You Have Failed Me

Admiral Ozzel: Lord Vader. The fleet has moved out of lightspeed and we're preparing to— [Force choked]
Darth Vader: You have failed me for the last time, Admiral.

— The Empire Strikes Back

Commonly in a Sic 'Em scene, the Big Bad — usually an Evil Overlord or Diabolical Mastermind — kills one of their henchmen who has failed to capture and/or kill The Hero, as motivation to all of their other (surviving) underlings not to repeat their failure. Presumably, the other underlings immediately all fall into line instead of (say) quietly updating their resumes and trying to find a less psychopathic overlord to work for. Some bad guys will use the Blofeld Ploy to pull off the underling murder. Others will drop the offending underling through a Trap Door into a Shark Pool or other deathtrap, or feed them to their Right-Hand Attack Dog. A variation has the Big Bad not killing the failed underling on the spot but sending him off on a Suicide Mission, usually with a cold-hearted reminder that doing one's duty comes before self-preservation.

The Big Bad may eventually realize there's something special about the hero and stop summarily executing minions for their failures as they gain a healthy admiration for their skills, but don't bet on it. Evil organizations more often than not will stick to an explicit policy of "Succeed, or die."

Few stories address the question of what happens when this policy is taken to its logical conclusion. Realistically, such a policy causes its practitioners to kill off many of their own skilled leaders, while leaving the survivors demoralized, afraid to take initiative, more concerned with sucking up and dodging blame than with actually doing their jobs well, and inclined to either desert, defect, or kill their boss before he kills them. See the unfortunate results described in the Hitler and Stalin examples under "Real Life". Sometimes, this makes it easier for the heroes to spare Mooks when they beg for mercy; if the heroes know that the minions will be killed if they try to return to the villains' service, they know they won't end up regretting letting them live, and might even do so because they believe the minions are working under duress. In a reconstruction, pragmatic, if ruthless, villains may avoid this trope for most cases of failure, reserving this fate explicitly for those who have shown repeated or total incompetence. If the villian decides to get involved in the task at hand personally, he may express his displeasure with his mook by destroying him before moving on to it.

Exactly how badly this reflects on the boss depends on a few factors; most prominently, (1) Is there no real alternative to death? If not, well, that's a point on the Anti-Villain side of the equation (and yes, it does happen that no alternative exists; for example, an overly ambitious minion in The Horde); (2) Was it something worse then mere mild incompetence that lead to the failure; say, if the hero got away because the minion was violating explicit orders, well, the extreme reaction is somewhat more understandible; (3) Was the minion violating Even Evil Has Standards or Pragmatic Villainy concerns? (4) Was the minion's incompetence directly responsible for the unnecessary deaths of many other minions?

Some Big Bads have the Genre Savvy to not advertise the fact. Instead, they will arrange for a Hunting "Accident", Uriah Gambit, or Assassination Attempt with Plausible Deniability. Some will subvert the practice and let the constant failure cause the person in question to fall into further public disgrace among his own men. In such cases, Klingon Promotion is often discreetly encouraged (and discreetly sponsored) as a way of getting rid of an underling who has failed too many times.

Another variant on this is instead of the Big Bad doing this, a high-ranking, oftentimes very loyal, and particularly ruthless official working for the Big Bad, possibly The Dragon, does it instead — perhaps without the boss' approval.

Some Big Bads do this by phone. Mook 1 phones Big Bad with bad news while Mook 2 stands nearby. Big Bad asks Mook 1 to pass his phone to Mook 2. Mook 2 says "Ok Boss, I understand. I'll see to that rightaway. Bye Boss... here's your phone back" and then shoots Mook 1 while he is distracted with his phone.

See also: Bad Boss, Shoot the Messenger, You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, Villainous Demotivator, We Have Reserves, and Volatile Second Tier Position, which is a position that often suffers this fate. Contrast Even Evil Has Loved Ones, I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure, and Can't Kill You, Still Need You. Can lead to Mook Depletion if the villain overdoes this. See Make an Example of Them when the failure is punished especially harshly "to encourage the others". See also The Purge when this is done en masse to anyone even suspected of incompetence or disloyalty. May be an example of Karmic Death if the character has actually earned this fate.

