Decapitation Strike

"You will be with the angels when I launch this missile at the Geneva arms conference, eliminating the leaders of two dozen nations in one fell swoop! Then, from out of the chaos, Baroness Von Gunther and her forces will rise up to take control!"

— Baroness von Gunther, Batman: The Brave and the Bold

It's no secret that often, all that's needed to end a struggle is to get rid of the enemy's leadership — effectively decapitating the opposing organization. Military strategists, royal heirs, mafiosi, and putschists all can attest to that.

While cornering and killing the Big Bad or their Dragon can already have a devastating effect on the entire Empire, there is a certain charm and effectiveness to ensuring that many — if not all — leaders of any importance are assembled in one place, so they can all be taken out of commission in one fell swoop.

Whereas killing one character might put the enemy operation at great risk, a Decapitation Strike renders the very idea of its continuation all but impossible.

Will occasionally, but not always, result in a surprise successor ascending the helm. It's also a very popular device during The Coup. May often take place at a Nasty Party or Board to Death.

Note that this trope can just as likely occur by nobody's hands, and easily be triggered by either force majeure (such as, say, an earthquake) or just a tragic Contrived Coincidence.

Compare to its Supertrope Decapitated Army, its sister tropes — The Purge and Straight for the Commander — and the subtrope, Ruling Family Massacre (which restricts itself to actual royal families). A Keystone Army may be affected in this way. If this happens to the villainous faction, it will frequently lead to a Evil Power Vacuum.

Literal decapitating attacks without the domino effect fall under Off with His Head!, a related but different trope.

Since this is very much a Death Trope, there will be unmarked spoilers ahead!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• This happens in Mobile Suit Gundam where Char betrays and kills Garma Zabi as a start of his vengeance against the Zabis. Later on the show, Dozle Zabi falls in battle during the Battle of Solomon but his oldest brother, Gihren, kills his own father, Degwin, and the supreme commander of the Earth Federation, General Revil, in one blast with a solar ray when attempting to negotiate with peace. His sister, Kycilia, kills him for what he did but she too is killed by Char who blasts her with a rocket launcher. By the end of the show, the Zabi family has fallen at the end of the One Year War leaving Dozle's daughter, Mineva, as sole living member of the clan.
• In Monster, this is the modus operandi of Manipulative Bastard Serial Killer Johann Liebert (an expertise he inherited from his semi-mentor, Psycho Psychologist Franz Bonaparta), leading to them racking up a likely combined body count of hundreds of people. While many of the decapitation strikes were specifically intended to seize power in or destroy an organisation (such as during Red Rose Mansion massacre (destroying the Czechoslovakian state's eugenics programme), the Kinderheim 511 massacre (killing most of the witnesses to the GDR's child experiments), the Eisler Clinic murders (ridding it of its corrupt leadership), the underground bank massacre and the Neo-Nazi conspiracy massacres (destroying said organisations entirely), others were perpetrated for much more mundane reasons - namely to Destroy the Evidence or even to Unperson the lone survivor for fun rather than profit.

Comic Books

• The Punisher often pulls these off, as disorganized crime is easier to deal with.
  • The Punisher MAX begins with Frank sneaking up on the birthday party of the centenarian Don Cesare, shooting him and as many of the invited high-rankers as he can. The resulting power vacuum fuels much of the series.
  • In The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank, Frank goes to a lot of trouble to rescue a Don being held hostage from a South American rebel camp. The Ungrateful Bastard betrays Frank and returns to New York, where he calls a meeting of the Mafia to deal with the Punisher once and for all. Frank calls him at that moment to ask him why he'd been rescued, if not as the best way to put a lot of high-ranking Mafia goons in the same room. Then shows up with an M-60.
  • Yet another has Frank booby-trap a building where various organized crime members are having a meeting. He pushes down the detonator, making it clear that if he dies, everyone dies, and promptly starts shooting the helpless criminals.
  • Barracuda once sent out invitations to multiple mob bosses in a single location in order to mow them down... and as bait for Frank.
• The Transformers (Marvel): Invoked by Operation: Volcano, which was meant to be the beginning of a general Autobot uprising to try and wrest control of Cybertron away from the Decepticons. The key element was to be the assassination of the Decepticons' Ten Deadliest Killers (the three Coneheads Dirge, Thrust and Ramjet, the three Insecticons Kickback, Shrapnel and Bombshell, the three Triple-Changers Octane, Blitzwing and Astrotrain... and a comparative nobody named Macabre). In order to lure these dangerous enemies into one location, the Autobots leaked word that the Autobot resistance leader Emirate Xaaron would be meeting with the heads of the various resistance cells, thus presenting an irresistible target. Luckily for the Decepticons, before they fell into the trap Megatron contacted them and ordered them to Earth to join his forces, with only Macabre ignoring his orders and continuing on alone. He managed to kill the Autobot warrior Impactor, but was immediately shot to pieces by everyone else.
• War of Kings: Apparently a favoured tactic of the Shi'ar Empire, their Imperial Guard is sent to perform one at the wedding of Ronan and Crystal (because the Inhumans accidentally destroyed a few Shi'ar cruisers on their way to take over the Kree). All it does is really piss off the Inhumans and the Kree.

