  • Midway through the final season, popular supporting cast character Ronnie Gardocki gives a speech about how killing turncoat murderer Shane Vendrell would be too merciful and would be more content with him rotting in jail for the rest of his life. The irony fairy strikes Ronnie at the end of the series as he is arrested and facing possibly spending the rest of his life in jail. A nasty bit of subversion, given that Ronnie survived countless injuries that would have killed lesser mauve/red-shirt characters over the course of the series, let alone him being the only subordinate of Vic Mackey's to survive the end of the series alive.
  • Vic Mackey's final fate as well could be described as "cruel mercy"; made to face the fact that he turned his protégé into a man who murdered his pregnant wife and young son, forced to watch his most loyal friend arrested (with his betrayal of Ronnie shoved into both men's faces for added "fuck-you"-ness), and then ordered out of the police precinct, now knowing that every one of his sins is now public knowledge amongst the rank and file police officers who used to look to Vic as the precinct's resident Alpha Male. Vic Mackey was given immunity for his numerous and varied crimes, and got a nice cushy contract working for ICE to boot. However, Agent Murray, in her capacity as Mackey's Literal Genie, tells him that he's not going to be out on the street busting skulls like he used to; he's going to be sitting at his desk, with its sterile surroundings and bad lighting, doing paperwork for his entire tenure. Noncompliance means dissolution of his immunity agreement, and off he'll go to prison. And once said tenure is over, he'll be kicked out and never be allowed to work in law enforcement again. Some familiar with Mackey's character would see this as his own personal hell. This is open to interpretation, however, as the last scene of the series is Vic strapping on his pistol and heading out into the night, suggesting that he will somehow find a way to continue being who and what he is.
• In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Threads", it seems like Anubis will execute his minion Ba'al for betraying him and failing to defend Dakara from the System Lord's enemies. Even Ba'al thought Anubis' plan to wipe out all life in the galaxy at once was a tad overkill, if only out of self-preservation. However, Anubis lets Ba'al live solely so he can witness the coming end of all life, himself included, knowing that his work on the Stargate network made it possible.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • In "I, Mudd", Captain Kirk and company find themselves trapped with the infamous Harry Mudd, an Affably Evil fraudster. The Enterprise crew works together with the villain to escape the android-run prison that they are trapped in, but in the end, Kirk decides to leave Mudd behind. Mudd is left to enjoy a life of luxury but is also left with at least 500 androids — all of which have been programmed to mimic his overbearing, nagging wife (and ignore his override commands!).
  • In "The Trouble with Tribbles", Kirk tells Cyrano Jones that if he were arrested and tried for his crime, the sentence would have been 20 years. Thus, he considers it a better option for Jones to pick up every single tribble on K-7 (a task estimated by Spock to take 17.9 years). Still, the problem with the tribbles continuing to breed is a concern that no one mentions... (Although even with the number of tribbles there are, it doesn't seem like it should take almost 18 years just to pick up the ones that already exist, so Spock may have already factored breeding into his estimate.)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • In "Captive Pursuit", O'Brien meets an alien who is specifically bred for Hunting the Most Dangerous Game by a Proud Warrior Race. The prey ultimately gets captured by the hunters in a shameful way, so they give him a Fate Worse than Death by sentencing him to go back to their homeworld alive and caged, the ultimate humiliation. O'Brien rescues him and allows the hunt to continue, to the joy of both prey and hunters.
  • In "The Wire", Garak mysteriously collapses, leading Bashir on a quest to the Cardassian Union to meet the one man capable of saving Garak's life, Enabran Tain. The problem is that Tain is the man who exiled Garak from Cardassia and now hates his former protege with a passion. When he quickly offers Bashir all the information Bashir needs to save Garak's life, Bashir is surprised and thankful. Tain chastises Bashir's gratitude, telling him — to Bashir's growing horror — that he's not doing Garak a favour by saving his life. He wants Garak to live a very long life in exile, surrounded by people who hate him for being a Cardassian and knowing that he will never, ever be able to return to his beloved homeland again.
