Moments where a character warns an individual that if they kill the murderer, they will be just like him/her in Western Animation.
Examples:
- Actually discussed in-depth in Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- When Zuko reveals he knows how to find the man who killed Katara's mother, Aang tries to talk her out of seeking revenge on him. Aang even points out this is exactly what happened with Jet after the Fire Nation killed his parents. She ignores him but ultimately doesn't go through with it when she has him at her mercy because he's Not Worth Killing.
- In the series finale, Aang, a pacifist monk, agonizes about how he can stop main villain Ozai without killing him. The dilemma started once Zuko advocated it—his personal experience during his second war meeting in seeing his own father settle on annihilating the Earth Kingdom up to Ba Sing Se has shown him just how high the stakes are, and shared it with Aang so he could grasp that. When Aang consults with the avatars of his former lives on what to do, the show subverts this trope: as Chosen One, Aang's duty is to protect the world - if the only way to save countless lives and stop Ozai is to kill him, Aang must do it, even if it means sacrificing his own personal convictions. Even the previous airbender Avatar, who shared Aang's pacifist spiritual beliefs as an Air Nomad, told him that an Avatar has to place the good of the world above his own spiritual well-being, and if a threat to the world is so extreme that it's impossible to defeat non-lethally, it becomes his duty to kill.
- Subverted in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Batgirl Returns". When Catwoman is about to drop Roland Daggett into his own vat of acid, Batgirl calls out "If you drop him you'll be just like him!" to which Catwoman replies "Oh, grow up"—and lets go. Daggett survives, being saved by Batgirl.
- Batman Beyond: In "Speak No Evil", Fingers (a gorilla given human-level intelligence) has caught the poacher who captured and sold him and his mother, but is dissuaded from killing him when Batman points out that he's behaving like a human.
- Used three times if not more in Beast Machines. One is when Optimus Primal was thinking of using the Plasma Energy Chamber to destroy Megatron and everything else technological on Cybertron, in order to stop his tyranny. Cheetor flat-out tells him "You fire this thing, and you're no better than he is!". Another time is after Botanica joins the Maximals and uses it as her justification to not get involved with the actual fighting: "The more we fight like Megatron, the more we become like Megatron". Fortunately she realizes that it's also her world and her fight, so she joins the battle in time to save the others from Obsidian and Stryka. A variant, though not actually about killing, when Tankorr is revealed to have the spark of Rhinox, and he is awoken to this, he decides both the Maximals and Megatron need to go and he, Tankorr, should be ruler. Cheetor decides to reformat Tankorr to make him Rhinox again, but Optimus stops him, saying "Rhinox has made... his choice. If we tamper with his mind, then we're no better than Megatron. Let him go."
- Team Firebender Wheeler and Team Waterbender Gi play out this trope in the Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "'teers in the Hood", when Gi's trying to drown the gang member who shot her friend. A fair example, as the Planeteers have never actually killed anybody, and Gaia implies in "The Conqueror" that maintaining a (relatively) peaceful approach is important to their cause.Wheeler: Gi, you don't really want to do this!Gi: Yes, I do!Wheeler: This is his way, Gi, not yours...(Gi gives up with a sigh and starts crying in his arms)
- Invoked (in a more comedic context) in the episode of Drawn Together that has Foxxy Love turning into a minstrel and being arrested by some Culture Police. When she is thrown into the paddy wagon, she sees herself surrounded by a number of other politically-incorrect cartoon characters from the past, who tell her that they are all being taken to a prison facility. At the prison, after briefly being incarcerated, the caricatures are forced to board a conveyor belt that dumps them into a vat at its end, where they are permanently erased. The other housemates show up for Foxxy just in time and confront the Big Bad in charge of the genocide plot (who, judging by his voice and headgear, is obviously Mickey Mouse). Spanky Ham gives an impassioned speech, arguing that if Mickey exterminates all the caricatures because of embarrassment at the racism they embody, he will be just like the Nazis, and thus racist himself. Mickey briefly seems to consider this argument, but then just laughs and starts the conveyor belt. Foxxy dies, but Captain Hero manages to reverse Earth's rotation to bring her back to life for a (sort of) happy ending.
- Used in the Dungeons & Dragons (1983) episode "The Dragon's Graveyard", where Hank refuses to finish Venger on the grounds that if he did, "We'd be no better than you are."
- Gargoyles:
- Spoken by Elisa to Goliath in the premiere, as Goliath held the villain David Xanatos over the edge of his own building (although she compares the act to something the other main villain, Demona, would do).
- The show elaborates in another episode, saying killing someone in the heat of battle was all right, but attacking a defenseless enemy with the direct intent to kill was wrong. It's not that all instances of killing are wrong, but that murder is wrong.