Fan Works

• A semi-accidental example in The Bridge (MLP): During a multi-way kaiju brawl, the Global Defense Force gets panicky and votes to fire the Dimension Tide at the battlefield. They take out the leaders of the Mutation faction, Xenilla and Destroyah... as well as the leaders and seconds-in-command of the Terran Defender faction (Godzilla, Mothra Lea, Anguirus, and Rodan). Oops.
  • The spinoff fic The Bridge: Humanity's Stand reveals the aftermath: The Terran Defenders recover faster than the Mutations, as Gamera is promptly chosen as Regent of the Monsters in Godzilla's stead and proceeds to choose Zilla II as his second-in-command- though at this point in the spinoff, the Terran Defenders are unaware that the incident was caused by their uneasy allies, the GDF, losing faith and turning on them. Meanwhile, the Mutations (who were only held together by Xen's manipulations and Dessy's brute force) suffer a full-on Evil Power Vacuum, splintering as individual members either make a break for it or try to stage a takeover.
• Code Prime: Defied, and then Played Straight. When Lelouch explains his backstory to the Auotbots, they offer the chance to do this to Britannia, but Lelouch turns it down as it would have caused an Evil Power Vacuum. However, during the Black Rebellion, while Britannia is focused on dealing with the Black Knights and Autobots, Megatron has the newly repaired Nemesis launch an assault on Pendragon, and assassinate Charles. The beginning of R2, then sees the Decepticons conquering Britannia with little effort.
• In one reimagining of the Discworld, the Guild of Assassins recommends doing this as an instrument of policy, to earn suitably inflated inhumation fees and incidentally to defuse potential conflicts between neighbouring states. Every so often, when there is no less drastic alternative and plausible deniability is certain, Lord Vetinari likes to put a little business the Guild's way. ^note So they can feel useful and valued. The nearest thing the Guild has to an Ethics advisor, its Guild Chaplain, remarks that if the alternative is prolonged war and suffering and the deaths of thousands, inhuming the right person at the right time for the right reasons represents a just and ethical use of the Assassin. Read more in the works of A.A. Pessimal.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: The entirety of Crowned Death's intelligent troops gets taken out by Mukrezar with a collapsible ceiling.
• A Scotsman in Egypt; the Timurid invasion is thwarted first by infiltrating their army years earlier with a Fake Defector who arranges for their army to head west while sending information back, then by a single assassin killing their top generals as they're looking over the planned battlefield. Despite the loss of their (competent) leaders and the fact that they're outnumbered by the Scots, the Timurids still fight and are defeated.
• In The Unabridged Memoirs of Darth Plagueis the Wise, the Rim Liberation Front launches an attack on a conference of most of the galaxy's Mega Corps, wiping out most of their leadership.
• In the pro wrestling alternate universe story, ''The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas'', the Bullet Club attempts this against Charlotte Flair at FozzFest. Charlotte managed to survive, but most of her inner circle were killed.
• The Will of the Empire: In order to ensure that Vader's last orders — for Luke to be named heir to the Imperial throne — are enacted, Admiral Piett takes measures to eliminate as much of the old guard as possible. He starts by calling a meeting on Coruscant with many of the most powerful figures left (including Pestage, Isard, and Lumiya) and, once they're all gathered, having his forces assault the meeting, managing to kill all of them.
• Harry and the Shipgirls:
  • The Tokyo Magical Diet ^note their version of the Ministry of Magic was struck with a large number of its leaders in charge when the Abyssal Fleet launched its major offensive during Blood Week, forcing their leadership to become largely decentralized by necessity.
  • The Kingdom of Foxes, a reserve for Kitsune, Kumiho, and Huli Jing was likewise struck during Blood Week, with the Sole Survivor being Princess Chun-Hei, who was elsewhere due to being The Unfavorite.
• Embers (Vathara): An established tactic for the Fire Nation against the Earth Kingdom is killing off their commanders, due to the inflexibility of Earth Kingdom command structure. Iroh demonstrates on General Gang.
• Used correctly by the author of Contact at Kobol, in which a decapitation strike is treated as a shock and awe tactic to force a surrender. By the end of the war, the Tau'ri are actively avoiding performing this, as the Colonial government is such a wreck that removing the top government officials would simply cause the total collapse of Colonial society, a situation that would be far messier to deal with than surrender.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: At the start of the Imperium of Man's war with the Confederacy of Independent Systems, Chapter Master Davik Thune launches an all-out surprise attack on Raxus Secundus and wipes out most (if not all) of the Separatist Council and Senate through an indiscriminate Orbital Bombardment. When General Grievous's fleet comes to the defense of the Separatist capital world, Thune successfully baits Grievous into a trap that seemingly destroys the Separatist Supreme Commander alongside many of the Confederacy's tactical droids. The sudden loss of both their civilian and military leadership leaves the Separatist Droid Army in total disarray and unable to mount a coordinated defense, enabling Thune to divide his Imperial fleet into many squadrons which he disperses throughout CIS space to destroy their most important worlds while barely facing any opposition.
• Freedom's Ring: The CIA pulled this off on the First Interior Squad by kidnapping Djel Sannes, throwing their leadership off and their plans into disarray. They got back at them later by attacking Hill Zero One itself, killing Erwin, Nike, Pyxis, Zackly, the US ambassador and almost killing General Connor.
  • Later down the story, the CIA did this again, this time by taking Zeke Yeager and his family out of World Union's hands, preventing them from using his powers against Paradis.
• The Weaver Option: Horus heavily favored this attack, and his descendants will typically attempt this whenever the opportunity arises. This backfires during the Fifth Black Crusade, as the Imperial Warmaster defending Cadia knows their preferred strategy and has created several targets which are all traps.

