Painless Death for a Price

No thank you, weird bug person!

"Now, I'm gonna make you a deal: you tell me what I need to know, one pro to another, and I will put a bullet in your brain. You don't, you jerk me around, and you will be begging me to before this night is up."

— Hal Lockwood, Castle (2009)

Oh, no! The villain has the hero (or another victim) at their mercy. Staring death in the face, the hero grits their teeth as they anticipate a slow and agonizing end. But what's this? The villain is offering them a deal: a quick, clean, and (relatively) painless death in exchange for something the villain needs. Casually mentioning the long, drawn-out, torturous death they'll get instead if they refuse is optional.

This thing the villain wants is almost never a physical object, as there's no point in demanding something they could simply steal from their victim's cold, dead hands (and it's unlikely the victim would just happen to have that one specific thing with them at the moment of near-death, anyway). Most often, it is a crucial piece of information that can be easily and quickly stated by someone even if they are in their death throes, assuming they're still capable of speech. However, it can be the location of a MacGuffin, the life of another person, or anything else, if the victim has been marked for execution but is not critically wounded and dying at that very moment.

Rarely does the hero actually resign themselves to their fate and give the villain what they want, especially if the offer involves betraying a comrade or a loved one. It is more often that they make one final gesture of defiance, get saved by an ally at the last minute, or pull a Heroic Second Wind out of their ass and save themselves from imminent death. That said, if the hero/victim takes the villain up on their offer, they may really end up regretting it in their last moments if the last thing they hear is a victorious cackle and the words "I Lied!"

To qualify for this trope, simply offering a Mercy Kill isn't enough. The would-be killer must make it clear to the other person that they won't give them a quick death unless they do what's asked of them first.

Due to the inherently dark nature of this trope, it is usually offered by a villain to a hero, but can also be offered by a particularly unscrupulous Anti-Hero to a villain or more commonly a low-level Mook.

Sub-trope of Mercy Kill and Sadistic Choice. Related to An Offer You Can't Refuse, Defiant to the End, and Last Breath Bullet. Compare The Easy Way or the Hard Way, and see also You Will Be Spared. A villain offering this choice is usually some flavor of Affably Evil. If both parties follow through with their agreement, it overlaps with I Gave My Word.

This is a Death Trope, so all spoilers are off!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Chainsaw Man: During his final duel with Denji, Katana Man has managed to slice off the chainsaws on Denji's arms and head, leaving him at his apparent mercy. Katana Man tells Denji that if he apologizes for killing his grandpa, he'll kill him quickly. Unfortunately for Katana Man, he didn't know Denji could also grow chainsaws on his legs and had already dealt him a finishing blow.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: Risotto Nero's and Diavolo's/Doppio's fight is interrupted by Narancia's Stand, Aerosmith, suddenly appearing and shooting dozens of bullets at Risotto. As he lies dying, Diavolo offers to kill him quickly if Risotto returns all of the iron to his body that he used his Stand, Metallica, to steal during their fight. Risotto instead uses Metallica to take control of Aerosmith and fire at Diavolo (unsuccessfully) and expires without giving back an ounce of iron.
• One Piece:
  • When Nami is fighting Miss Doublefinger, she notices that Nami is clearly out of league and struggling to use a weapon she's never tested until that very moment. She tells Nami that she should just give up and she'll be granted a quick and painless death rather than a dragged out and futile battle. Of course, Nami's not going to give up that easily.
  • When the Oniwabanshu catch Nico Robin snooping where she shouldn't be, their captain, Fukurokuju, says that if she answers truthfully about what she was doing, they'll kill her painlessly, but lie and be gruesomely tortured. Fortunately, that Nico Robin was just a disposable clone manifested by her powers, so "killing" her does nothing.

