If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him / Live-Action TV

Moments where a character warns an individual that if they kill the murderer, they will be just like him/her in Live-Action TV.

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• Although never actually spoken, it is heavily implied (and even nearly subverted) during the scene at the Huntsman's treehouse in The 10th Kingdom, when Wolf is about to kill him with the magic axe and Virginia stops him.
  Virginia: No! We can't kill him.
  Wolf: Of course we can, he'd kill us!
  Virginia: That's not the point, he's helpless!
  Wolf: Exactly why we should kill him now!
  Virginia: Wolf, no!
  Wolf: Awwww, he's gonna come after us!
  Virginia: I don't care, we're not killing him.
  Wolf: You're gonna regret this moment.
  • And of course, he's right.
• 24's Jack Bauer doesn't bother with this trope, killing several villains in cold blood including his mentor Christopher Henderson, who no longer has any reason to continue being a bad guy at the time of his death.
  • Played straight in the final season where on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge Jack slaughters countless members of the current conspiracy-of-the-day in ways that cross even his own personal lines. In one of the last hours, he holds another of them in on it, Jason Pillar, hostage, and with whatever composure he has left Pillar screams that by this point Jack is as much a murderer as they are. The fact that in this rare case he's actually right hurts, and in the end when he sobbingly begs Jack not to shoot him because he wants to see his own daughters again Jack ultimately can't bring himself to kill him.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • Variant. Deathlok is trying to interrogate Skye for information. She realizes that Can't Kill You, Still Need You applies to her, so Deathlok then gives The Mole a heart attack and threatens to let him die if Skye doesn't give him the information.
    Skye: You think I don't want to see him suffer?
    Deathlok: Not suffer. Die.
    Skye: He's a murderer.
    Deathlok: Yes, he is. Are you?
  • Skye does break down and give Deathlok the information he wants—but later bitterly says it wasn't worth it, and she should have just let him kill The Mole. The next time she sees him, she shoots him in the back three times and leaves him for dead, without the slightest twinge of remorse (though he does survive).
    Skye: I'm still glad I shot you.
• Played with in an episode of Angel. Knox is at least partially responsible for Fred's death, but Angel starts a long speech about how he won't hurt Knox because he, Angel, has dedicated himself to protecting all human life. However, Wesley interrupts the speech—by shooting Knox.
  Angel: Were you even listening?
• Sort of inverted in an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? ("The Tale of Cutter's Treasure"). The main character was fighting a pirate ghost, and was about to finish him off with a dagger...then realized that the ghost was trapped guarding his treasure, and wanted to be at peace. They decided that after all the people he killed in life he didn't deserve it, and did the LESS MERCIFUL thing by LETTING HIM LIVE.
• A variation (and eventual subversion) occurs in the Babylon 5 episode "Deathwalker" when the title character flaunts her miracle cure to Commander Sinclair, a miracle cure that requires the death of another living being to manufacture. "The billions who live forever will be a monument to my work, and the billions who are murdered to buy that immortality will be the continuance of my work. Not like us? You will become us." The subversion comes when the deal is made to research her cure anyway... only to have the Vorlon ambassador destroy her ship, claiming the younger races were not ready for immortality.
  • In "In the beginning" (a spin-off depicting the Earth-Minbari war) Dr. Franklin is revealed to have gathered extensive biological information on Minbari after he tried to cure a group of sick aliens, but he's unwilling to pass the info to the military since they'll most certainly use it to create bio-weapons and he considers using it to be as bad as the genocide that Minabari are inflicting.
  • Also in the season three episode "Dust", Ivanova is about to let loose the full power of Babylon 5's defense grid on the Psi-Cop Alfred Bester only to be stopped by Sheridan. He even incorporates the trope name in the speech (somewhat), telling Ivanova to fight Bester and evil baddies like him without becoming them.
    • Sheridan later sacrifices dozens of innocent and disabled telepaths to undo the Psi Corps-supported coup. But he spares Bester's girlfriend because he's a good guy. Or it might have simply been chance. But he didn't specifically arrange her death.