Film

• This is the plan of HYDRA in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as they plan to assume control of SHIELD's newest weaponry and aim them simultaneously at thousands of high-ranking targets (including several in the White House and the Pentagon) to take over the world in an enormous coup d'etat(s). Thanks to the Avengers' intervention, they end up blowing each other up. And that's only after they entrap and kill most of SHIELD's own (uninvolved) leading figures.
• In The Godfather, Michael has the heads of all of the other New York crime families assassinated on the same day. This ends the Mob War and makes Michael one of the most powerful mob bosses in America.
• Independence Day: Resurgence: While the president is at NORAD, the aliens invade and kill everyone. With the line of succession all but destroyed, General Adams is sworn in as the new president.
• Inglourious Basterds has "Operation Kino", a joint SOE/OSS plan where almost the entire Nazi high command — including Goebbels, Goering, Bormann, and even Adolf Hitler himself — is to be blown up while attending the premiere of a major propaganda movie in Paris. Surprisingly, it goes off almost without a hitch.
• Kingsman:
  • Played literally in The Secret Service, where much of the world's leaders (including seemingly the entire White House, the entire British Royal Family, and the Swedish prime minister) have conspired with the Big Bad to let a Hate Plague decimate the world's population. Eggsy and Merlin manage to reverse-engineer the cranial chips that are supposed to protect them from the plague's effects, causing every involved world leader's head to overheat and explode simultaneously in one glorious montage.
  • Early on in The Golden Circle, Poppy hacks the Kingsmen's database in order to locate their headquarters, as well as the homes of all their agents. She then launches ballistic missiles at all the targeted sites, killing all the agents except for Eggsy (who wasn't home) and Merlin (whose home address wasn't on the database).
• In London Has Fallen, Islamists try to simultaneously assassinate all the leaders of the G7 as they attend the funeral of the British prime minister. Of course, the American president is the only one to survive.
• In The Marvels (2023), it was revealed that following the events of Captain Marvel (2019),, Carol Danvers made good on her promise on taking out the Supreme Intelligence, the artificial intelligence that the Kree Empire depended on for political and military leadership. With it destroyed, the Kree Empire fell into civil war that even brought their homeworld of Hala on the brink of environmental collapse.
• The 1998 Austrian thriller Opernball is about a right-wing terrorist cell venting cyanide into the Viennese Opernball (an annual high-society event typically attended not only by most of the Austrian government, but by all of the social and economical elite), gassing thousands of people to death in an apparent suicide mission, including the chancellor and the president.
• Emperor Palpatine of Star Wars loves this trope:
  • Revenge of the Sith:
    • The Jedi Order are the only serious threat to a Sith regime. Order 66 decimated the Jedi Knights, including the majority of the Jedi Council, leaving a spotty few to counter the Empire's millions-strong standing army.
    • The Separatist Council gets a visit from the Emperor's right-hand man, who wordlessly locks them in the war room, and then massacres them.
  • Further, according to A New Hope, the last bastion of power in the old Republic was the Galactic Senate. Quoting Grand Moff Tarkin: "The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently." Pink slips or bloodbath?
  • In Return of the Jedi, he lures the Rebel Alliance into attempting one against him as bait for a trap, which in turn would have let the Empire destroy most of the Alliance's military. Unfortunately for him, his foresight proves fallible, and the Rebels' strike is ultimately successful, taking out the Emperor and a number of high-ranking admirals and generals (Darth Vader — the closest thing to a potential successor for Palpatine — also died, although only after his Heel–Face Turn and not due to the Rebel attack) and dealing the Empire a crushing defeat they never recover from.
• Tried unsuccessfully in Valkyrie, as detailed in the Real Life section. Colonel von Stauffenberg, in collusion with several other German officers and politicians, stashes a bomb in the Wolfsschanze, the Nazi German military headquarters, during a 1944 meeting headed by Hitler. Though some generals and officers are killed, Hitler himself survives, and promptly orders his Schutzstaffel to arrest the conspirators.
• Discussed in WarGames. This is the reason why WOPR cannot be "unplugged" to resolve the problem. A shutdown would be interpreted as a decapitation strike and would launch immediately. Many real-world nuclear powers do have safety measures in place that will launch if there is no positive signal from Command.
• In Der Wixxer, it turns out it was Victoria Dickham's plan all along to blow up the entire British royal family during a wedding to catapult herself onto the throne. It is foiled by the protagonists via Wire Dilemma.
• Discussed in Doctor Strangelove as the reason why Plan R exists and the original General Ripper was able to order his wing to execute it without the President's authorization — it was put in place as a retaliatory plan in case the Russians successfully managed to perform an attack that killed the American chain of command. Mostly, it was there just as a political move to showcase some dissenting (or better read In-Universe as "whining") senators that the military was Crazy-Prepared enough... unfortunately, Ripper's free access to it is a case of Gone Horribly Wrong (or even Gone Horribly Right).
• Terminator Salvation: Skynet's plan involves luring the human resistance into a Defensive Feint Trap by making its core bases in the former San Francisco area more vulnerable to attack. The humans believe that they're about to carry out a decapitation strike on Skynet when it's actually using the opportunity to pinpoint the nuclear submarine that carries the resistance leaders and take them out with a missile strike.
• In The Sum of All Fears, a group of Neo-Nazis smuggles a nuke into Baltimore on the day the President is supposed to watch a football game there. The President is evacuated in time, but the stadium (and much of the city) is destroyed, and one of the President's closest advisors is also killed. Due to the rising tensions, the attack is blamed on Russia, almost leading to World War III. However, the true goal of the Neo-Nazis wasn't to kill the President, it was to start a war between the US and Russia, so they can then pick up the pieces.
• In the Action Prologue of Richard III, the title character is shown leading a squad of commandoes to attack the mansion being used as a field headquarters by King Henry and his son, starting with them smashing through the wall with a tank.
• Part of Elliot Carver's plot in Tomorrow Never Dies is to arrange this on the Chinese leadership, with help from a General Chang within the PLA. With tensions rising in the South China Sea between China and the UK, an impending standoff between the PLAN and Royal Navy will lead to an emergency meeting in Beijing to which General Chang will be conveniently held up by traffic while a British nuclear missile, previously stolen by Carver via a stealth ship, will launch and strike there. This will lead Chang to take over control of the Chinese government and sue for peace, while later granting Carver Media Group exclusive broadcasting rights from the last remaining global holdout to his media empire for 99 years.

