Shared Fate Ultimatum

"If he dies, you die."

— Princess Gwendolyn, The Court Jester

The Shared Fate Ultimatum shows up in fiction when a person or group is endangered and someone tries to get someone else to save them by delivering an ultimatum: "Whatever happens to that person/group will be your fate as well."

Sometimes this will be threatened against the Big Bad. Other times against an Anti-Hero who has the power to act, but no inclination to do so. In some cases, it will be a third party against two warring factions as a means of preserving the peace.

Many an action film or police procedural will use this to create a Mexican Standoff.

If it's between a pair of characters, it might involve a Mutual Kill.

In some situations, such as a doctor being threatened if a patient dies, it might be the result of Anger Born of Worry.

If enforced by mystical means, it may overlap with Synchronization and/or Shared Life Energy.

Might result in Together in Death. Might be the result of a Human Shield attempt.

Compare Taking You with Me, for when such a threat is acted upon. May double as a Badass Boast. Compare Implied Death Threat. Contrast the Original Position Fallacy, where a character believes something negative should befall another without considering whether it might befall themselves.

To qualify, people must be told that one death will result in another. If killing one person will result in another's death, but no warning was issued, it is not this trope. That said, the warning need not be verbal, so long as it's clearly understood.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ah! My Goddess: The doublet system between the Goddesses and Demons works this way by using a type of Synchronization. A Goddess and a Demon are paired, and then their memory erased of who their pair is with. Thus, neither side can kill the other, lest they kill an ally they care about, or even themselves, while trying to take out the opposition.
• In Death Note, Light warns Misa that he can kill her if she doesn't follow his orders, but Rem the Shinigami tells him that if he does that, she will kill him in retaliation.
• Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu: When Chidori is kidnapped by a gang to get back at Sousuke, he retaliates by kidnapping the gang leader's little brother and tying him to the ceiling of the warehouse where the gang was holding Chidori hostage. The ropes are tied to detonators, and Sousuke has the trigger. He tells the gang leader she can either kill both Chidori and her own brother or save both of them. Subverted, as Sousuke was bluffing and the gang leader's brother was in on it.
• My-Otome: The otome/master system, which is a form of Synchronization, means a master shares the fate of their Otome, virginal girls given One-Woman Army status via nanomachine treatment. The idea was that world leaders would be hesitant to start conflicts knowing that they would die if their Otome died.
• Slayers: In Next, Martina puts a curse on Lina that anything she did to anyone else would be visited back on her. It becomes truly absurd when Lina executes a Groin Attack on Gourry and gets to literally experience Share the Male Pain. However, while stopping to gloat, Martina manages to accidentally inflict the curse on herself. The only way to undo the curse on herself, which involves putting a cursed knife through an item belonging to the victim, would require removing the knife, which would also free Lina, as Martina couldn't pull the knife out of her boot without also pulling it out of the scrap of cloth she took from Lina.

Comic Books

• Hellblazer: In "All His Engines", John gets an Aztec death god to stop possessing a little girl (Chas' granddaughter) by setting a strand of her hair on fire and threatening to let Sympathetic Magic do the rest. The god backs down, Chas punches John for being ready to sacrifice her... and it turns out John was bluffing: the hair was from a doll.
• The Killing Joke: Batman's monologue, which serves as Bookends to the story, is an acknowledgement of this as a Mutual Kill outcome for Batman and The Joker and serves as an attempt to avert it. Joker, for his part, acknowledges Batman's point but believes they're both too far down that path to turn back.
• Spider-Man: Back in Black has Peter Parker tell the Kingpin that he will come to finish him off on the day that Aunt May dies.