Comic Books

• Alix Senator: After dispatching a band of assassins, Alix says he'll leave their gutstabbed leader to die a slow death in the desert if he doesn't reveal the name of his employer, but give him a quick death if he does.
• In Marvel 1602, as Werner is being prepared to burn at the stake for being a witchbreed, he is offered the opportunity to confess and repent his sins in exchange for the stake being laid with wet wood and grass so that the smoke would asphyxiate him before he felt the fire consume him. Luckily for him, he is rescued by Scotius Summerisle and Robert Trefusis, fellow witchbreeds, who bring him back to their master.
• Sin City: In "The Hard Goodbye", Marv deals an Agonizing Stomach Wound to a hitman sent in to kill him, tells him You Are Already Dead and that it's going to be slow and painful, and that Marv will help if the hitman gives up the name of the man who hired him. The hitman obliges, and Marv shoots him in the head as thanks.
• The Transformers (Marvel): When Autobot spy Scrounge is captured and brought before Decepticon leader Straxus, he is interrogated. Scrounge refuses to talk even when Straxus effortlessly rips off his arm and remains silent even when Straxus offers him either a quick death if he talks, or a slow, agonizing one in the Smelting Pits. Scrounge's friend Blaster finds him in the Pits, melted into little more than his head and torso, but Scrounge clings to life long enough to give him the info he'd learned: Optimus Prime is alive! This news reinvigorates the demoralised Autobot resistance.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: When Spaceman Spiff is captured and brought before the ruler of the Zorg aliens, he is offered a "rather painless" death in exchange for a summary of Lewis and Clark's expedition to the Pacific Northwest. The last panel cuts back to reality, where Calvin is refusing to answer a question in class from his teacher, Miss Wormwood.

Fan Works

• Dæmorphing: In Abel or Cain, the Animorphs fake Tom's death so he can go live in the woods. They ask his Yeerk to let Tom go free in exchange for a quick death, and he accepts.
• A Darker Path: Atropos manages to blackmail concessions out of the Simurgh, of all beings, in exchange for a quick execution (with a shotgun empowered by Flechette) rather than torture. The Simurgh relents and undoes all her bombs, and Atropos kills her quickly with a Coup de Grâce.
• The Slippery Slope: Once Lung is down and missing most of his limbs, Taylor reaches into the gaping hole in his chest to seize his heart and offer him a quick death if he tells her who tipped him off to the Empire's movements. Since Lung resents being used as a cat's paw, he's happy to take the offer and reveal that it was Coil, earning a clean decapitation.
• In What Tomorrow Brings, the Animorphs kidnap Temrash-in-Tom and tie him up in the woods. Tobias offers Temrash the choice between a quick death and freedom or a slow and painful one by kandrona starvation; Temrash chooses the former.

Films — Live-Action

• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Shortly after the skirmish with Saruman's warg riders, Gimli and Legolas realize they lost track of Aragorn in the fight and find a wounded orc cackling to himself. Gimli offers to ease the orc's passing if he tells them what happened to Aragorn. The orc replies, truthfully, that he was dragged over the cliff by the warg the orc was riding but expires before Gimli can administer the Coup de Grâce.
• In Payback, Porter is captured by a mob boss whose son he abducted. The guy doesn't bother pretending he'll let Porter live, but threatens a more unpleasant end if his son isn't returned.
  "You tell me where he is, I'll end this quick. You can die without ever finding out what your left ball tastes like."
• At one point in Quigley Down Under, The Hero Matthew Quigley comes upon a group of Big Bad Marsters's mooks killing a group of Aboriginal Australians, as part of Marsters's efforts to commit genocide on the locals. After the shooting is over, he finds one wounded mook alive but whose back is broken due to falling from his horse. The guy begs for a Mercy Kill, but Quigley gets some information from him first, after threatening to leave the guy to find out if the ants or the dingoes will get to him first.
• Defied in Reservoir Dogs: When Mr. Blonde reveals that he captured a cop and everybody else discusses about whether or not torturing him for information about the possible mole in the heist team would work, Blonde makes clear he does not gives a damn. He just wants to torture the cop for kicks. If the cop knows anything and spills it out to try to make Blonde stop, or begs for a Mercy Kill, he ain't gonna get either either.
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Zigzagged. When Kirk and Spock are beamed aboard the Klingon Bird of Prey, Kirk holds the sole Klingon left aboard, Maltz, at phaser point and tells him, "You, help us or die." Maltz replies, "I do not deserve to live." An exasperated Kirk merely says, "Fine, I'll kill you later." Naturally, to Maltz's chagrin, Kirk reneges on that promise.
  Maltz: Wait! You said you would kill me.
  Kirk: I Lied.