Literature

• Codex Alera: A somewhat more small-scale (and thus realistic) example popped up in book 3, Cursor's Fury. The First Aleran Legion is struck by a powerful, magical attack, targeted at the Commander's Tent, just when every officer in the camp has been summoned there to discuss a recent development. If it had worked as designed, it would've wiped out everyone who could've taken command of the Legion, except for a strategically-placed traitor... but instead, command of the Legion winds up falling to the Third Subtribune Logistica (which basically means undersecretary to the undersecretary of logistics) who had been delayed. Fortunately, said Subtribune happens to be a Cursor - a secret agent of the First Lord, sent to infiltrate the legion to search for signs of treason and general espionage, and given a lowly officer's billet specifically to keep him flexible and out of the spotlight. Later, several characters state that the ORIGINAL leadership of the Legion, however competent they might have been, could not have accomplished even half of what he then proceeded to do with the 'decapitated' Legion...
• In the Hercule Poirot novel The Big Four, Hercule disguises himself as his non-existent brother Achille, in order to trick the titular group into thinking that Hercule is still at large, so that they can be taken out all at once in the planned operation.
• In the Back Story of the Deathlands series a hardline communist faction tried to decapitate the entire US political and military command structure by detonating three briefcase nukes during the Presidential inauguration, as a preliminary to a surprise nuclear attack. Unfortunately the General Ripper who finds himself in command at this point has secretly acquired all the nuclear launch codes, and the resulting nuclear, chemical and biological conflagration turns Earth into the equivalent of a Death World.
• The Footprint of Mussolini: At the climax of the Second Arabian War, Italy enacts Operation Samson, a mass nuclear strike on every major administrative and military target in the United Arab Republic. This causes the majority of the UAR to collapse into anarchy due to the loss of any sort of centralized leadership, with only Egypt's higher-ups escaping the attack on Cairo in time, and even then they've lost enough forces that they can't enforce enough authority to prevent the UAR from being overrun.
• Honor Harrington:
  • In The Short Victorious War, Rob S. Pierre's conspiracy hijacks a naval shuttle and carpet-bombs the Haven presidential palace while his entire family and the heads of all the major Legislaturist houses are there. He frames a "rogue element of the People's Navy" for it, which gives him an excuse to purge the Navy of old regime loyalists.
  • In a later novel, the Havenites send their Masadan lackeys to ambush the shuttles carrying the Manticoran and Grayson leadership, including the two monarchs: Queen Elizabeth III Winton and Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX. One of the shuttles is saved, but the other one is destroyed, including the current Manticoran Prime Minister.
  • Space being as big as it is, it is simple for a nation at war to conduct a massive strike directly against their enemy's home system, bypassing all other strategic objectives in favor of a single-stroke victory. The reason this rarely happens is because it is also a quick way to a single-stroke defeat. The one time it happens, at the climax of At All Costs, it is because Haven knows they are once again losing the Lensman Arms Race and have only one chance to end the war in their favor before Manticore brings their latest weapons into full production. The attempt fails, with both sides suffering horrific losses but neither gaining a decisive advantage.
• In The Machineries of Empire, La Résistance establishes itself as a true rival to the Hexarchate Galactic Superpower with a two-pronged decapitation strike that kills five of the six Hexarchs. One Suicide Attack destroys the Space Station where four Hexarchs are gathered to receive an Immortality Inducer; another bombing destroys the station that houses the Kel military command, including the Hexarch.
• In Malazan Book of the Fallen this was a favorite tactic of the Malazan Emperor. When conquering small kingdoms he would send in his Talons, a cadre of magic wielding assassins into the enemy capital. In a single night they would kill the ruling family, any prominent generals and any magic users who could be a threat to the Malazan army. The Malazans would then use the ensuing chaos to quickly take the city without a major battle or lengthy siege.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Freys killed the vast majority of the northern lords during lord Edmure Tully's wedding, thus ending the War of the Five Kings in a single night.
