Hunting the Most Dangerous Game in Live-Action TV series.
- Stephen Colbert often asks guests who hunt whether they do this.
- Subverted in the 30 Rock episode "Apollo, Apollo":Jack: I've hunted the world's most dangerous game: man. [coughs] Excuse me, manatee.
- The Adventures of Sinbad: In the episode "The Beast Within", Sinbad is forced to play a game of hunter and prey with one of Rumina's monsters.
- An episode of Airwolf features a corrupt small-town sheriff who has set up a man hunting club using prisoners from the local jail, often vagrants arrested for no actual reason.
- The A-Team: In the episode "Children of Jamestown", Martin James sentences the team and Amy to a trial, which involves running on foot from the cultists in jeeps while the cultists try to shoot them down. They manage to give them the slip by hiding against an embankment until the cultists pass.
- The Scythians in Atlantis are bandits who capture travellers, take all their belongings, including weapons, then release them to be hunted.
- The Avengers (1960s): In the episode "The Superlative Seven", a mysterious invitation that strands Steed on a remote island, with six companions who are murdered one by one, makes him a Little Indian.
- Babylon 5 is from an odd angle a quirky version of this. Both the Vorlons and the Shadows seem to have, in different ways, regarded themselves as gamekeepers and the Younger Races as stock that had to be culled from time to time. It is not about a chase scene per se, though.
- Parodied in black•ish when Charlie makes yet another reference to his bizarre childhood:Charlie: My father and I loved to spend time together. I always remember when he took me into the forest to hunt for the most dangerous game... deer.
- Bonanza: The final episode of the long-running western titled "The Hunter" featured "Little" Joe Cartwright, played by Michael Landon, being hunted by a war-deranged ex-Army officer. The villain, who fancies himself as a hunter, steals Joe's supplies, water, and wagon, then allows him to flee as his "prey", before later going after him to kill him. Joe is forced to rely on his wits and luck to defeat the villain.
- Bring 'Em Back Alive: While on a safari in "The Chase", Buck and a photographer are tracked by a tribe of hunters led by a sadistic escaped convict.
- Buffyverse:
- In the Buffyverse, there is no game more dangerous than a Slayer. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Homecoming", the hunters at "Slayerfest '98" all get killed, either by each other or by Buffy, and it's frankly astonishing that they expected anything else to happen. This seems even dumber when one considers that Faith was supposed to be there as well, but Cordelia ended up there instead. So instead of two Slayers, they were facing one Slayer preoccupied with looking after a normal, basically noncombatant human — and they still all died.
- Genevieve hunts other Slayers, as training to kill Buffy.
- One of Spike's initial reasons for coming to Sunnydale was to explicitly hunt Buffy; he had killed two previous Slayers and wanted to make her his third victim.
- In Angel, a comment is made of the existence of paranormal hunting groups. "Vampire hunting in Eastern Europe. That kind of thing."
- In the Charlie's Angels episode "Angel Hunt", the Angels are lured to Diablo Island by an old enemy of Charlie's who plans to hunt them down and kill them in order to avenge himself on their boss.
- In the Charmed (1998) episode "Witch Wars", Gideon — aware that Piper, Phoebe and Paige are on the verge of discovering that he is after Wyatt — conspires with two demons to make the girls part of Witch Wars, a new demonic reality television show where demon contestants compete to hunt down the Charmed Ones, with the winning demon acquiring the witches' powers
- This is the premise of the Game Show Cha$e (2008). 10 contestants are released onto a playing field (called a "game board" in the context of the show). They are set a series of challenges, called "missions," for which they may earn "utilities" (see below). All the while, they must avoid being tagged by the show's resident hunters, more of whom are introduced onto the board as the game progresses; if tagged by the hunter, the contestant is "captured" and eliminated from the game, without winning any money.