• Subverted (and possibly lampshaded) in the Battlestar Galactica episode "Blackmarket". Lee is holding the big bad at gunpoint, and the big bad claims that Lee will not shoot because "You're not like me." When Lee does not lower the weapon the man starts to say it again and Lee shoots him dead. The producers say this never happened, and all events from that episode (With the exception of the death of Pegasus's CO) are never referred to again.
• Breaking Bad:
  • Early in season one, in "The Bag's in the River", Walt is faced with this choice when he has Krazy 8 chained up in a basement. Hilariously he makes a pros and cons list, balancing "Judeo-Christian values" versus "He will kill you and your family"
  • The trope is also applied to a literal extreme, as Walt absorbs traits from many of the people he kills. A few examples: he is seen cutting the crust off his sandwiches after killing Krazy 8, and suddenly starts drinking his whiskey on the rocks after killing Mike Ehrmantraut.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Faith pulls this on Buffy to break a Mexican Standoff where she and Buffy both have knives to the other's throat. Unique in that Faith seems to somewhat want Buffy to kill her and thus become like her, as some form of revenge. Yeah, Faith had issues...
  • In "Graduation Day, Part 1", Xander raises this concern, when Buffy is intent on killing Faith. Not only does she ignore him, after she failed and Faith wakes up from her coma, Buffy follows her onto Angel for another go.
  • In Issue #8 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Buffy finally says what we all think of when this trope is done poorly.
    Willow: You know what I mean. It's not like we can just stake these grunts in the heart, right? Not killing humans is what separates us from the bad guys.
    Buffy: No, not being bad is what separates us from the bad guys.
  • In S5's "The Gift" Giles decides not to expose Buffy to these moral questions with Ben/Glory, and kills Ben/Glory himself.
  • In S6's "Villains", when Warren accidentally shoots and kills Tara while trying to kill Buffy, Willow goes insane with grief and fully intends to kill him. Buffy desperately tries to reason with Willow by invoking this, insisting that if she does this, she lets Warren destroy her as well; Willow is beyond caring, and the episode ends with her torturing Warren and finally flaying him alive.
• The opening episode of Crime Story has Detective Torello thwarting a robbery of a department store by Ray Luca's mob - he storms into Luca's storefront hideout and is ready and willing to shoot him on sight. Instead, he kicks Luca's chair out from under him, fires a bullet into the floor an inch from his head, and growls that he's going to take Luca down legally. Luca never bats an eye through all this - it's a Moment of Awesome for both of them.
• Criminal Minds:
  • Played bizarrely straight (and by a character who should have known better); an episode of the second season ends with one of the agents pondering, apropos of almost nothing, how much difference there REALLY is between the offenders that they hunt, and the agents themselves. In this corner, an antisocial, sociopathic recidivist murderer who was abused by his parents for fifteen years and slaughters innocent women purely for the sexual thrill that it gives him. In the opposite side, an agent with ten or fifteen years of experience in fieldwork with the FBI who is willing to fire their weapon ONLY in the cause of self-defence or the preservation of another life (and even then, only with utmost angst over the decision afterward), and who has dedicated their professional life to the incarceration of those who would commit such heinous crimes. Yeah, that's a real slippery slope right there.
  • In an episode of season three, a man takes it upon himself to rescue his kidnapped daughter, but is interrupted from killing him by Agent Reid, who tells the man that if he kills the kidnapper, he'll introduce a cycle of violence into his daughter's life. As he pleads with the father, asking him when the violence will stop, the man whispers, "Tomorrow," and shoots the kidnapper in the head.
• Common in Doctor Who, where the highly moral Doctor often must make a difficult decision between killing his enemies (technically a violation of his principles, though he's forced to do so more often than not) or showing mercy at the risk of them going on to hurt others. He often settles for giving them a fair chance to leave peacefully, even pleading with them to "just walk away."
  • The Doctor almost references this trope by name in "Genesis of the Daleks" when he hesitates in killing a large number of baby Daleks, stating that if he did so he'd "become just like them". In the new series episode "Dalek", the Doctor IS prepared to simply blow away the titular creature, but Rose pulls this trope on him.
  • "The Age of Steel": Mickey persuades Jake not to kill a controlled Cybus guard by pointing out that doing so would make him no better than a Cyberman.