Shoot the Dangerous Minion can be considered the opposite, where the villain destroys his minion because he's too good at his job and might become another threat. Compare and contrast Self-Punishment Over Failure, where the minions themselves are behind their punishment.

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Examples:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
  • The DCU
  • Marvel Universe
• Films — Live-Action
  • Star Wars (Trope Namer)
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Webcomics
• Western Animation
• Real Life

Advertising

• In the 1990s Barclaycard ads where Rowan Atkinson plays a bumbling British agent, the new head of British Intelligence says she'll have him terminated as a suspected double agent if he fails to capture the villain again. He messes it up of course, but escapes death because he (finally) gets smart enough to use Barclaycard.

Fan Works

• Absolute Trust: Of all people, Ozai betrays and arranges Azula's death after too many failures. Katara revives her with the Spirit Water, and it doesn't take long for her to join the Gaang.
• In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Fanfic Demon Duelist Legacy, Kilomet Sestros is the ALL-TIME CHAMPION of this trope. If you breathe the wrong way while working under him, you can expect to be tortured excessively before finally dying. And he may eat your corpse afterwards.
• In DoofQuest after destroying Danville through reckless mad science and the doctor being horrified by the damage (since he's now in charge of cleaning it up) LOVEMUFFIN accuses Doofeshmirtz of not being properly evil anymore. Doof counters by letting them know that they've failed him for the last time and throws them all in prison.
• The Immortal Game: Near the end of the story, Prince Empyrean is drained of his power by the Elements of Harmony, at which point his father King Titan doesn't hesitate to kill him.
• Friendship Is Aura: After Chrysalis ends up back in his realm following her defeat by Lucario, Tartarus responds by absorbing her into himself.
• The evil Calvin duplicate in The Pez Dispenser and the Reign of Terror shoots one of his own men for being a "coward".
• In Perfection Is Overrated, any SUE who fails against the Himes will be killed by the next one to step up. This happens to Toki, who is the only one who remains alive after being defeated.
• In Naruto Veangance Revelaitons, the Council has somewhat inconsistent enforcement on death as being a punishment for failure. The head of the Kibusi Corporation is killed after one failed attempt at killing Ronan by bombing a theater, but Madara, who has more failures to his name, is kept around and never executed for failing.
• In the Unacceptable Sitch Series story "Under the Milky Way Tonight", Gemini's habit of dropping unsuccessful agents down trapdoors, which was Played for Laughs in the show, is instead given realistic consequences. Gemini's minions are terrified to act on their own initiative when a plan starts going off the rails, which becomes an important factor in the heroes' ultimate victory.
• Subverted in Ultimate Sleepwalker: The New Dreams in a couple of cases involving the Kingpin:
  • When the Kingpin hires the Porcupine to protect an essential arms deal and Lightmaster defeats him, the Porcupine is arrested by the police and taken to the prison hospital to recover from his injuries. The Kingpin does not have the Porcupine killed, because he has succeeded enough times at other missions that the Kingpin decides he still has some value.
  • The Kingpin eventually has the Enforcers, who serve as his Co-Dragons in running the day to day affairs of his crime syndicate, killed after they are unable to keep the organization from being driven out of New York. However, given that the Enforcers have proven themselves to be very competent and loyal minions up until this point, the Kingpin has them killed by Batroc the Leaper, an Affably Evil badass who cooks each of them a delicious Cordon Bleu dinner as a last meal before killing them quickly and painlessly.
• In Eugenesis, the world-weary Sixshot deliberately holds his battalion back from the first battle with the Quintessons because he was present at the previous war with them and is still deeply traumatized from his experiences. This partly leads to most of the Decepticon military getting slaughtered in the ensuing firefight, with Soundwave himself narrowly avoiding death or capture. When he finally meets up with Sixshot's battalion, Sixshot attempts to make excuses and pleasantries but Soundwave is done tolerating failure and shoots him dead.