- Cold Case: The character of George Marks, played by John Billingsley, is shown hunting his victims in forests, much like the real-life serial killer Robert Hansen. He even chose women who had previously been assaulted and fought back so they would give a good fight. Okay, it was probably because his mother didn't fight back when she was assaulted and "offered" him in her stead.
- Conversed in Community. Pierce believes it's badass. Jeff, not so much.Jeff: Britta, you're not a whore. Shirley, Jesus turned the other cheek, he didn't garnish wages. Pierce, do I need to say this? IT IS WRONG TO HUNT MAN FOR SPORT.
- In Criminal Minds, there's a personality profile that fits people who do this, referred to as "human predator".
- "Open Season" has two UnSubs who kidnap people, set them free in the woods, and then hunt them with bows and arrows.
- In "A Rite of Passage", instead of a more traditional green setting, the UnSub hunts his victims in the desert.
- The UnSub in "The Eyes Have It", while not treating his hunts as sport like the ones in the former two episodes, uses hunters' tactics (such as tripwires) to snare his victims.
- The UnSub in "Exit Wounds" has a hunter's mentality, but tends to just walk up to people and kill them rather than set up elaborate chases.
- They do it again in "Middle Man", with cornfields this time.
- A variant is done in "The Wheels on the Bus..." with a pair of Psychopathic Manchild brothers who use high school students as players in a live version of the fictional video game "Gods of Combat".
- In the CSI: Miami episode "Hunting Ground", when a man is shot and killed by a bow and arrow, Horatio goes against the clock to solve the case involving an exclusive hunting club that hunts humans for sport.
- In the Dark Angel episode "Pollo Loco", Max searches for a fellow X5 named Ben who has been tattooing his barcode onto the necks of his victims then ritualistically killing them and pulling out their teeth for the 'blue lady'.
- In the Syfy adaptation of Deathlands: Homeward Bound the mad Baron enjoys this and ends up hunting Ryan and his True Companions, who are given only knives against mutant hunting dogs and Sec Men with assault rifles. Needless to say, the hunting party doesn't have a chance.
- Doctor Who: In "The Woman Who Fell to Earth", the antagonist is an alien participating in a ritual hunt in order to be made the leader of his species, the Stenza, by tracking down and capturing a randomly designated human as a trophy. The trophies are kept preserved on the Stenza homeworld in a state between life and death.
- Richard, a client in the second episode of Dollhouse, pulls this on Echo, who is programmed into a super outdoorswoman. Specifically, he approached the Dollhouse saying that he was interested in a hunting/hiking trip with a beautiful woman who was a highly skilled outdoorswoman, and they obliged, thinking it was just a variant on the usual "engagement". It wasn't until after he slept with Echo that he sprung the real meaning of the "hunting" trip on her. However, at the end of the episode, it turns out that Connell was actually a sociopathic lunatic hired by Alpha to hunt Echo in a brutally Darwinist attempt to make her stronger. In a Shout-Out, the baddie's fake name is "Richard Connell", the author of the Trope Namer story.
- Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger: The Deathgaliens host an event called "Blood Game" where a Player is sent to a planet to wreak havoc, killing as much of the population as possible, eventually culminating with the destruction of the world, all for the amusement of their "owner" Ginis. Having annihilated 99 planets this way, Earth was supposed to follow until the heroes stepped in.
- In Falling Skies, Pope seems to view the alien invasion mainly as a chance to kill things that can fight back without attracting any legal attention.
- In the pilot episode for Fantasy Island, guilt-ridden bounty hunter Paul Henley's fantasy is to be killed, so that he no longer feels remorse for the deaths he caused. So Mr. Roarke sends Henley on a hunt on the island, with a beautiful young companion named Michelle along for the journey.
- Father Brown: An Egomaniac Hunter does this to Father Brown at the end of "The Lair of the Libertines".
- In the Forever Knight episode "Hunted", Nick and Schanke track a vigilante killer who offers two million dollars to any criminal who escapes her hunt alive. When she discovers that Nick is a vampire, she kidnaps Schanke and holds him hostage to force Nick to play along, so in this case it's Hunting the Even More Dangerous Game.