  • And yet sometimes his "mercy" is pretty severe, as in "The Family of Blood", where one member is put into a field, alive and conscious, as a scarecrow and another is trapped in a mirror — every mirror.
  • A noteworthy example in "The Doctor's Daughter", when he seems about to kill a man in vengeful anger but then puts the gun down, explaining, "I never would", despite his rage.
  • Completely forgotten in "A Good Man Goes to War", as the Doctor blows up an entire Cyberlegion just for a dramatic entrance. Although, to be fair, Cybermen are humans who have had all their emotions removed, and who probably would have preferred to die rather than be converted.
  • He does, however, start to slide down that slippery slope when he attempts to kill the doctor that the Gunslinger is trying to kill for making him in "A Town Called Mercy". Luckily, Amy is there to snap him out of it. To be honest, the Doctor is not a fan of Kahler-Jex, who created cyborgs to go to war, killing thousands to bring about peace, though it is hypocritical to judge Jex when the Doctor practically committed genocide to end the Time War, making him the last Time Lord.
  • "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos": The Doctor uses this argument when she hears that Graham is planning to kill Tzim-Sha, who was responsible for his wife's death. Eventually, Graham agrees, and decides on a Fate Worse than Death for the villain instead.
  • The Ranskoor example is subverted in the next episode, "Resolution", where the Doctor plots to kill the Dalek without a single word about the morality of the action. Several people pointed out that, in hindsight, this makes her argument in the previous episode not a moral warning, but rather a simple statement of fact. If Graham had killed Tzim-Sha, he would become a killer... like the Doctor.
    The Doctor: I learned to think like a Dalek a long time ago.
    • She does, however, make a point of giving the Dalek a fair chance to walk away, and even makes sure her companions heard her do it. It doesn't work, for obvious reasons.
• The Dukes of Hazzard:
  • Uncle Jesse has instilled in his nephews, Bo and Luke, that for as wily as Boss Hogg is and for as much grief and trouble as he and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane has caused the Duke family through the years — simple harassment to outright framing the Duke boys for various crimes to trying to illegally foreclose on their property — they have a moral obligation and duty to rescue and aid Hogg (and/or Rosco, when necessary) whenever their lives are threatened. Jesse has told Bo and Luke that, if they were ever to allow Boss or Rosco to die at the hands of criminals, they would be disinherited and disowned as they would be just as responsible for allowing their deaths to happen as if they had pulled the trigger themselves.
  • In the Season 2 episode "Grannie Annie", after Boss is kidnapped by a counterfeiter and his bodyguard who plans to brutally kill him (after believing he double-crossed him), Rosco begs Bo and Luke to go after the counterfeiter and save Boss' life; Bo and Luke balk and all but outright refuse, but after Rosco gives a tear-stained, impassioned plea telling them that if they don't go after Boss's captors and allow him to be killed, he will hold them accountable for the rest of their lives and never forgive them ... and (although unstated) they will be just as bad as Boss was. The Duke boys agree and save Boss's hide.
• Played with in The Expanse. Throughout seasons 2 and 3, botanist Prax slowly becomes more and more numb to the sorts of bad things the Rocinante usually deals with in their search for his daughter Mei. In the process, he also forms a friendship with moral sociopath Amos, who has a soft spot for kids, having lacked parental figures in his life. When they find Mei and corner her kidnapper, Strickland, Prax is ready to execute him in cold blood... until Amos nudges the gun away, saying, "You're not that guy." Prax realizes the line he almost crossed and leaves with Mei, letting Strickland breathe a sigh of relief. Then Amos says, "I am that guy" and immediately shoots Strickland in the head.
• Used and justified in the Farscape three-part episode "Look At The Princess". At the end of the trilogy, Crichton has Scorpius at his mercy and is ready to shove him into a vat of acid; however, at the last minute, he finds himself unable to go through with the murder, and lets Scorpius off with a warning. Later, it's revealed that this had absolutely nothing to do with any fine motives on Crichton's part- he literally couldn't do it because the neurochip Scorpius had implanted in his brain wouldn't let him. Of course, even if he had been able to overcome the chip, it probably wouldn't have done much good, because as soon as Crichton has left the room, Scorpius casually reveals that his gimp suit can't be so easily dissolved by the acid.
