Professionals Have Standards.
'Cause when you don't, this happens.
'Cause when you don't, this happens.
"Do you know I'm an assassin who's never killed anyone?"
— Rayla, The Dragon Prince
In this world there are tons of people and organizations who specialize in Professional Killers, who have racked up tons of kills under their belts. But there are members of these groups who, despite being with them for a long period of time, have never secured a kill of their own before. These instances may result from lack of confidence, experience, opportunity or any other factors that explain why, usually driving them to try and get their first kill.
When these guys do get their first kill, expect them to be ecstatic about it, gaining more confidence and determination to perform more kills afterward. Except if it turns into Suicidal Overconfidence, then expect it to be the first and last kill of their short career. Could be justified if they work more as the Mission Control, or intel gatherer, or (at worst) a field assistant, who doesn't confront the targets directly.
However in some works, a kill will not count if the victim is not human, a monster, or a being that Was Once a Man but discarded their humanity and will only apply to a human killing another human. What Measure Is a Non-Human? will come into play here if this is the case.
Possible Sub-Trope of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. Compare Gaining the Will to Kill, These Hands Have Killed and Bleed 'Em and Weep, when someone's first kill causes them emotional angst, It Gets Easier, when a character suffers emotional trauma when they first kill, but subsequent killings have less effect on them, and It Never Gets Any Easier, when dealing with death (including killing), a character has emotional trauma no matter how many deaths (killings) they've been involved with. Another bad outcome is Murder Makes You Crazy.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Akuma no Riddle: Lead character Tokaku Azuma is one of the assassins chosen to kill Haru Ichinose before deciding to protect her instead. However, she operates on a Thou Shalt Not Kill due to her Aunt enforcing such a restriction on her, which means she has never taken a single life.
- The manga Happy Kanako’s Killer Life stars an ex-Office Lady who accidentally becomes an assassin despite never really wanting to kill her targets (it happens more or less by coincidence when she thinks of what Asshole Victims they are, as with her old boss
or a pair of douchebags). While she doesn't consciously want to kill them, the benefits of her new job are so much better than her old one that she stays.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind has Pesci, who, despite being a member of the deadly mafia assassin team La Squadra, has apparently never actually killed anyone by himself before. It's until his encounter with the heroes and after Prosciutto's death does he get his first and last kill, an Innocent Bystander who basically called him a momma's boy, as a way to psych himself up to kill Bucciarati.
Film — Live Action
- In Black Patch, Young Gun Carl is determined to avenge Hank by killing Marshal Clay Morgan. However, while he is extremely skilled with a gun, he has never shot a man before.
- In The Island (1980), teenager Justin is The Gunfighter Wannabe, and thinks becoming a pirate will allow him to live out all of his fantasies. However, he has never given any thought to what the emotional toll of killing another human might be. After making his first kill, he is shocked and sickened, loses his nerve, and starts to crack up.
- Billy Valance in More Dead Than Alive. A trick shot artist in Ruffalo's traveling shooting show, Billy believes that he is great gunslinger and a ruthless killer, but has never been in a real gunfight. Cain keeps showing him up by demonstrating that things are different when the target can shoot back: such as slapping him in the face before he can draw his gun. The only person Billy manages to kill is Ruffalo who is unarmed. And this act puts Cain on his trail looking for revenge.
- In The Seven Samurai, Katsushiro is an apprentice samurai who never killed before; during the defense of the village, he loses his killing virginity (and his sexual virginity as well shortly thereafter).
- Unforgiven has the Schofield Kid approach homesteader William Munny about collecting a bounty in Big Whiskey. Kid claims to have killed three men, but always one at a time; there are two targets in Big Whiskey, so the Kid figures to have a wingman. After the killing's done, the Kid consoles himself with whiskey, and admits that he'd never killed before. The deed clearly unnerved him.