- In the Game of Thrones episode "The Lion and the Rose", Ramsay Snow and Myranda hunt a peasant girl for sport, because the latter was jealous of her, shooting her through the leg and allowing the dogs to rip her to pieces. It's even more horrific in the books. The women are stripped naked and then hunted down. When Ramsay catches them, he rapes them. If they "give him good sport", he'll cut their throats before flaying them, and name a bitch after her. If she doesn't, he flays her first.
- In the Get Smart episode "Island of the Darned", 86 and 99 are stranded on a KAOS-controlled island where they must fight for their lives as they are hunted by a sadistic KAOS agent armed with guns, tracking dogs, and KAOS killers.
- Gilligan's Island did an episode where Gilligan is the prey of a big game hunter. Like the usual Jerkass guest character visiting the island, he leaves with no intention of letting anyone know that there are people stranded on there since he would be surely arrested for his hunting. Fortunately, the hunter later has a psychotic breaker after a shooting competition, mumbling only "Gilligan" to the complete puzzlement of the others around him, but to the satisfaction of the Castaways.
- Harrow: In "Ex Animo" ("From The Heart"), Harrow unravels a confusing set of clues to determine that this is what had happened to the Victim of the Week.
- In the Hart to Hart episode "Hunted Harts", while visiting a wildlife reserve, Jonathan and Jennifer are hunted as prey by a competitor of Hart Industries.
- A non-lethal variant occurs in the Have Gun – Will Travel episode "The Great Mojavo Chase". Paladin accepts a bet that he can avoid a team of man-hunters on their own turf for a certain period of time.
- In the Here Come the Brides episode "The Soldier", Sergeant Todd tries to get revenge on Jeremy for the death of the regimental bear by shackling his ankles, giving him a five-minute head start, and then tracking him down, planning to shoot him the way Jeremy shot the bear.
- Heroes:
- Sylar hunts evolved humans for their brains.
- And then there's Emil Danko, who is an operative of the US government. And although he doesn't hunt for fun, he does enjoy his job and hates the people he hunts.
- Highlander:
- Duncan plays the part in the episode "Black Tower" as he is hunted by the Mooks of the Big Bad in an office building.
- In "Patient Number 7", the Big Bad is shown to be an Egomaniac Hunter with a vast Trophy Room, who uses a lot of hunting metaphors when instructing his thugs to kill Kyra.
- One Human Giant sketch features astronaut Cliff Tarpey, who created his own reality TV show called "Lunatics" in which he and two other astronauts capture people, hunt them down, and kill them on the moon, for entertainment purposes.
- The Incredible Hulk (1977): The hunter in "The Snare" is so loony that when he discovers Banner's Hulk form, he is delighted at the special challenge with his quarry.
- This is the premise of Interceptor, where the (presumably) human contestants are mercilessly hunted down by the titular Interceptor trying to "zap" them (nonlethally jamming the locks on their backpacks) with his infrared Arm Cannon.
- In the I Spy episode "The Name of the Game", Kelly and Scott are the quarry in a deadly game of hide-and-seek. The hunter: a general obsessed with the idea that he's been betrayed.
- Parodied in the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters": not only are the protagonists the ones doing the hunting, they intend only to humiliate their quarry by doing something involving testicles (they spend the episode arguing over just what).
- In the Kraft Suspense Theatre episode "The Hunt", a Small-Town Tyrant sheriff occasionally allows inmates to escape from the local jail so he and his posse can have fun tracking and killing them.
- The Villain of the Week in one episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is a Robert Hansen-style serial killer who brings women to a forest preserve to hunt them.
- Logan's Run: In "Capture", the bored, Crazy Survivalist husband and wife team James and Irene Borden made a habit of killing Runners that passed by their estate and have the keys mounted as trophies. They learned about Sandmen from these Runners. Longing for a greater challenge, James hunts Logan and Francis with a Ray Gun. After Jessica escapes from their custody, Irene begins hunting her with an antique 20th Century rifle.