• In chapter 9 of Children of an Elder God, Rei kills The King of Yellow, stating that he’s failed and the Outer Gods don’t tolerate failures:
  "The Crawling Chaos will devour you all!" The King shouted. "The Outer Gods cannot be mocked! I have gazed upon the Throne of Azathoth! I have..."
  "You have failed. And the Herald of the Outer Gods has no patience for those who fail him."
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Paul keeps his attitude of releasing his Pokémon if they fail to live up to his high standards. During the Fuchsia Tag Tournament, he releases his Raichu after she loses in the semifinals, not bothering to properly heal her, and this prompts Ash and Red, who are at odds with each other over their use of bloodliner powers in competitive battles, to set aside their differences for the finals and ensure that he doesn't win the tournament.
• Infinity Crisis: In In Hand and Foot, when a Hand ninja reports failure, Gorgon turns him to stone to send a message to the rest.
• In A Prize for Three Empires, Ronan the Accuser isn't pleased when his soldier Iva Kann fails to capture Carol Danvers. Nonetheless, he gives her a second chance to complete her mission, making clear there will be not a third.
  Ronan: You have failed, and failed badly, Iva Kann[...]You will have one chance to redeem yourself, Iva Kann.[...]Should you fail, Agent Kann, and should she choose not to destroy you, I will see to your execution myself. Personally. Is this understood?
• In RWBY canon, Salem inverts this when Tyrian returns to her, minus his tail, and begs forgiveness for failing to capture Ruby. But in the RWBY fanfiction, How Salem Should Have Dealt With Tyrian, she actually goes forward on it by trapping Tyrian in tendrils on the floor and ceiling, then resurrecting Roman Torchwick and asking him to torture and execute Tyrian. Roman gleefully obliges to it, and blows off Tyrian's arms, all the while telling Tyrian that he's superior to him in every way, then gouges his eyes out and then bludgeons him to death with his cane.
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: While it doesn't happen immediately, Draco has a list for when he's actually in a position to kill idiots.
  "And everyone with secret orders, make sure you carry them out to the letter," said Draco.
  Around half his soldiers openly nodded, and Draco marked them for death after he rose to power.
• In Hellfire Saga, a Sonic fan game, Satan punishes Dr. Eggman for failure to kill Sonic with everything the devil lent him. Eggman pleads for another chance, but Satan refuses to give it and he instead sends the doctor's mecha flying skywards before it explodes, nearly killing Eggman.
• Heroes of the New World; Kaido does this twice in a row to two different characters, but with wildly different results:
  • First, he tells Spytand Malice he failed for losing his fight with Izuku Midoriya and failing to stop Yamato from escaping Onigashima. But since he owed up to his failure and since he is the only one with any idea of Izuku's powers and looks, Kaido spares him with the caveat that he must bring both of them back alive in order to redeem himself fully.
  • Queen, unfortunately, is less lucky, as Malice told Kaido that Queen had ignored his earliest warnings about Yamato's odd behavior prior to her escape. Kaido tells Queen they're going to have a "talk" later, and the next time Queen appears he's been beaten so badly he's a Bandage Mummy stuck in a wheelchair and short his mechanical arm, and Kaido has arranged it so Queen can only get low-quality medicine that stings like hell whenever he uses it.
• Dance with the Demons: In this Batman story, it's pointed out that the leader of the team guarding Ra's Al Ghul Greenland's base is still alive because he hasn't screwed up as of yet.
  The detachment of guards at a remote area of Greenland were watchful, as they had to be. But they really didn't expect anything to worry about. A couple of idiots had wandered onto the property at times and either been escorted back or left in pieces, whichever the team leader had deemed most expedient. So far, the team leader had kept his head on his shoulders. That signified he had done his job well.
• A centaur prophecy in The Rigel Black Chronicles warns that the wielder of the Dominion Jewel must either dominate and control others, or be taken control of in turn and devoured. Sure enough, after Peter Pettigrew fails to overcome and steal Harry's wild magic, the Jewel sucks out his life force and leaves him as a shrivelled corpse.
  Ascend and rule, but bear the cost
  Beware what comes of power lost
• In UA:LA, since Stacks was stopped from successfully stealing a wallet by Hero, Heiki orders he be killed.