Literature

• Artillerymen: In "Hell's March", after Captain Cayce's army defeats a Dominion force that was in the process of massacring a village, he offers the surviving enemy soldiers a choice: either tell him what he wants to know Dominion troop movements, in which case he'll have them executed by firing squad or remain silent, in which case he'll turn them over to the surviving villagers (who at that moment are already crucifying the Blood Priests who'd led the attack). All of the soldiers start talking at once. Subverted in that Cayce ends up sparing them after all since it turns out they'd been Forced into Evil and would have been tortured to death had they refused to carry out their orders.
• In the Deryni novel The King's Justice, Archbishop Edmund Loris intends to have the captive Duncan McLain burned at the stake as a Deryni heretic. But, says Loris, he'll give Duncan a quick death if Duncan confesses his heresies and betrays King Kelson's army. Subverted when Duncan listens carefully to Loris's words and realizes that Loris isn't offering a Mercy Kill; he's offering to give Duncan a dagger so he can kill himself — and the act of suicide would damn Duncan's soul as surely as betraying Kelson would.
• Dragon of the Lost Sea: While Shimmer and Thorn are fleeing from The Keeper, he says that he'll kill them painlessly if they surrender the Dream Pearl, Shimmer's family heirloom and her source of magic power, as well as perhaps the most powerful magical pearl in the world. They continue fleeing and eventually outmaneuver him enough to escape.
• Fire & Blood: While the House Targaryen siblings were in the process of conquering Westeros, Queen Rhaenys and her dragon Meraxes were dispatched to Dorne. Mid-flight, Meraxes took a scorpion bolt in the eyeball and plunged to her death, but Rhaenys' fate remained unknown even to her brother-husband King Aegon I. Three years later, after he and his other sister-wife Visenya had scorched Dorne with their own dragons in revenge, the princess of Dorne came to King's Landing to give Aegon a letter from her father. The contents of that letter are a mystery, but one possibility is that Rhaenys survived the fall and was in horrible agony from her injuries, and the letter promised that she would be given a quick and painless death in exchange for Aegon giving up on his conquest of Dorne.
• Hannibal: When Hannibal Lecter faces the gruesome fate of being fed to Mason Verger's pigs, Mason's twisted assistant Cordell offers to give him a serum that will grant a quick heart attack, in exchange for whatever money Lecter has stashed away. The good doctor responds by luring Cordell close with a promise of a Swiss bank account number... then snaps a bite out of his eyebrow.
• The Riftwar Cycle: Lady Mara's chief spy, Arakasi, makes use of this technique when interrogating a man for vital information to save Mara's life, using drugs that expand the victim's perception of time as Arakasi tortures him. Once the man finally cracks and tells Arakasi everything, he finally gets the quick end of a slit throat, as promised.
  Arakasi: But your life is no longer a bargaining point. What has yet to be determined is the manner of your death.
• In the Safehold novel By Schism Rent Asunder, Erayk Dynnys was promised a relatively merciful death (by garrotting before the horrific tortures of his Punishment were applied) if he would give the public confession that the Grand Inquisitor wanted as an excuse to invade Charis. Instead, Dynnys publicly confessed... to his faults for not standing up against the lies and corruption of the Church as it plotted to invade Charis for no good cause.
• Sword of Truth: In the sixth book of the series, the Imperial order captures a Mord-Sith and attempts to interrogate her. By the time Nicci hears of it, the Mord-Sith is too badly mutilated to survive but has told the interrogator nothing. Nicci kills the interrogator and asks the Mord-Sith to give her some non-secret information about Richard in exchange for a slit throat.
• Tower of the Swallow: In this book of The Witcher saga, Angoulême is given an ultimatum once she is arrested by Governor Fulko. If she willingly gives him enough information on her gang's activities, then he would ensure she gets a painless execution rather than a more torturous one. Luckily for her, some of the information she shares pertains to an impending ambush on Geralt and his hanse, which is passed on to him, and he in turn sets a term that Angoulême's custody be turned over to him, saving her life.
• Warbreaker: Breath is a precious magical resource that can only be voluntarily transferred. Vasher infiltrates a dungeon just to offer the imprisoned rebel leader Vahr a quick death in exchange for his Breaths since the Empire would be guaranteed to torture them out of Vahr eventually. They both follow through with the bargain.
• The Wheel of Time: In the Final Battle between The Chosen One Rand and the Dark One, the Dark One offers to mercy-kill all Creation if Rand surrenders, rather than torment it forever if Rand loses. It's both a lie and a case of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, since Rand, motivated by sincere hope for the future, doesn't buy it for a moment.