- In The Whole Nine Yards:
- Jill, the assistant to dentist Dr. Nicolas Oseransky, is actually a newbie assassin whose first job was to kill "Oz", as the doctor is often called. She got the job as a dental assistant as part of an effort to get close to him, learn his habits, and make it easier to kill him and cover up her hand in it. However, Oz was such a Nice Guy and so genuinely decent that she found herself unable to go through with the assignment. (The fact that her employer, Oz's wife, is a godawful human being whose only motive is greed didn't do anything to convince her to go through with it.) She does eventually get her first kill late in the movie when she helps longtime assassin Jimmy Tedeski and his friend Frankie Figgs ambush and kill the gangster Janni Gogolák and his men.
- Jimmy tells a similar story of having once being a young killer who got too close and friendly with a target and found himself unable to go through with killing him. He opted to warn the guy about the hit on him and tell the guy to flee. Unlike Oz, the guy was a fellow criminal, and he repaid Jimmy's kindness by shooting Jimmy in the back. Jimmy no longer had any qualms about killing the guy, and Jimmy all but says that he horrifically tortured the guy to death as payback.
Literature
- The Brothers Cabal: The Dee Society reluctantly accepts the vampire Horst's help to fight an army of monsters, assuming it to be an Enemy Mine situation. He's deeply distraught afterwards; the Society members are shocked to realize he'd never killed before and truly is the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire he appears to be.
- In The Garden of Sinners, this is a big part of Shiki's character. Despite repeatedly stumbling onto murder scenes and routinely killing supernatural beings like ghosts, she constantly suppresses a psychological urge to kill fellow humans and never once takes the life of another human being until the final book, when she symbolically crosses this threshold by killing Lio. This is eventually revealed to be an expression of her grandfather's philosophy, who claimed that a person can only ever kill one other person, because the act of killing irrevocably changes the murderer into something slightly less than human.
- Jarhead: The cast do very little killing despite being snipers during the Gulf War due to the prominence of aircraft and artillery. One of them is about to shoot a high-ranking officer when he suddenly gets orders to stand down. By the end, the only time they actually use their guns is Firing in the Air a Lot once the war's over.
- Pyramids sees Pteppic, Prince of Djelibeybi, graduate from seven long hard years at the Assassins' Guild School. He realises the awful truth during his Final Exam: that despite having trained to do it, he is not temperamentally at home with the idea of actually killing people. For an Assassin, this is something of a drawback.
- The Valley of Fear: Two inexperienced members of the Scourers are tasked with hosting a pair of killers there to do a job and insist on participating in the 'fun'. After the deed is done it turns out it's not so much fun anymore.
Live-Action TV
- In Deadly Class, Marcus is given a scholarship to Kings Dominion, a school for young assassins, in the belief that he burned down his group home and killed everyone there. In reality, the killer was his psychotic roommate Chester, who spends the season trying to kill Marcus for "stealing" his reputation.
- Hightown: Junior, who gets pushed to carry out a hit under experienced killer Osito's supervision. He's very nervous about it and broken up afterward.
Video Games
- In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, your units are new students at a military academy who, with a few exceptionsnote , have never been in a real battle before. They all have a special line of dialogue that pops up the first time they kill an opponent.
- Yakuza 0 had Goro Majima with the task to kill Makoto Majimura if he wanted to return with the Shimano Family. However, said target was a blind woman which couldn't bring himself to kill her. Not killing her was part of the plan in reality due to Shimano knew he wouldn't do it in the first place.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: Stan reveals in the episode "The 42-Year-Old Virgin" that despite working at the CIA for years, he is a virgin when it comes to killing. This winds up making Steve hate him and Francine losing sexual interest in him, but gets the approval of Hayley. He gets his first kill at the end of the episode, a poker buddy named Bad Larry, albeit by accident.
- The Dragon Prince: Subverted with Rayla. During her very first mission she takes a binding oath with her Moonshadow elven kinsmen when they set out to assassinate King Harrow of Katolis, along with his son Prince Ezran, in retaliation for what they believed was humanity's part in the slaying of the Dragon King Avizandum and his son Azymondias. However, she finds herself unable to go through with it, and instead decides to guide Ezran and his (maternal half-)brother Callum to Xadia with Azymondias when all three accidentally discover that the young Dragon Prince (who was then still inside his egg) is very much alive.
Real Life
- In his autobiography No Easy Day, Navy SEAL Mark notes that his first kill wasn't until two years into his career as a SEAL, and after several years prior in general infantry.