• The Gospel Of Malachel: When one member of Seele goes behind the group's back and attempts to get the Eva pilots assassinated, Kihl gets him executed immediately, and afterwards he warns his subordinates he will not suffer fools or tolerate their blunders.
• Repeatedly subverted in The Mountain and the Wolf, where the Wolf doesn't kill his men for failing him despite being unafraid to do so in canon (of course, given that he has an agenda he might be doing it for purely pragmatic reasons):
  • One of the Wolf's marauders gets in a fight with Wildings. The Wolf punches the marauder for each offense (fighting, with allies, over a woman, when there's a major battle coming up, and losing), but it's likely because they need every man capable of defending Winterfell to do so.
  • The Wolf's seer is accused of killing Varys and destroying his body when the latter tries to have Daenerys poisoned. The Wolf (who is officially working for Daenerys at this point) makes quite a spectacle of berating the man before handing him over to Daenerys to punish as she sees fit (in this case, dragonfire). In fact the seer abducted Varys, and both are seen alive and well later.
  • When the seer deliberately weakens the spell he'd cast over Daenerys so she'd leave more of the city standing, the Wolf recognizes that Pragmatic Villainy was the right way to go... and only gives him a black eye.
  • Two of his men are gambling instead of watching the ship like they're supposed to, he only beats them and forces them to serve as temporary bodyguards to Tyrion without starting fights rather than killing them.
  • After Qyburn says he can't bring back whatever it is the Wolf wants him to reanimate, he gets ready to bite a Cyanide Pill to deny the Wolf the pleasure of killing him. The Wolf instead tells Qyburn he'll soon have the means to revive it and leaves him to it.
  • Played straight in that the Wolf expects this of Daenerys, appearing genuinely shocked that she'd spare the Lannister soldiers or some Dothraki who deserted at Winterfell. It doesn't seem to occur to him that his heavy-handed approval and recommendation of unforgiving brutality is exactly what drives her to pardon them in the first place.
• In Rebel King After the Ghost crew broadcast their message, defeating the Grand Inquisitor in the process, and XCOM liberates the Lothal prison camp Vader arrives and kills Aresko and Grint for their incompetence then turns his attention to the Grand Inquisitor.
• In Viridian: The Green Guide, after repeatedly having her plans foiled, culminating in the destruction of her entire hive, All For One decides to have Queen Bee executed.
• In Cinders and Ashes: the Chronicles of Kamen Rider Dante, Re:Shocker is implied to have a tendency to do this to their subjects, as seen when Yudai has one of his minions get killed by another one after they failed to defeat Dante. He later asks his boss, Vega, if he failed him for the last time after the other minion ends up getting killed. Though Vega brings up that it was the minion that failed, not Yudai, with the only punishment he received being throttled after finding the minion died trying to assassinate someone he intended on keeping alive.
• Subverted in the Knights of the Old Republic fanfic The Revan Saga Episode One: The Phantom Empire. When a group of Mandalorian warriors fail to kill Revan, Darth Aestis prepares to execute their leader Valk Ordo for her failure. Then her subordinates immediately demand her release, and Valk points out that if he goes through with it, he will incite the wrath of all of Clan Ordo and then all of Mandalore when they inevitably learn of his treachery. Darth Aestis is forced to back down.
• Invader Zim: A Bad Thing Never Ends: When Iggins fails in his task to destroy the Membranes or Irkens in Chapter 14, Aldrich decides to imprison and torture him as punishment.
• My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator:
  • When Wolfram claims that if the Slayer didn't show up, the Sabers would be eating out of their hands and All Might would be dead, Volcano shuts down the argument because the whole clusterfuck is on him whether or not the Slayer would've shown up, and that there was a limit to the number of failures All for One can tolerate.
  • Averted for Curator and the Volcano Thieves, who were aware failing All For One would be a death warrant. However, the Slayer's arrival, constant derailment of the clusterfuck and the possibility that the Slayer could've killed Curator and the Volcano Thieves alongside the loss of the VX rocket, but gaining the blueprints for the QAH, means that All For One puts this mess solely on the dead Wolfram.