• In A Memory of Light, the last book of The Wheel of Time:
  • Hessalam near-fatally sabotages the armies of the Light in the Final Battle by infiltrating the generals' dreams and turning them into Manchurian Agents who misuse their troops in subtle but debilitating ways. Were it not for Mat Cauthon taking command, the ploy likely would have won the war for the Dark One.
  • A literal example occurs with Demandred, who has been leading the Sharans very effectively against the forces of Light. With his strategic experience, the element of surprise, and himself being a magical Person of Mass Destruction, they have a considerable upper hand. Then Lan manages to get close and slay Demandred, cutting off his head and holding it up for the Sharan forces to see, shattering their morale and allowing the remaining leaders on the Light side to outmaneuver them.
• In William Prochnau's Trinity's Child, and it's HBO adaptation By Dawn's Early Light, this is initially defied. The Soviets and Americans deliberately try to avoid killing heads of state with their nuclear strikes. Harpoon explains this is because both sides need them alive to be able to negotiate a cease fire, otherwise the mechanisms in place to succeed them will not stop until the world is destroyed. Later, however, Colonel Fargo convinces the new Acting President to order their B-52s on a Grand Tour of the Soviet Union, taking out the Soviet leadership bunkers one by one.
• The last book of the Mage Winds trilogy features Herald-Mage Elspeth and a few hand-picked allies crossing Hardorn to kill the evil King Ancar and his two most powerful mages and save Valdemar from invasion. Justified since Hardorn has a Keystone Army that will collapse if the magic controlling its unwilling soldiers is disrupted.
• In New Deal Coalition Retained, this is how the Serbian front in the Great Southern War is brought to a close. Anti-government forces leak to the Freyist Pact the location of the bunker from which Milošević and his inner circle are conducting the war effort, allowing them to destroy it in a targeted bombing run. With most of the Serbian leadership dead, their government and military splinter, with a barely-stable legitimate successor government suing for peace while forces elsewhere go rogue and turn guerrilla.
• In The Gates of the Galaxy, an Earth Federation task force is sent via a Precursor Portal Network to the Dromi home system in order to take out their ruling clans. Since the Dromi are heavily hierarchical, this would result in a lengthy period of chaos while they were sorting out who should be in charge. However, the Dromi leaders are tipped off and manage to use their equivalent of Human Shields to keep the humans from burning their homeworld from orbit. The strike is called off, and the Human-Dromi War lasts for another century.
• Magic, Metahumans, Martians and Mushroom Clouds: An Alternate Cold War:
  • After Prometheus unleashes him, Typhon wipes out most of the leadership of the Kingdom of Greece, effectively dissolving the whole faction and allowing the Communists to win the civil war.
  • The regime of Saloth Sar (the man who would rename himself Pol Pot in OTL) is brought to an end when he and his whole government are killed in a nuclear strike. The country is then occupied by Vietnam, who set up a new provisional government.
  • The first thing Nergal does after taking a human host is obliterate the Iraqi government, creating the power vacuum that leads to the chaotic mess of a civil war that follows, with dozens of factions springing up to fill the void.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Like a good samurai, Nanao Hibiya routinely searches for an opening to try to take an enemy leader's head, often literally.
  • During her Last Stand in Yamatsukuni, she led her remaining troops in a suicide charge at the enemy general's camp and very nearly got through to him, killing his son-in-law in passing in the process.
  • When the Sword Roses intervene in the "Battle of Hell's Armies" (the test to enter the third layer of the labyrinth), the others foil the enemy cavalry charge, giving her an opportunity to go for the enemy leader. She takes the skeletal general's head off.
  • When her and Oliver's broomsport team, the Wild Geese, face off against Diana Ashbury's Blue Swallows, three of her teammates keep Ashbury busy and the others counterattack the Swallows. In the confusion, Nanao slips away and then makes a diving attack on the opposing captain, only foiled at the last second when a student in the stands shines a light in her eyes and throws her aim off.