Fan Works

• Code Prime: In Chapter 22 of R1, Megatron gets fed up with the constant backstabbing of the Seekers and Airachnid and declares all four of them will die if any of them makes another attempt at hindering the others.
• Inter Nos: After being recalled to the capitol as part of a plot against her, Shizuru returns to the battlefield just in time to route the Mentulean Empire. She finds her lover, Natsuki, at death's door and rushes her to the medics. When the head medic tells Shizuru that Natsuki will die, she hoists him in the air with one hand and tells every medic in the tent that Natsuki will live, or they won't.
  Shizuru: I shall see this girl alive, or I will end you superfluous worms myself!
• Mega Man X Revenge: After losing two lives in the titular game, Ivan is presented with text telling him not to lose all his lives or he would suffer the same fate as X.
• Your Heart a Haven of Thorns (Naruto): After Hiruzen brushes off Kikyō's warnings against continuing the Chuunin Exams while Orochimaru is still at large, she threatens to make things more personal by hunting down his personal summons, the monkey king Enma. Hiruzen ignores the threat, and Enma pays the price, with the Tiger clan inflicting the same fate upon him that Enma had inflicted upon the tiger cub Yumi ages before.
  Kikyō: You will call off these exams or I will gather my siblings and hunt down your personal summons. You seem to care not for the lives of your villagers, so what are a few more lives to add to your growing dead?

Films — Live-Action

• Billy Jack. A deputy threatens to shoot a girl to make Billy Jack drop his rifle. Billy Jack refuses, saying that if the deputy shoots the girl, he'll shoot the deputy.
  Deputy: Now you drop that gun, or I'll shoot her. I'm not gonna ask you again.
  Billy Jack: You won't have to.
  Deputy: What?
  Billy Jack: I said shoot her.
  Deputy: You'd kill her, just like that?
  Billy Jack: You'll kill her. And then I'll kill you, just like that.
• The Court Jester: Princess Gwendolyn becomes smitten with the man she believes is Giacomo (in reality Hawkins), and warns her Lady-in-Waiting, Griselda, that if Giacomo/Hawkins dies, then Griselda will die as well.
  Princess Gwendolyn: If he dies, you die.
• The Dead Pool: "Dirty" Harry Callahan has, through the course of the film, been the subject of two different assassination plots, one by a mob boss he busted, and another involving the titular list. Figuring to put a kibosh on at least one, Harry bribes a large convict to stand at the end of a corridor and look menacing. He then tells the mob boss a story about the convict being a renowned killer.
  Harry: I'm going to be sending him a letter once a week, and I'm going to be telling him how I'm gonna be looking in on his sick mother, and how I'm trying to get him special privileges here at the prison. And you know what's the interesting part? The interesting part is if anything happens to me, and Hicks doesn't get his letter, he's going to be really pissed off, and he's going to come down here and see you because you're the mailman. In fact he'll probably come down here to this post office and cancel your ass like a stamp. So you'd better ensure prompt, courteous delivery, and pray that nothing happens to me.
• Pulp Fiction: When Lance tries to refuse helping Vincent with Mia when she overdoses, Vincent says that if her husband Marsellus finds out Vincent will be "a fucking grease spot," but he'll make damn sure to tell Marsellus that Lance let her die on his lawn, making sure he'd die slow too.
• Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith: After freeing Senator Palpatine, Anakin goes to pick up an unconscious Obi-Wan in order to carry him to safety. Palpatine orders him to leave Obi-Wan behind so as not to slow down their escape, which Anakin shuts down with a blunt "His fate will be the same as ours."