Films — Animation

• Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: One of the Jokerz mouths off to the Joker for not telling them his plan after they fail a heist...
  Bonk: (finishing his rant) I want out!
  The Joker: (pulls a gun) If you insist...
  Bonk: Take... Take it easy, man — I was just kidding!
  (Joker pulls the trigger, the gun fires — and all that happens is a 'BANG!' flag pops out)
  The Joker: So was I.
  (Bonk relaxes — Joker pulls the trigger again, firing the flag into Bonk and impaling him)
  The Joker: Ooops... No I wasn't.
• In The Emperor's New Groove, Yzma does something even worse than killing her lackey Kronk: she insults his spinach-puff recipe.
• Played with in Jonny Quest vs. the Cyber Insects. Zin kills 425 and 427 for things that weren't their fault, apparently just to have somebody to punish.
• In The LEGO Ninjago Movie, Big Bad Garmadon fires his underlings — out of a volcano. They survive though and form a whole community where they plot to get their revenge.
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): The Storm King himself implies this'll happen to Tempest if she doesn't deliver on the magic she'd promised him. Not that it matters since he planned on doing it anyways.
• At the end of The Princess and the Frog, after Dr. Facilier's plot is foiled, rendering him unable to pay off his debt to his "Friends on the Other Side", said "Friends" show up to collect anyway... by dragging Facilier to his childhood trauma-inducing doom.
• In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the Prowler (A.K.A. Aaron Davis) finally has the new Spider-Man in his grasp, but then it turns out Spider-Man is his nephew, Miles. Aaron realizes he can't kill his beloved nephew, but that the Kingpin (who is watching) will surely kill him if he refuses to kill Spider-Man. He lets Miles go anyway, and Kingpin immediately shoots Aaron dead.
• Team America: World Police: When Alec Baldwin gets outclassed by Gary's "dicks, pussies and assholes" speech, Kim Jong-Il kills him for it.
  Kim Jong-Il: You are worthless, Alec Baldwin! (shoots Alec Baldwin until his head blows up)
• The War to End All Wars – The Movie: Defied by Adrian Carton de Wiart in "The Unkillable Soldier", who tells his steward that he deliberately doesn't carry any weapon into battle except his walking stick on the grounds that he might be tempted to use a revolver on his own men. This line was taken from Sir Adrian's memoir almost verbatim.

Gamebooks

• Lone Wolf:
  • This is the reason why Vonotar the Traitor has to flee to the icy wastes of Kalte in Book 3: he had failed to prevent Lone Wolf from bringing the Sommerswerd to Sommerlund and from stopping the Durenese reinforcement with his ghost fleet in the previous book. The Darklords don't tolerate such failures and would have killed him if he didn't escape; even after that, they send a helghast assassin to pursue him.
  • We learn in Book 12 that Darklord Kraagenskûl likes to whip out his psychic Agony Beam when his servants disappoint him.
  • The final book starring Lone Wolf The Curse of Naar reveals that the Dark God Naar has no tolerance for failure. Lone Wolf's travels in the Plane of Darkness lead him to the Plains of Despair, where the spirits of those who failed Naar in life are hunted and tortured for eternity by the demonic spectre Tzor and his fiery whips. Among them are old foes such as Zahda and Darklords Gnaag, Haakon, and Kraagenskûl. The moment Lone Wolf defeats Naar's champion Kekataag the Avenger, Kekataag's spirit joins them.

Jokes

• Stalin is giving a speech when somebody in the audience sneezes. Immediately Stalin interrupts the speech to ask "Who sneezed?". Utter silence. "Who sneezed?". Still nothing. "If I don't find out who sneezed right now, I'll have the first rank shot!" Still no one says anything, and Stalin orders the first rank executed. When the noise dies down, nobody admits to sneezing, so he has the second rank shot. Then the third. Finally someone in the fourth rank breaks down and admits that they sneezed. Stalin says "Gesundheit, comrade!".

Pinball

• Getting the Last Wave Bonus^note clearing all the stages in one Video Mode wave in Doctor Who triggers a cutscene where the Supreme Dalek reports his failure to capture the Doctor to the Emperor Dalek, who responds by vaporizing it. Getting another bonus inverts this: it starts out the same, but before the Supreme Dalek says anything he shoots the Emperor Dalek.