Live-Action TV

• Agent Carter: When Chief Dooley needs to acquire secret information from an incarcerated Nazi a few days away from execution, he offers him a pill and goes into a graphic description of everything that could go wrong with a hanging. Thus, the Nazi spills his secrets in exchange for a speedy death by cyanide. Or so he thinks because shortly after it turns out Dooley just gave him a breath mint.
• Better Call Saul: After Ignacio Varga is revealed as a mole who aided in the (supposed) assassination of Lalo Salamanca, he is captured and brought before The Cartel. Juan Bolsa offers him a "good death" in exchange for naming his co-conspirators, while the remaining Salamancas are aching to gruesomely torture him to death. Ignacio, who was acting under secret orders from Gustavo Fring, sticks to the agreed-upon story of a rival Peruvian cartel paying him off but chooses to go out on his own terms by breaking from his restrains, grabbing a gun to take Bolsa hostage, then giving a Final Speech before shooting himself.
• The Call of Warr: During his flashback about murdering a soldier, Prince is threatening to make him "last forever" unless he tells him what he wants to know.
  Tell me what I need to know, and this all ends. You get a quiet ending, and I get what I need. Tell me, or I will make you last forever.
• Castle (2009): While trying to learn the details of who killed Beckett's mother, Ryan and Esposito are taken hostage by a merc who was involved with the Big Bad behind it. He tells them that if they inform him of what the police know about the operation, he'll kill them quickly, a nice, fast headshot. But if they jerk him around, he promises to make them suffer to the point where they'll be begging for death. Ryan and Esposito firmly refuse to cooperate.
  Esposito: I'm going to have to go with option B.
  Ryan: Yeah, we're definitely going to jerk you around.
• Once Upon a Time: In a flashback scene of "Souls of the Departed", the Evil Queen questions a bunch of villagers about where Snow White is hiding. When one of them claims to know the answer but asks for a reward in return, the Evil Queen starts to telekinetically strangle him and tells him that if he talks she'll reward him by killing him quickly instead of slowly.
• Person of Interest: John Reese, seeking revenge against Dirty Cop Simmons for the murder of Detective Joss Carter, seizes Simmons' boss Alonzo Quinn, the head of crime syndicate HR, from federal custody and demands to know Simmons' location. Quinn refuses to talk, saying HR was built on loyalty, but Reese — a former black ops assassin — tells him he can choose between a quick and painless death or a slow and agonizing one. Quinn promptly folds.
  Reese: I'm not gonna threaten to kill you. I'm going to kill you... whether you tell me or not. No bargaining. In three minutes... you're dead. I've killed many people. Never bothered me much. That's why I was good at it. I didn't like them suffering, though. Took me years to figure out how to do it quickly, painlessly. But if you don't tell me, I'm gonna forget all of that. Understand? And I'll make the last three minutes of your life last forever.

Video Games

• Subverted in Borderlands 2. During "The Road to Sanctuary", at one point, Handsome Jack promises to the people of Sanctuary that their deaths will be quick if they turn themselves over... only for the man himself to go back on his promise and reassure the population that their deaths will be painful and he'll enjoy every second of it because he has a little secret.
• Halo: Combat Evolved: Guilty Spark offers the heroes a half-hearted attempt at this, which they don't even bother to think about.
  Guilty Spark: Why do you continue to fight us, Reclaimer? You cannot win! Give us the construct, and I will endeavor to make your death relatively painless, and— (Guilty Spark's feed cuts off)
  Cortana: At least I still have control over the comm channels.
• Heroes of Might and Magic V: The Demon Knight Agrael is ambushed by a rival demon, Erasial, but manages to defeat him and his army. He then demands to know why Erasial attacked him, offering a choice of a quick death if he complies or a slow painful one at the hands of his assistant, the succubus Biara if he refuses.

Webcomics

• Dracula needs the titular character of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja to scout out what lies beyond the Afterlife Antechamber and return. He offers a painless death to "sweeten the deal", so to speak.

Web Video

• Critical Role: Campaign One has a dark heroic example. After capturing Delilah Briarwood, Percy—whose family was slaughtered by Delilah and her husband Sylas years before—attempts to interrogate her for information on the dark ritual the two were performing beneath Whitestone. Delilah, knowing Percy is going to kill her regardless and no longer valuing her own life after losing her husband, refuses to cooperate. Percy offers her this as an ultimatum: Cooperate, and be killed quickly via a bullet to the head. Refuse, and be tortured into insanity, with the ultimate goal of so thoroughly destroying Delilah's mind and soul that even her final hope of reuniting with Sylas in the afterlife will be made impossible.

Western Animation

• The final season's penultimate episode before the Grand Finale of Justice League sees a version of this using preemptive payment: Lex Luthor has taken his Legion of Doom into the depths of space in a spaceship in order to resurrect Brainiac using the fragments of the space station that self-destructed with him inside. Unfortunately for Lex, someone else died in that space station without his knowledge: Darkseid, and as Darkseid finds himself amongst the living once more his first words are thus:
  Darkseid: It seems I have you to thank for my resurrection. Though your world will suffer slowly, I grant you a quick death. (destroys the spaceship)

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