Literature

• The Dresden Files: In Cold Days, the Red Cap challenges Harry by taking his date Sarissa and using her as a Human Shield. Harry undermines the Red Cap with his usual Deadpan Snarker routine and then issues one of these ultimatums (slightly undermined by the fact that Red Cap was merely the distraction, and while he keeps Harry occupied two other Winter Fae are sneaking up behind him).
  Red Cap: Touch me and I will kill her.
  Harry: That's bad, but there's not much I can do about it if you decide to kill her now. Of course, after you do that... I don't like your chances, Red. If she dies, you'll join her.
• The Executioner. The Starscream of one particular Mafia territory insists on command of all the gunmen of every underboss when they find out Mack Bolan is in town. Then he smugly waits for Bolan to kill his capo so he can rule the city. Next thing he knows, his capo is on the phone screaming that Bolan broke into his house and killed everyone except him (because Bolan is playing his own gambit). The capo then says that he's put out a contract—if he dies by Bolan's hand, then the contract killer (or killers) bumps off his ambitious underling as well, so he better start doing his job.
• Neil Gaiman's short story "The Monarch of the Glen". After Shadow helps save her son, Grendel's mother tells Smith and Mr. Alice that if anything happens to Shadow and she suspects their hand in it, they will meet with quick deaths themselves.
• Recoil by Brian Garfield. The protagonist is a whistleblower targeted by a mob boss, who hires a Vigilante Man to resolve the situation. They kidnap the boss's wife and cause various other problems, forcing the mob boss to back off under the threat of worse if anything happens to the whistleblower and his family, including accidents deliberate or otherwise.
• Sherlock Holmes: "The Three Garridebs" has Holmes tell a known killer who shot Watson that if the wound had proved fatal, he wouldn't have lived, himself. Watson tells the readers it was worth the wound, worth many wounds, to see the depth of Holmes's loyalty and love.
  Holmes: By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.
• Skylark Three opens with Richard Seaton informed that the aliens he had met in the last book have gotten into war with another planet, and knows that both species are Proud Warrior Races who can and will exterminate their enemy completely if they win the war, and also that, as technologically advanced as his alien friends are, they are less so than their enemy and have no realistic chance of winning. As it turns out, another, far more technologically advanced alien race had just sent a scout ship to the area, which Seaton finds and salvages for technology, then comes back and tells the warring races that, if they do not make peace and fight this new threat together, then he won’t intervene in their war, but he will use the super-tech to exterminate the winner as punishment for having exterminated the loser. They make peace.
• Wulfrik: When Sveinbjorn attempts to claim Hjordis is his wife by right, Wulfrik tells him to screw a goat. He further informs him and her father that whatever fate they have planned for him, she'll share it.