Pro Wrestling

• Ted DiBiase fires Bam Bam Bigelow for losing to Lawrence Taylor at Wrestlemania.
• Tarzan Goto started "Shin" FMW to prove he could be as big a star as Atsushi Onita but the story ended up being him breaking a chair on new tag team partner Ryo Miyake after the later got pinned too many times. Subverted in that rather than try to get rid of Miyake, Goto continued to attack and put Miyake in dangerous gimmick matches with himself in an effort to make Miyake more manly.
• Occurs often with Vince McMahon:
  • After Dude Love failed to defeat "Stone Cold" Steve Austin for the WWF Championship, he tried to apologize to Vince McMahon. The later responds with a Reason You Suck Speech, stating that for all of his hatred for Austin, at least he makes him richer while Dude makes him sick, before ultimately firing him.
  • He confronts Commisioner Shawn Michaels for holding The Coorperation back from saving Shane McMahon from Mankind. McMahon then replays footage of Michaels saying that he doesn't need his's support as he ultimately says that for as good of a wrestler he was, he was a horrible commisioner. He then fires Michaels, only for him to respond with a Superkick.
  • After failing to defeat The Undertaker in an Inferno Match, McMahon fires Kane as he calls in the white coats to take him back to the asylum. Chyna convinces McMahon to give Kane another chance, however. But not without the condition that if Kane failed again she would be fired with him.
• Caught up in the middle of their feud while in Interstate Championship Wrestling, The Diva got this in 2002 from Lexie Fyfe in regards to messing up her chance to eliminate Macaela Mercedes and from Mercedes after coming to her for help against Fyfe.
• When MNM lost Smackdown's tag team title's to London and Kendrick, Melina blamed Joey Mercury and Johnny Nitro agreed.
• El Profe kicks Disiple and Lady Demonique out of New Wrestling Stars and WWC's Starr Wrestling Club on account of their losses to TNT and Black Rose.
• Chris Hero doing away with his Kings Of Wrestling partner Claudio Castagnoli in Chikara and joining up with F.I.S.T. (who in turn, didn't actually want to team with Hero-he and Castagnoli would make up, but not before he sent Hero out of Chikara, seemingly for good)
• Awesome Kong put up with Raisha Saeed's demands for a long while, but ended up throwing her off the Impact stage once her antics led to failure one too many times.
• The Nexus has leader Wade Barrett. On a night where each member had to fight alone, he stated that if anyone in the group lost their match, they would be kicked out of Nexus. After a series of fluke wins, there was a match between Babyface John Cena and the weakest member of the group, Darren Young. Seeing how Darren had gotten his ass handed to him by Cena several times before, it was no surprise that he lost. So as Darren is surrounded by his former team, he tries apologizing to Wade, but then he gets mugged by all 6 of them. Here's the video.
• Antonio Cesaro dumped Aksana for not stopping his getting pinned by Santino Marella, after months of her distracting Santino to help Cesaro.
• 2011 had been a bad year for Britani Knight, and it only got worse when her mom disowned her SHIMMER volume 43 and said she was putting out a help wanted ad for a new daughter, as Britani's run in the promotion had basically been the apotheosis of everything that had gone wrong up to that point.
• Variation after an internet exclusive tryout match pitting QT Marshall and Ta'Darius Thomas against The C&C Wrestle Factory. After Thomas was pinned, Marshall berated and attacked him but put the real blame on Ring of Honor for making Ta'Darius his tag team partner in the first place. Marshall would have to eat his words when ROH held a "top prospects" tournament, which he would be knocked out of in the semifinals, by Thomas.
• Kevin Steen initially worked with the House Of Truth before starting S.C.U.M. When S.C.U.M. became a problem he could no longer control, Steen went to Michael Elgin for help, who abandoned Steen when they took on S.C.U.M. and Steen was pinned by Jimmy Jacobs.
• Alberto Del Rio sends this message to Ricardo Rodriguez but kicking his head into the ring post, with the steel steps, for costing him a match that wasn't even for the title. Rodriguez sides with Rob Van Dam as a result.
• Former Wrestling Alliance Revolution Champion Carlito Colón sends this message to former manager Rico Cassanova, who accidentally cost him the title to Pablo Marquez at a Coastal Championship Wrestling show by giving him a back stabber.
• Anthony Nese put Mr. A in a match against Moose at EVOLVE 30 to punish A for failing to ensure the Premier Athlete Brand got the Open The United Gate from The Young Bucks.
• Played for Laughs at Marvelous's first Korakuen Hall show where Sakura Hirota wrestled the legendary Jaguar Yokota while dressed as company owner Chigusa Nagayo. Hirota wrestled so poorly that Nagayo apologized to Yokota before stepping in to show Hirota how to apply a submission hold at Yokota's expense. As Hirota continued to be an embarrassment however, so Nagayo changed her mind and helped Yokota win instead.
• During the long reign of terror of The Authority, one of their earliest minions was Brad Maddox, a referee who first came to attention after costing Ryback a match against CM Punk. The Authority promoted Maddox to General Manager of Raw, though he did little during his tenure. After Maddox disobeyed their orders by allowing the Shield to be at ringside during a match, they had Kane attack him before firing him.
• After a miscommuication cost them a tag match, Austin Theory was attacked by Angel Garza and Andrade "Cien" Almas with manager Zelina Vega screaming that she should've never believed in him. Theory would remain in his beaten state at ringside until the Monday Night "Messiah" Seth Rollins recruited him as a new disciple.