  • In "Sons of Mogh", cultural differences result in Cruel Mercy to Worf's brother Kurn. With their family dishonored in the eyes of the Empire, Kurn seeks Worf out to give him his honor back... by killing Kurn in a specific ritual. When Dax puts the pieces together (the identity of the Klingon that recently arrived; Worf's belligerence toward Quark over acquiring a specific type of Klingon incense), she arrives just after Worf has struck with the ritual blade, but is in time to have Kurn transported to the infirmary and save him. Denied the restoration of his honor (especially since Sisko threatened Worf not to try it again), Kurn suffers a Fate Worse than Death for a Klingon, and slips into a deeper depression, turning suicidal... until Worf decides to provide him with a new identity and have Kurn's memory wiped so that he can start his life as a Klingon anew.
  • In "Broken Link", Odo is judged for killing a member of his species, and as punishment, he is stripped of his shape-shifting abilities and turned into a humanoid. One of his fellow changelings sadly comments that it would've been kinder to simply kill him.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • In the episode "Too Short a Season", a now-aged admiral returns to negotiate with a hostage-taker he had previously betrayed years ago — the terrorist wanted weapons, but the admiral gave them to both him and his enemies to preserve the balance. The admiral is taking illegal drugs that make him de-age but eventually cause incredible pain and death. When they finally meet, the terrorist initially wants to kill the admiral with one of his own smuggled weapons for poetic justice, but then decides a better revenge is to leave him to live in the pain caused by his drugs.
  • In the episode "The Survivors", the Dowd Kevin Uxbridge invoked this on himself. After an attack by the Husnock resulted in the death of his beloved human wife, Kevin used his powers to kill every Husnock in the galaxy with a single thought. Out of guilt, Kevin exiled himself on the colony world with only a replica of his wife to keep him company and remind him of his crime. Captain Picard notes that his crime is beyond the human scale to judge, but Picard notes in his ending log that if he sees it as fitting, then he should be left alone.
• In the Supergirl (2015) episode "The Darkest Place", J'onn tries to kill M'gann when she reveals she's a White Martian, one of the race that destroyed his. At the last minute, he spares her life, not out of mercy, but so she can live out the rest of her long life imprisoned in a DEO cell.
• Supernatural:
  • In Season 10, it's revealed that in 2003, Dean (presumably) killed a young boy's father. In 2014 he finally finds Dean, who has been turned into a demon and is beaten horribly by him. Sam later tells Dean that even though he is now a demon, he still let the man go. Dean tells him that that was the worst thing he could have done, as the man had trained his entire life for the moment when he would finally gain vengeance on Dean, and instead, Dean "whipped his ass".
  • In the penultimate episode of the series, Jack drains Chuck's power, leaving him totally human. Then, despite Chuck's expectations, the Winchesters don't kill him, instead leaving him to live and die as a normal, unloved person.
• True Blood: Eric wanted to leave Russell in the sun to burn until he had a vision of Godric and decided to spare Russell. By burying him in concrete the following night. Naturally, his vision of Godric does not approve. It also backfires, as a vampire zealot ends up freeing Russell in an attempt to overthrow the Authority. Eventually, though, Eric finally has his vengeance and stakes Russell.
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • In "Escape Clause", a hypochondriac sells his soul to the devil for immortality. He starts thrill-seeking, but his wife dies trying to stop him from jumping off a building. He's convicted of murder and tells his lawyer to get him sentenced to the electric chair, but his lawyer manages to talk the judge down to life in prison instead.
  • In "A Nice Place to Visit", a robber wakes up in an afterlife — and quickly realizes that, through his companion, can wish for absolutely anything, ever... and gets bored after a while... and realizes that he's in Hell.
  • Combined with a "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner in "The Obsolete Man". The Chancellor, trapped in a room with a bomb by the man he sentenced to death for believing in God, finally screams "In the name of God, let me out!" Thus, he is released just before the bomb explodes... only to be sentenced by the same government he served for his cowardice and invoking the name of God.
    "Yes! In the name of God, I will let you out!"
• WandaVision: Having unlocked her full powers and beaten down the villain of the series, the ancient witch Agatha Harkness, Wanda decides not to kill her...but instead, wipes her mind and locks her in the sitcom character persona she used to infiltrate Westview.
• The Wheel of Time (2021): The Amyrlin Siuan sentences the gentled Logain to life imprisonment, knowing that having been gentled will have made him a Death Seeker. He tries to subvert this, by throwing every insult he can at the Aes Sedai in the hope that they will result to execution, but they maintain their resolve and he begs to be killed as he is dragged away.

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