• Subverted and yet played straight in an episode of Fastlane. Billie has the criminal who ruined her life at gunpoint when one of her male partners arrives and yells, "Don't do it! Not like this! (Dramatic pause) Use my gun! It has a larger caliber so it will be more satisfying." Her other partner has a similar do-it-this-way comment (which I can't remember), but they're both using reverse psychology to convince her not to kill the criminal. Maybe. Well, she doesn't, anyway.
• Hilariously played with in Firefly, where Mal wins a sword fight and is encouraged to kill his opponent who is beaten and lying on the ground. He's told it's a matter of honor, but Mal responds, "Mercy is the mark of a great man." Then stabs him (slightly).
  Mal: Guess I'm just a good man. [stabs opponent again] Well, I'm all right.
• In The Flash (2014) Christmas Episode "Running to Stand Still", Barry has to talk down Patty from murdering Mark Mardon, the man who murdered her father. As Patty is a cop and she's holding the defeated and helpless Mardon at gunpoint, Barry points out that Mardon isn't worth Patty going to jail for murder, and throwing away everything she's worked for. Patty listens and chooses to arrest Mardon instead.
  • In later seasons, this trope is played straight at least a few times. Barry himself has to stop himself from killing Thawne, Zoom and Cicada for what they've done for his family. He also acts like a Moral Guardian and frequently reprimands other characters whenever they feel like executing the villain.
• Discussed in the Flashpoint episode "Clean Hands", while the team is escorting a prisoner. When his partner mentions she's tempted to harm the prisoner, Ed invokes this trope, saying he wants to have clean hands when he hugs his children that night. When the episode's antagonists turn out to be fellow law enforcement officers, the team invokes this trope again while trying to talk them down.
• Homicide Hunter's Joe Kenda is very proud of the fact that he never fired his gun in his 20-something years as a cop, because he thinks it would have been stooping to the level of the criminals he was trying to catch:
  "If you pull that trigger, you become like them. And I'm not like them."
• In episode 9 of iZombie, Liv, after eating the brain of a soldier with PTSD, decides that the best method for dealing with Blaine is killing him. As she is about to snipe him, she decides that if she does kill him, she will be no better than him (it should be noted that while Liv eats brains from dead bodies in the morgue and uses them to solve crimes, Blaine kidnaps his victims, violently murders them, and sells them to clients that he infects with zombieism, and does all of this while running what is effectively a Zombie Mafia). Immediately after Liv makes her decision, Blaine shoots her boyfriend in the head.
• Used in episode "The Scent of Roses" of Knight Rider. After his wife was killed just moments after they were wed, Michael Knight chases down the killer and begins to beat him, but KITT stops him.
  KITT: Michael, Michael, stop it! You wouldn't be able to live with yourself!
• MacGyver, being a Technical Pacifist, was rather fond of pulling this gem out whenever his sidekick-of-the-week had the villain at their mercy.
• In the 1998 series Merlin, Vortigern kills the Knight Templar King Constant and takes his throne, then promptly turns into an even worse king himself. Merlin comments, "And one tyrant smoothly passed the crown to another, even worse."
• Done in a comedic effect in Mockingbird Lane. Although Herman doesn't kill Steve (he actually died falling down the hidden staircase,) Grandpa installs Steve's heart to replace Herman's failing one. Herman then takes Steve's place as an Explorer Scout leader, the only type of socializing Steve did after his wife died.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • In the first season, flashbacks reveal Snow White willingly lost her memories of Prince Charming and the effect began to darken her personality. Because of this she ultimately decides to kill Regina since she's responsible for her misery. Prince Charming eventually learns that if she succeeds, she'll become as corrupted as Regina and sets out to both stop her and restore her memories of him.
  • In season 2, Snow actually goes through with it when she tricks Regina into killing her even more evil mother Cora. When Regina pulls out her heart to take revenge, she sees there's now a black mark on it and puts it back, wanting to see Snow continue down this path until she becomes evil herself.
• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Invoked by Alice as the reason she didn't kill The Red Queen when presented with the opportunity:
  Alice: Because I'm not like you.
  • Cyrus also tells the peasants that if they kill the Queen they won't be better than her. They ignore his advice.
• Justified in the 2006 Robin Hood series: Prince John promised that if Robin kills the Sheriff, then John will kill all the Peasants in Nottingham.
• In Robin of Sherwood, Robin says they can't kill Gisbourne while they hold him captive, because then they'll be just like him. The notably less idealistic Will Scarlet retorts "Who says we're not?"
• In The Shield, Vic Mackey regularly breaks the law to catch criminals. One could argue that he's better than the criminals, because he's breaking the law to keep his precinct safe. But then Internal Affairs lieutenant Kavanaugh develops a vendetta against him, and resorts to breaking the law to bring him down. So... he becomes a corrupt cop to bring down a corrupt cop. One of the most justified examples of "You will be no better than him", since if you think that breaking the law to catch a criminal is acceptable, then Vic should be allowed to do his thing. And if you think that it's not acceptable, then Kavanaugh's actions are not justified.
  
  Of course, Vic Mackey doesn't just bend the rules to get results. He pulls heists to enrich himself (such as the Armenian money train) and even murdered a fellow detective just to protect himself and his questionable methods (which Kavanaugh seeks to prove). He goes out of his way to antagonize Kavanaugh (such as sleeping with his mentally ill ex-wife and bragging about it to him). Kavanaugh may have crossed the line in "framing a guilty man" and ultimately paid with his career and freedom for his transgressions, but he avoided the Moral Event Horizon. Mackey crossed it in the pilot episode with no regrets.
• Smallville:
  • Said word for word in "Fragile" by Clark to convince a second-generation meteor freak not to kill her similarly-powered father.
  • One of the only times Clark has intentionally killed an opponent was when he faced the alien warrior, Titan. Clark reflects that, for a moment, he actually enjoyed it. He also clearly killed Brainiac (or tried to), rationalizing that machines aren't alive.
  • In a different twist, Chloe tries to convince Clark that Lex is a big threat and Clark can't just let him walk away. Clark asks if this means he must kill and says that it would make him just like Lex.
  • A postmortem version. Clark says something like this after he finds out that Oliver killed Lex Luthor.
• Implied in The Sopranos. The Shrink Dr. Melfi is violently raped by Villain of the Week Jesus Rossi, who's then released by the cops on a technicality. Melfi realizes she could just sic Tony on him and intends to, but chickens out at the last second to maintain her moral high ground, leaving her rapist free to victimize more women in the future.
• In an episode of Stargate SG-1, Daniel Jackson and Captain Samantha Carter come across a vat of young Goa'uld symbiotes, Daniel is about to shoot it when Captain Carter says that if he does he will be as bad as the Goa'uld. They begin to walk away but then Daniel suddenly turns and fires at the vat anyway, killing the symbiotes.
  • Subverted in Stargate Atlantis, Shephard and Michael fight on the roof-tops. Michael hangs from the roof by his fingernails. Earlier in the episode, Michael had threatened Teyla's baby. Teyla stamps on one hand and then the other; Michael falls to his doom. Mom morality pwns Hollywood morality.
  • This is part of the philosophy of the Ancients in Stargate SG-1. They believe in the free will of every being and even though they have the power to eliminate every threat in the galaxy, they still don't do it. This, however, is taken to such an extreme that one can only declare them guilty.
    • Then again, later seasons reveal the existence of the Ancients' evil counterparts, the Ori. A rival group of ascended beings who are more than happy to maintain complete control within their galaxy by enslaving everyone. The Ancients were actually exiled by them because of this difference in philosophy, so it makes sense the Ancients themselves would be really worried about slipping down the slope if they start interfering and solving mortals' problems. They do prevent the Ori from acting directly in our galaxy, but the Ori's followers are free-willed (if misled) mortals, so the Ancients don't do anything to stop them.
    • The slight flaw in this argument is that many of the "threats" arise from leftover Ancient technology strewn all over the galaxy, thus providing countless opportunities for younger species to advance their technology far ahead of their morality. If the Ancients had bothered to clean up after themselves, their hands-off policy would be more laudable.