- A version in Lost Girl where a prisoner is given a chance for freedom by being the prey and the contestants for the position of the Ash (the local leader of the Light Fae) must kill them before they reach their symbol of freedom.
- In the Lost in Space episode "Hunter's Moon", after killing a hostile alien, Professor Robinson comes across a "hunter" and must replace his dead prey.
- Manhunt was a short-lived reality show airing on UPN in 2001 that featured "Big Tim Kingman" and a bunch of actors pretending to be bounty hunters, all of whom chased after hapless contestants. Why was it so short-lived? Producers rigged the game in favor of certain contestants, a deal with WWE that would've seen more talent cast as "manhunters" fell through, and the show was filmed in California instead of Hawaii, as advertised.
- The Outdoor Life Network show Mantracker is essentially a nice version of this. A professional tracker and a local expert must hunt down two people on the show. Terry Grant (always referred to as Mantracker!) and his partner have no idea what their prey look like or where their finish line is. The Prey have about 36 hours to travel through 40KM of Canadian Wilderness (recently, a few episodes have been done in California), while evading Mantracker. They're on foot, Mantracker's on horseback, which is both blessing and curse based on terrain. No weapons are involved.
- Played for Laughs in the Married... with Children episode "The Gas Station Show". After the "Sunday Bundy Fun Day" Al plans with the family ends with the family eating him into debt and abandoning him to work at the gas station alone, he then says that next Sunday, they'll all go hunting, but he'll be the only one with a gun.
- One episode of Matt Houston has a sporting-goods magnate who hunts athletes in this manner.
- The Middleman: In the episode "The Manicoid Teleportation Conundrum", when the intrepid duo are sent to solve the mysterious disappearances of a benevolent alien race with a sweet tooth for precious gems, Wendy is inadvertently teleported to a deserted hunting reserve where Dr. Gil, a usually affable TV psychiatrist, is looking for something fresh to put on his mantel. It's "The Most Dangerous Game"... with aliens.
- The Murdoch Mysteries episode "Artful Detective" is about a Deadly Game being fought on the streets of Toronto. When Murdoch starts getting too close to the truth, he's added to the listings without his knowledge. One of the survivors, a Egomaniac Hunter who was the only one not desperate for money, even says he wanted to hunt "the most dangerous game".
- The New Adventures of Robin Hood: In "The Prey", Robin and his men rob a gambling house, and make a mortal enemy of its owner, Simon Asher. Robin is overpowered and captured by a quartet of aristocratic huntsmen: Master Chu, Lord Henry, Lord Spire and Mr. Fox. They offer Robin a chance of survival by playing a game of hunting, with Robin as the prey. To ensure his cooperation, they are holding Friar Tuck hostage.
- The Outer Limits (1995):
- "The Hunt" has humans hunting androids that look indistinguishable from humans. The androids are programmed to be unable to harm humans, though, until they find schematics detailing how to disable that feature.
- In "Judgment Day", the titular Immoral Reality Show gives convicted murderers the choice of having their death sentence performed by the state or being hunted down and killed by a relative of the victim. The relative is given 24 hours to find the killer. If they fail to do so within the allotted time, the killer's sentence is automatically commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The killer is implanted with a chip which is tuned to the same frequency as a 10,000-volt taser given to the relative. The taser can shock the killer at 50 feet and kill them at 3 feet.
- A non-lethal variation in The Partridge Family: A detective/author bets the Partridges (for charity) that they cannot elude him for 24 hours. He cheated by bugging their car. When he does catch them, they tell them that he's lost since he didn't find them all — they let the two youngest children spend the night at a friend's house. He pays up. Zigzagged: The kids later reveal that he had found them, and even read them a bedtime story.