Religion

• The Bible: After Peter is broken out of prison by divine intervention, Herod Agrippa I, who was planning to have him killed during the Passover, has the men assigned to guard him killed in his place for allowing it to happen.
• The Book of Mormon: As soon as the flocks of King Lamoni are scattered by robbers, all the servants except Ammon panic and lament their fate, because the king has executed a string of previous shepherds for allowing that to happen. Ammon sets out to recover the flocks by whatever means are necessary (and ends up disarming most of the robbers), in order to avoid it.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted: The Neverborn have this reputation with regards to their lieutenants, the Deathlords. Failure is not tolerated. The First and Forsaken Lion screwed up the whole Great Contagion thing — which, by that point, had wiped out ninety percent of all life in Creation — and was painfully welded into his armor. Princess Magnificent with Lips of Black Coral lost hold of her territory to three upstart gods telling a story, and was almost thrown headfirst into Oblivion.
• In the plot of Magic: The Gathering, and shown on three cards of the Tempest set, Vhati il-Dal attempts to kill his master, Greven il-Vec, by firing on the Weatherlight while Greven was aboard it. Greven escapes, and on returning to the Predator, demonstrates his irritation with Vhati's actions by throwing him overboard. Please note that the Predator is an airship.
  "The fall will give you time to think on your failure."
• Shadowrun 3E supplement Corporate Download. Runners who work for for the MegaCorp Saeder-Krupp are killed if they fail their assignments.
  • It gets better in Fourth Edition. Saeder-Krupp is run by the Great Dragon Lofwyr. He pays well upon success, but punishes failure harshly: it's heavily implied that Shadowrunners who fail the company get eaten.
  • This trope is the reason why seasoned runners avoid S-K jobs (both from and against Saeder-Krupp) like the Plague. It's even implied Lofwyr is the reason for one of the three main bits of 'Runner wisdom: "never deal with a dragon."
• Common in Warhammer 40,000 (naturally) among Chaos warlords, Ork bosses, Dark Eldar archons, and Imperial commanders alike. Some specific examples:
  • Imperial Guardsmen units with an attached Commissar need not fear Morale checks — or rather they do, a lot. If the squad fails such a test, the Commissar will execute the squad leader for incompetence and immediately rally the unit. Thanks to this motivation, any squad leader with a Commissar breathing down his neck will actually receive a bonus to Leadership. Sadly, due to an Obvious Rule Patch regarding the way targets of this ability are chosen, the commissar cannot shoot himself despite the obvious effect on morale this would have.
    • Other units react differently to Commissars, however. Special character Nork Deddog, the thick but doggedly-loyal Ogryn bodyguard, will retaliate if a Commissar executes the officer he's protecting. Meanwhile the Catachan Jungle Fighters, being a bunch of headstrong commando Rambo types, dislike Commissars to the extent that before a battle you have to check to see if the political officers have suffered an "accident" — the "Oops, Sorry Sir!" rule.
    • Lampshaded by Ciaphas Cain, who specifically avoids doing this because he knows the more trigger-happy Commissars have an alarming tendency to be killed by "enemy" las-fire.
  • Even Imperial Governors are not immune to this, those who send particularly sub-par tithes in either manpower or materials often receive a visit from the Adeptus Arbites, or worse, the Inquisition.
  • Abaddon the Despoiler, Warmaster of Chaos, has such an insanely violent temper that his underlings would rather commit suicide than deliver him bad news. If he's fielded in the Battlefleet Gothic Gaiden Game, his flagship will open fire on one of your vessels if it fails a (re-rolled) command test in his presence... and if he's out of firing range, Abaddon will abandon that ship, preventing it from being able to use his rerolls for command tests for the rest of the game. If it happens on his ship? It'll take a certain amount of damage from him and his retinue slaughtering some of the crew. The name of the rule in question? "You Have Failed Me For The Last Time".
  • Perturabo's first act upon taking command of what would become the Iron Warriors was to have one in ten executed for failing to live up to their potential. They weren't even doing that badly; the Legion just wasn't doing well enough for Perturabo's tastes, in that it was not the pre-eminent Astartes force in the entire Crusade.
  • The Tau do... something... to their officers who somehow fail the Greater Good, implied to be a form of seppuku.
  • Strangely averted by Abaddon himself, despite his 13 failed Black Crusades. Which goes into Fridge Horror territory: The Chaos Gods are not tolerant of failures, and Abaddon is being watched by all four, and yet despite his failures, he's not getting punished for it? It is explained in the late 7th and early 8th edition books that Abaddon's Black Crusades were meant to destroy blackstone pillars that serves as some sort of limiter to the Eye of Horror, so in the eyes of Imperials, they defeated Abaddon's Black Crusades, but Abaddon actually achieved his strategic goals.
  • One of the sourcebooks recommends the player does this when using an ability that kills one of your own units: choose a model whose failed rolls, inferior combat performance or even cowardice cost you a previous game.
• The The Transformers RPG sourcebook gives Megatron the Hangup "The Reward For Failure". If one of his allies/minions suffers a Fumble to a check in his presence, he targets that ally with at least one attack on his next turn, even if it would mean Defeating them!