    • The slight flaw in 'this' argument is that human beings ARE leftover Ancient technology. If they were to clean up after themselves, they'd have to destroy humanity itself.
• Supergirl (2015): After Agent Liberty tortures a woman to death for being an alien, her (human) boyfriend decides to torture Agent Liberty to death. Supergirl tries to talk him down, but he's not interested.
  Supergirl: If you kill him, what does that make you?
  Manchester: The intolerant Left.
• An all-too-common occurrence on Walker, Texas Ranger:
  • Walker's dilemma in Season 4's "Final Justice", when he encounters a racist criminal gone free who helped murder his parents. Walker spares the man's life, but still beats him like a bass drum and brings him in for arrest.
    Walker: You're not worth it, Murdock. We'll let a court decide your fate.
  • In Season 6's "In God's Hands", when Trivette is suspended without pay following the accidental shooting of six-year-old Danny McGee and goes through a Heroic BSoD, Danny's older brother, Ted buys a gun from an unlicensed seller to kill him, since he can't buy one from a real gun shop; obviously, the clerk knew he lied about his age, as State and Federal Law states one has to be at least 21 years old to buy a gun in Texas. When Walker finally snaps Trivette out of his BSOD and the two revisit the scene of the crime to determine if Trivette did it or the bullet belonged to the Villain of the Week, Kroeger, Ted plans to kill Trivette, to which the latter responds he will make one of the biggest mistakes of his life. This causes Ted to relent, especially when Trivette tells him that doctors operated on Danny and removed the bullet, and he is expected to recover. In addition, Walker proves to Trivette and Ted that the bullet that hit Danny really did belong to Kroeger, having found Trivette's bullet lodged in a tree. Trivette is placed back on duty, and the two Rangers then finish the job by arresting Kroeger.
  • In "Everyday Heroes", also in Season 6, after Trent beats up an abusive husband who broke into his wife's home to kill her, the wife attempts to kill him herself to finally be free of him. Trent managed to talk her out of killing the husband no matter how much he deserves it. While it was going on, said abusive husband recovered and pulled a gun on them. He mockingly taunts them for their mercy and spitefully asks Trent what he's going to do now. Cue an angry Trent easily disarming the fatass and beating him unconscious.
  • In another Season 6 episode, "Test of Faith", where a middle school teacher, who was a former karate student of Walker's, is killed by gang members, Walker and Trivette get the break they need to catch them after a student tearfully comes forward and tells Walker he witnessed the gang kill him, not to mention he accidentally shot a fellow classmate with a gun he purchased out of fear of retaliation from the gang while trying to stop another classmate named Carlos, who was a prospective new member of that gang, from shooting her. The gang leader, Loco Morales, escapes the hideout after it is raided, but Walker chases him down and dukes it out with him, just before Carlos shows up. While Loco encourages Carlos to shoot Walker, Walker tries to talk him down, saying he didn't shoot Faith and has his whole life ahead of him. Carlos relents, allowing Walker to arrest Loco.
  • In Season 9's "Division Street", when Boomer Knight (played by Hulk Hogan), an ex-con-turned community center director, is kidnapped by a drug dealer named Carson, the two gangs that Carson dealt the drugs to, only to join Boomer's center to try to live decent lives, realize that he played them for fools to get rid of Boomer and likely intends to blame them for his murder. Thus, the two gangs cooperate to rescue Boomer while the younger relatives of the rival gangs' leaders get Walker and his crew to help. When the gangs come bursting into Carson's hideout and beat up the henchmen, they release Boomer from his noose and threaten to hang Carson instead. Boomer tells them not to do it, as they will end up in prison like he did. The gangs release Carson from the noose, seconds before the Rangers arrive to arrest him and have him indicted for drug dealing and Boomer's attempted murder.
• In The Walking Dead franchise, this trope has not only been belabored to death, it's been resurrected and kept in a shipping container to be brought out every other episode, even though it smells worse than a four year-old walker by now.
• This is why Warehouse 13 insists on Tesla stun-guns and bronzing. As Artie puts it, killing "taints your soul."

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