Live-Action TV

• In the season finale of The Book of Boba Fett, Boba sends Fennic Shand to assassinate the leaders of the Pyke Syndicate, which she does with ruthless efficiency.
• In Breaking Bad, Big Bad Gus Fring ostensibly surrenders his entire business to a rival Mexican cartel. He is invited to the Don's hacienda in Mexico, and after the "negotiation" ends, Gus poisons himself, the Don and all his lieutenants with a laced bottle of rare tequila. He then escapes quickly enough to get himself medically treated before the poison kills him too.
• Buffyverse:
  • Happens in the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the First Evil's followers blow up the Watchers' Council headquarters in London, killing almost all the leadership.
  • In the final episode of Angel, Angel and his followers kill the entire leadership of the Circle of the Black Thorn in one night.
• In Designated Survivor, the US president and most of his staff are killed by a terrorist bombing, promoting the eponymous protagonist (see Real Life for more) to the presidency.
• In Game of Thrones, this happens multiple times:
  • The most (in)famous instance would be the Red Wedding, where the minor House Frey butchers the entire leadership of the Northern Rebellion, including the freshly anointed King In The North, Robb Stark, during a wedding feast.
  • Khaleesi Daenerys does the same thing after being taken prisoner by a rival Dothraki horde; she arranges for all the Khals to meet her in the temple of the sacred city to hear her out, then has the temple set ablaze, killing everyone inside but her own (fire-proof) self.
  • Cersei Lannister pulls one off on the entire Sparrow leadership, most of the Tyrell family, and much of her son's royal court, when she has a secret stash of wildfire detonated under the Great Sept while they all attended what was meant to be her own blasphemy trial.
  • As a comeuppance for the Red Wedding, the entire male leadership of House Frey is served poisoned wine by Arya Stark, disguised as Lord Walder Frey, whom she had murdered earlier together with his two sons.
  • Euron Greyjoy ambushes the fleet of his niece, Yara, and captures the de facto leader of Dorne, Ellaria Sand and her daughter Tyene while killing two of the Sand Snakes. After Ellaria and Tyene were delivered to King's Landing, Cersei poisons the latter and forces the former to watch her to die while locking them up for the rest of their lives.
• In The Handmaid's Tale, this was perpetuated by the Sons of Jacob against the United States government in a False Flag Attack. The president, most of the cabinet and line of succession, as well as the entirety of Congress and the Supreme Court were all killed, with the Sons of Jacob using the subsequent power vacuum to seize control and transform the US into the theocratic and highly religiously strict Republic of Gilead.
• In Jericho (2006), the President is addressing a joint session of Congress when the nuclear attack that kicks off the story happens. A succession crisis ensues and results in a Divided States of America.
• In the Grand Finale of Blade: The Series, Blade uses a virus developed by the Big Bad to kill the entire pureblood leadership of the House of Chthon. Then again, this was the Big Bad's plan all along, since he hates purebloods and wants to lead the House of Chthon himself.