Live-Action TV

• Angel: Being the only child of two vampires, Angel's son was prized by every faction of evil in the world. Angel's solution was to make one of these threats to the head of Wolfram & Hart.
  Angel: (holding down Linwood) My son has a cut on his cheek (cuts Linwood's cheek) and now coincidentally, so do you. Whatever happens to my son, happens to you whether it's your fault or not. So not only are you not going after him, you're going to make sure no one else does either.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Becoming, Part 2," Buffy and Spike end up in an Enemy Mine alliance against Angelus, who plans to destroy the world, has captured Giles to torture him for information about it, and is stealing Spike's girlfriend Drusilla. Buffy is not happy to let two vampires escape, but with the world in danger and her usual allies in hospital, she's forced to make the compromise. However, as Spike leaves, she gives him some incentive to do his part properly:
  Buffy: If Giles dies? [Drusilla] dies.
• Castle:
  • "Under the Gun": When aged crook Clifford Stuckey is pointing a shotgun at Beckett, Ryan and Esposito promise if he shoots he's dead "half a second later".
  • "Cuffed": Ryan and Esposito are trying to rescue Castle and Beckett from the murderous Spurloch family, and Esposito makes this Badass Boast.
    Esposito: It doesn't matter which of us you shoot first. Whoever is left standing will kill you, I promise.
  • "Under Fire". Beckett learns that the city building inspector is the arsonist known as The Phantom who has caused a building to be set ablaze that Ryan and Esposito are trapped in. She and Castle believe there's a way out, and that he knows it. So Beckett slams him against a car and holds her gun on him, telling him that if Ryan and Esposito die, he will share their fate.
• Doctor Who: "A Christmas Carol". The Doctor warns Kazran Sardick that he will share the fate of the passengers of a wounded starship unless he helps save them.
  The Doctor: There are 1103 people I won't allow to die tonight. Do you know where that puts you?
  Kazran: Where?
  The Doctor: 1104.
• The Equalizer discovers that the husband of his client has hired a contract killer
• Game of Thrones: When her grandchildren are arrested and her House is threatened, Olenna Tyrell meets with Petyr Baelish, with who she had conspired to murder King Joffrey. Baelish's actions had indirectly contributed to the arrests, and he tries his characteristic strategy of talking his way out of trouble, but Olenna is having none of it.
  Olenna: "I promise you, Lord Baelish, that our fates are joined. Together, we murdered a King. If my House should fall, I will have nothing to hide. And if I should meet with some 'accident' here at your broken little flesh-market, they'll never even find what's left of you."
• La Femme Nikita: Operations barely survives an assassination attempt. With him on life support in the hospital, the doctor tells Madeline it's only a matter of time. She puts a gun to his chin and announces that he is to do the impossible, and then the unthinkable to save Operations, otherwise the entire surgical team will share his fate.
• The Legend of Zhen Huan: The Emperor announces that if heroine Zhen Huan dies in childbirth, he will bury the entire Imperial medical bureau with her.
• M*A*S*H:
  • "A Full Rich Day": Implied. When Lt. Smith holds the doctors at gunpoint and demands they work on the wounded man he brought in, it's suggested he might open fire if the wounded man dies.
  • Referenced but subverted in "The Best of Enemies". Hawkeye is held at gunpoint by a North Korean soldier and ordered to treat a wounded man. Hawk wonders aloud if failure to save the injured soldier will result in him being shot. But so desperate is Hawk to save the wounded man, when he needs help, he yanks the rifle out of the other man's hands and has him hold the patient down. Though the injured man dies, Hawkeye is allowed to go, because the soldier who held Hawkeye realized his desire to save him had been sincere, and not motivated solely by fear of consequences.
• Quantum Leap: during an episode where Sam ends up deep in Klan country and struggles with his friends and family being of that viewpoint, he ends up showing up at the lynching of a black friend. He announces to the group that they should hang him, but hang Sam as well. He even brought his own noose and sets it up next to his friend's.
• The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: In "The Missing Witness Sensation": Terrorists have kidnapped Max Carrados, a key witness in the trial that got one of their own sentenced to death, and sentenced him to death in turn. They issue an ultimatum that if the condemned terrorist's execution is carried out, so will Carrados's.
• Rory Bremner: In one sketch, James Goldsmith is portrayed as a Bond-style supervillain, holding John Major hostage with the threat of unleashing a million votes for his Referendum Party. Major, in the role of Bond, replies "If you press that button it'll destroy you as surely as it will me." Goldsmith nonetheless presses the button, and Major is proved right.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • Inverted in "The Search, Part II"; when Odo learns that his people abducted the DS9 crew to run experiments on them, he warns the Female Changeling that "whatever you do to them, you'll have to do to me." Since the Changelings have a very strict Ape Shall Never Kill Ape policy, she allows them to leave with Odo.
  • In "Shattered Mirror" Mirror!Garak is Mirror!Worf's prisoner. Garak's guard accuses him of stealing the key to his shackles which earns Garak a stabbing by Worf. The key suddenly turns up, and Worf threatens to kill the guard if Garak's wound isn't healed.

Mythology and Religion

• Invoked by Moses in the Book of Exodus chapter 32, while pleading for God to have mercy on the Israelites after the golden calf incident. God has told Moses he plans to wipe them out and make Moses's own descendants the chosen people instead. Moses rejects this option, asking that his own fate be the same as that of the Israelites. This means God has to choose between wiping out his chosen people entirely — killing Moses and breaking his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — or having mercy on the Israelites for Moses's sake.
  Moses: But now, please forgive their sin — but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.

Tabletop Games

• Mage: The Awakening: The three-dot Fate spell "Shared Fate" can enforce this, since it links two subjects together and causes each to take any harm the other suffers. It's played with, though, since the spell can also be cast in such a way that makes only one subject take all the harm that befalls another, or make a single subject also suffer any harm she inflicts on others.
• Werewolf (1997): One player may be assigned the role of Cupid and choose two other players to become Lovers. Regardless of what other roles the Lovers are, if one dies, the other dies with them. This can lead to some interesting possibilities that could ultimately help or hinder the villagers or werewolf team, or just sew chaos.