- Princess Agents: Yuwen Huai kidnaps girls, including Chu Qiao, then he and his friends hunt them for sport.
- In the Red Dwarf episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", a group of rogue simulants attempt to hunt the crew of Starbug. They even upgrade Starbug's armor and engines and fit it with a laser to make it more worthy prey.
- In the Relic Hunter episode "Run Sydney Run", Syd — on a mission in Russia — becomes the prey of a crazed hunter who has taken to tracking the most elusive animal: humans.
- One episode of Renegade features convicts being hunted for fun/as target practice by novice/wannabe assassins.
- Used on Scare Tactics (2003), when the "threat" is a deranged trophy hunter who keeps humans in small cages and releases them to chase down.
- In the Smallville episode "Extinction", Clark discovers Van McNulty has been killing green meteor rock-infected people. When he confronts him, the green kryptonite rock Van is carrying stops him. Knowing Clark's weakness, Van manufactures meteor rock bullets, and almost kills Clark, using Lana as bait. Van McNulty is more of a racist bastard than a hunter, but the imagery is still there.
- In Stargate Atlantis, the Wraith occasionally capture humans and, instead of feeding on them, release them as "Runners". Runners have a tracking device planted within their bodies and are hunted from planet to planet. They do it both for fun and to use the Runners to find any isolated groups of humans that might be hiding from the Wraith but might help a Runner, not knowing what's on his trail.
- Star Trek:
- Kirk manages to invoke this trope to escape in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Squire of Gothos". He asks his captor, "Where's the sport?" in simply hanging him, as he had planned. Instead, Kirk talks his captor into staging a "royal hunt". This bought Kirk enough time for a Deus ex Machina rescue.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- In "Captive Pursuit", one of the station's first contacts through the wormhole from the Gamma Quadrant is Tosk, who was a reptilian humanoid bred to be hunted by another species, with a body and mind highly optimized for that purpose. The hunting party chasing him shows up in act three.
- When Dr. Bashir and Chief O'Brien are captured by Jem'Haddar soldiers in "Hippocratic Oath", they recognise from O'Brien's uniform and insignia that he's an experienced NCO and propose using him for a 'tactical exercise' as a means of execution. However, the trope is not played out, as their leader has an urgent need for a doctor, so orders both men kept alive.
- In Star Trek: Voyager, this is the hat of the Hirogen. Their whole culture revolves around it, and the Voyager crew winds up in their sights every so often. Yet, they're not Always Chaotic Evil; one episode has a Hirogen Alpha discovering Voyager's holodeck and realising they can use this technology to offer an alternative, as their species has become so spread out across the galaxy hunting prey they're in danger of becoming extinct. Unfortunately, a later episode reveals that this had Gone Horribly Right, as the holograms had their intelligence increased to make them more challenging prey and they Turned Against Their Masters.
- Supernatural: In "The Benders", Sam and Dean are investigating what appears to be a Monster of the Week only to find the culprits are an entirely human family of hillbillies who enjoy hunting people for sport.
- Served as the basis for a sketch in Thank God You're Here in which Angus Sampson plays the Egomaniac Hunter (and romance novelist) addressing his unwilling prey.
- Top Gear riffed on this trope heavily when reviewing a new 4x4, which Jeremy put through its paces with the aid of a local Hunt and a scent-marker tied to the back bumper. He didn't quite manage to give them the slip, but it was a close-run thing.
- The Torchwood episode "Countrycide", set in a small Welsh village, involves a village full of cannibals harvesting and butchering passing travellers every ten years.
- In the Ultraman Tiga episode "The Released Target", GUTS encounters two Human Aliens named Rucia and Zara being pursued by a beetle-like alien named Muzan. They soon find out that Rucia and Zara have been sent down to Earth to be freely hunted for sport by Muzan, and work towards trying to save the pair.
- In the Xena: Warrior Princess episode "Dangerous Prey", an evil prince named Morloch hunts the Amazons as if they were animals.