Video Games

• Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars: One of Nod's first acts is to destroy the GDI space station Philadelphia, with almost the entire GDI leadership onboard, with the exception of Secretary of the Treasury, Redmond Boyle.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: The Soviet campaign opens with a strike force landing near Washington DC and destroying the Pentagon to send the US military into disarray. While they come pretty close in the Allied campaign as well, they're pushed back by the player.
• In Hitman (2016), this is the story behind the majority of your missions:
  • In "The Showstopper", 47 must take out Dalia Margolis and Victor Novikov, the leaders of an international spy ring. Since they are the sole masterminds of the ring, it ceases to exist after their deaths.
  • In "The World of Tomorrow", you are tasked with killing bioengineer Silvio Caruso, who just developed a new super-virus, his assistant Francesca de Santis, who might be the only person capable of completing the virus without Caruso, and then destroy the virus itself. With no means of recreating the virus, the project is cancelled afterwards.
  • In "A Gilded Cage", 47 must kill corrupt banker Claus Hugo Strandberg, who scammed billions of dollars to provoke riots, and his partner general Reza Zaydan, who wants to use the riots to establish a military dictatorship. With the people having no one to riot against anymore and the military without a figurehead capable of becoming dictator, the plans are terminated.
  • In "Freedom Fighters", 47 is tasked with killing the leaders of a paramilitary terrorist group. With all of them dead the group is apparently disbanded.
• In Mass Effect, this is part of the Reapers' periodic purge of spacefaring life: leave a space station at the heart of the mass relay network to serve as a convenient center for galactic civilization, then make their big return at that space station and take out all the leaders in one strike. After it's all done, they leave the empty station behind for the next cycle to find.
  • From Mass Effect: Andromeda, the kett started their war with the angara by taking out their leaders, by pretending to be peaceful, then striking when the angara's guards were down.
• In the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, this is the core of the "Dragon's Breath", a conspiracy hatched by the rogue Qunari viddasala: using their access to the eluvians, they had smuggled barrels of gaatlok (fantasy gunpowder) into the seats of power of most Southern kingdoms (including the Winter Palace, where the current Divine and the leaders of the Inquisition are convening), then blowing them all up in preparation for the full-on Qunari invasion of the south.
• In the backstory of Shattered Union, the entire US government is wiped out by an atomic bomb during a highly unpopular president-elect's inauguration speech, triggering the Second American Civil War.
• In Emergency 4, terrorists detonate a bomb under a photo-op tribune during a Fictional United Nations congress. It's the player's job to rescue the survivors (of which there are comparatively few) and arrest the terrorists.
• Vermintide II: Each Act ends with the Player Party executing a targeted strike on a leader of the Chaos invasion. One is the Warlord of the Skaven clan leading the attack; his death spreads paranoia and infighting among the clan, compromising its forces.
  Olesya: The ratmen are viciously fighting each other. Chieftans being killed by the scores. Clan Fester's numbers are dropping by the minute...