Video Games

• Fallout: New Vegas: During the "Dead Money" DLC, Father Elijah invokes this trope by fitting the Courier and the other participants in his planned heist with a set of explosive collars. One of the conditions that triggers the collars is if a collar ever detects a lack of life signs from its wearer, it sends a detonation signal to all others in the same set, forcing the heist participants to work together and care about each other's well-being if they don't want their heads to be blown up.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has an early plot point where the Exile and Kreia unconsciously form a Force bond with one another, which quickly turns out to be much stronger than usual when Kreia loses a hand and the Exile immediately feels it. When Kreia reveals herself to be the Big Bad Darth Traya, she holes up at the remains of Malachor V, using the shared bond with the Exile as a threat to bring them to her: if they refuse, she will kill herself, and in turn kill the Exile.
• Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus: A sign in Slig Barracks says "Terminating General Dripik while he is possessed prior to disarming the main gates is against regulation and is punishable by death and dishonorable discharge". If either Dripik or Aslik dies before disarming the gates, a slig will appear and shoot Abe.

Visual Novel

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: this principle is the basis for the entire legal system in the Kingdom of Khura'in thanks to the Defence Culpability Act: if anyone is found guilty in a Khura'in court, their defense attorney shares the same sentence. Unknown to most people, the act also covers anyone directly or indirectly aiding the accused in their crimes or defense, which they usually don't know about until it's too late.
• Zero Time Dilemma: When Carlos and Junpei are trapped in the Reactor room, they're forced to play a modified version of the AB Game if they want to escape. The terminal warns that others will share their fates: If Carlos is executed for having his BP drop to 0, then Diana and Sigma will be killed as well. Meanwhile, if Junpei reaches 0 BP, Akane and Phi will be executed along with him.

Webcomics

• The Last Days of FOXHOUND: After Revolver Ocelot fails to poison Psycho Mantis, Mantis lets Ocelot know that the Patriots will kill Ocelot if Mantis dies under any mysterious circumstances. Ocelot doesn't take it well.

Web Original

• There is a popular internet meme that uses a downplayed version of this, where an Overprotective Dad will tell a boy "Whatever you do to my daughter, I will do to you."

Western Animation

• Justice League: In the episode two-parter "In Blackest Night", Flash volunteers to speak on behalf of Green Lantern when the latter is accused of a serious intergalactic crime. The judges agree but then add that if Green Lantern is found guilty, then the Flash will also be subjected to the same penalty (which is execution) as well.
  Flash: The same penalty? You mean...That's crazy!
  Chief Judge: No, that's how we solved our lawyer problem.
• Justice League Unlimited: When Batman accosts Amanda Waller and she threatens to reveal his identity to the world, he responds in kind.
  Batman: Fine. Why don't we step into the light together? I'm sure the American people would be just as interested in your activities as mine; secret weapons, illegal cloning experiments, bypassing Congress.
• Superman: The Animated Series: In "Worlds Finest: Part-3," after Batman fires missiles from the Batwing at the Lex-Wing bomber the Joker and Harley Quinn stole from Luthor, who was unwillingly brought along for the ride:
  Joker: Batman! It's always Batman. What do you got in the way of air-to-air missiles, Lex?
  Luthor: You're asking me for help?
  Joker: If I go down, you go down.
  Luthor: It's a red switch.
  Joker: (Sees console full of red buttons) Which red—? Oh, the heck with it. (presses several buttons which launch missiles, with one disabling the Batwing.)

Real Life

• In the '60s, Reverend Wade Watts was threatened with this by the Ku Klux Klan. He had ordered a chicken in a whites-only restaurant and the Klansmen told him whatever he did to that chicken, they would do to him. So he kissed it. The Klan were promptly too busy laughing to do anything.
• In a rare instance of Imperialism being on the sensible side of things, the British government in India prior to the Raj banned the lethal practice of suttee, where a widow was to be cremated alive along with her husband on his funeral pyre (sometimes voluntarily but definitely not always). When local priests complained that the practice was a sacred part of their customs, Governor Charles Napier invoked this while dismissing their grievance, which effectively ended the tradition of suttee:
  Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs!

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