- Goliath has to relearn this lesson a lot, as there are a number of occasions after Xanatos where he almost kills someone in blind rage but is talked out of it. Although he can be excused for it, as his entire existence before coming to Manhattan was to fight and kill threats. You can't just decide something one time and rewrite what might be centuries of attacking on your first instinct.
- Zig-Zagging Trope in Jumanji: The Animated Series where the villainous Van Pelt is an Invincible Villain with Resurrective Immortality so simply "killing" him isn't an option in the first place, so the heroes instead devise a plan to trap him forever in a pit, which would potentially be a Fate Worse than Death. The problem is that Van Pelt is not simply a person, but an actual creation of the game itself, so when their plan actually does work, Jumanji responds by literally transforming Peter into the next Van Pelt, and Peter Van Pelt gloats that if the other characters kill him, they will just transform into Van Pelt as well. The only way to get Peter back was to rescue Van Pelt from the prison they put him in, making it a bit of an intentional Space Whale Aesop.
- Justice League:
- In the episode "Hereafter", Superman appears to be killed by Toyman when performing a Heroic Sacrifice.Toyman: What are you gonna do to me?
Wonder Woman: I'm gonna punch a hole in your head.
The Flash: We don't do that to our enemies.
Wonder Woman: Speak for yourself.
Flash: I'm trying to speak for Superman. [she releases him] - When Big Barda is ready to kill Granny Goodness, Martian Manhunter stops her. Interestingly, he only says that the Enemy Civil War needs to continue and does not mention this trope.
- This is the case with Huntress in the episode "Double Date." She is about to kill Steven Mandragora, the mobster who had her parents murdered while she was a child right in front of her eyes. Then Mandragora's son runs out and the look in her face after seeing him clearly says that if she kills him right in front of his child, she'll be just like him.
- In the episode "Hereafter", Superman appears to be killed by Toyman when performing a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Kid Cosmic: In the second episode, Rosa is about to squash Chuck underfoot. Papa G intervenes and tells Rosa not do do it.Papa G: Heroes help, not hurt.
- Subverted in an episode of Mighty Max. Norman is facing down a rival barbarian who killed his family. The bad guy uses this line because it's the last card in his deck. Norman smiles and says "I can live with that", then knocks him off a cliff.
- Defied in The Owl House. Throughout most of Season 3, Luz's main worry is that she's secretly a horrible person, since she unwittingly helped Belos bring his plan to fruition. In "Watching and Dreaming", Luz admits to the Titan that when she saw the Collector fly at Belos, she secretly hoped they'd blast him to pieces, and worries that that makes her as bad as the genocidal Eldritch Abomination that Belos has become. After initially asking her if she's drunk, the Titan affirms that she's absolutely nothing like him.Luz: Belos says he's trying to save humanity, and we're saying we wanna save our families, so... isn't that the same thing, don't- don't these feelings come from the same place?!
The Titan: Well, you assume Belos's goal comes from a genuine place. But that man doesn't care about anything except his need to be the hero in his own delusion. And because of that, he fears what he can't control. - In The Simpsons episode "Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish" has Burns sending assassins after Abe, trying to drown his grandson, etc... and yet, when Abe has Burns cornered...Burns: Don't kill me!
- In The Smurfs (1981) episode "For The Love Of Gargamel", Papa Smurf tells his little Smurfs that leaving Gargamel and Azrael in their self-petrified state would make themselves no better than their enemies. It ends up becoming the justification for many a Save the Villain moment in the cartoon show, despite how ungrateful Gargamel ends up being.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In the episode "Voyage of Temptation", Merrick is at the mercy of Obi-Wan and Duchess Satine and quickly taunts them over this; if Satine kills him, then she's betraying her beliefs and making herself a hypocrite in the eyes of her people, and if Obi-Wan kills him, he'll lose Satine's respect. Unfortunately for Merrick, Anakin is perfectly okay with murder.Obi-Wan: Anakin!
Anakin: What?! He was gonna blow up the ship! - Taz-Mania: Francis X. Bushlad's goal in the series is to capture Taz and bring him back to his tribe so he can pass his manhood ritual and take his father's place as Chief of the Mudpeople. It is also revealed in "Just Be Cuz" that he is jealous of Edgar, his brainy younger cousin who is much more successful at capturing wild animals than him. At one point, Francis uses Edgar as bait to catch Taz. Francis' shoulder angel manages to talk him out of it, saying that if he lets Taz eats Edgar, he'll be just as bad as Taz.
- Appears once in the 2003 TMNT, when Angel stops Casey from killing Hun, but the rest of the series says it's okay to kill villains, and in fact the turtles do kill (or sort-of-kill) a number of villains during the series.
- In one episode of The Venture Brothers, The Monarch actually invokes this on Dean for tattling so Dean won't spill the beans about him breaking into Dr. Venture's lab just to screw around. And it works.