Web Comics

• Schlock Mercenary: Part of the backstory, Celeschul's Terraforming War started with the insurgents wiping out 95% of the planet's key political, industrial, and military figures. General (formerly colonel) Karl Tagon and his son captain Kaff Tagon were among the few survivors, the rest of their family, were not.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: After infiltrating the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se, Azula works with Long Feng and the corrupt Dai Li to take over the city by capturing all the high-ranking officials and generals who might be able to oppose them. The Earth King eventually escapes with the help of the Gaang but is still forced to leave his city.
• Non-lethal example: In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic two-parter "To Where And Back Again", the Changelings launch a coordinated strike and capture pretty much every powerful pony in Equestria within a week, allowing them to use their shapeshifting powers to take their place.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Eminence", Maul has all the leaders of the Black Sun decapitated in one fell swoop by Savage when they refuse to join them.
• In the backstory to Steven Universe, Rose Quartz led an attack to (personally) assassinate Pink Diamond in order to end the Gem Rebellion over Earth. While this did successfully end the war and freed Earth from Homeworld's control, it came with horrible consequences that Rose failed to account for. Though since Rose Quartz was in reality Pink Diamond, it was more the symbolic sort instead of literal as she killed her previous identity.

Real Life

• Princess Olga of Kyiv was a repeat offender.
  • Following the murder of her husband Igor at the hands of uprising Drevlians^note To be fair, Igor kinda deserved it. When he arrived for the monthly tribute, they gave it to him. Then, after leaving, he decided that they probably have more to give and returned with just a few men, sending the rest home. The Drevlians were angered by his unreasonable demand and emboldened by the fact that they outnumbered him, so they seized him, tied him to the trunks of two bent trees, and let go., she pretended that she was willing to negotiate. The Drevlians sent 20 high-ranking diplomats by boat. Olga proceeded to have the boat seized and then had the diplomats buried alive. In their boat.
  • Next, she convinced the Drevlian prince Mal that she was ready to marry him. He arrived with much of his royal court in tow. She invited them to clean up from the long trip in a banya (Russian sauna) — which she promptly had locked from the outside and burned to the ground.
  • Then she invited the remaining Drevlian leadership to a funeral feast in Igor's honour, which they again happily attended. After one night of partying and excessive drinking, Olga had 5,000 of them rounded up and massacred by her army.
  • Finally, she made her move on their capital Iskorosten, where she had all remaining Drevlians burned to death in their houses, in a ruse involving birds and burning pieces of sulphur.
• Several countries have security mechanisms in effect to avert this trope from happening. The US government, for instance, has a "Designated Survivor" who is brought to a safe location when the rest of the government is supposed to gather at a single place. This was put in place during the Cold War, when the government being wiped out by a nuclear holocaust was a very real threat.
• Poland has had multiple unfortunate run-ins with this trope.
  • The fate of a good chunk of the 2010 Polish government shows what damage the absence of a "Designated Survivor" programme can cause; On a state visit to Katyn Forest (for what exactly, see below), the Tupolev 154 carrying (quoth The Other Wiki) "the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria, the former President of Poland in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish Government officials, 18 members of the Polish Parliament [and] senior members of the Polish clergy" crashed with no survivors. While it was ruled an accident, conspiracy theories naturally abound.
  • Almost sixty-seven years earlier, in 1943, Poland's government-in-exile during World War II struck a similar fate. During a troop inspection in the Mediterranean, the B-24 transporting the Polish Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces General Wladislaw Sikorski, Polish Army Chief of General Staff Major General Tadeusz Kilimecky, Army Chief of Operations Colonel Andrzey Marecky, plus an assortment of adjutants and some British dignitaries, crashed off the coast of Gibraltar, crippling the remaining government dangerously. Again, plenty of conspiracy theories abound.
  • Three years earlier, in 1940, Stalin had rounded up 22,000 Polish military officers, policemen, members of the Polish intelligentsia, as well as anyone else who he deemed being capable of leading an opposition against Soviet occupation and summarily executed them in and around the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.
• There was a Nazi conspiracy to assassinate British PM Winston Churchill, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet Gen-Sec Josef Stalin when they gathered for the Tehran Conference in 1943, but it was dismissed by Hitler himself as 'unfeasable'.
• Narrowly averted during the 20 July Coup attempt, in which Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, in collusion with several other German officers and politicians, stashed a bomb in the Wolfsschanze, the Nazi German military headquarters, during a 1944 meeting headed by Hitler. Though some generals and officers were killed, Hitler himself survived, and promptly ordered his Schutzstaffel to arrest the conspirators.
• During the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a massive convoy some 40 miles long was spotted by satellites heading for the capital of Kyiv. It was an attempt by the Russians to capture the city and put a swift end to their campaign. Unfortunately for them, President Zelenskyy chose to remain in Kyiv, providing a major morale boost for the Ukrainian Army. The convoy soon became bogged down by Ukrainian strikes, and was ultimately forced to withdraw as the Russians redeployed to focus on eastern Ukraine.

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