Theatre

• In Margin for Error, the Consul tells Horst that he's finished for having made a laughingstock of the glorious Nazi party. When Horst asks what he can do now, the Consul suggests finding a martyr willing to die for the cause, going on to say: "My dear Horst, if you could contrive to get yourself—how do they say it here—rubbed out by a—Jew!" Horst laughs at this, but his expression changes to horror when the Consul says he could arrange it for him.

Web Animation

• Beauty and the Beast (Phelous): Played for Laughs. Wabuu shoots Wuschel for trying to start up the Villain Song again when he and the other lackeys had already ruined it once.
• Dorkly Originals: A more sympathetic example than usual in "Bowser Wants A Gun". Bowser kneecaps one of his Koopas for making mediocre guns that shoot gigantic, slow-moving bullets, but it's hard to say he doesn't have a good reason.
  Bowser: There were hundreds of your worthless guns on my kids airships. Hundreds! And Mario got past all of them! Literally all of my children are DEAD, Jerry! Because of your shoddy work!
• In Mastermind, the main character does this every single time he calls a meeting, with his prompt being "Does anyone know why I called this meeting?" His minions eventually call him out on this. Later, it turns out that his smart engineer apparently redirected his Shark Pool Trap Door to lead to the cafeteria instead.
• In Minecraft: The N00b Adventures, GayLord stabs Milky Dad In the Back after the latter decided for a Heel–Face Turn to help the trio, leading GayLord to declare his services has ceased.
• RWBY:
  • Junior Xiong reveals that the henchmen he loaned to Roman Torchwick never came back. He assumes Roman killed them for incompetence, and says he would have probably done the same thing.
  • Salem inverts this when Tyrian returns to her, minus his tail, and begs forgiveness for failing to capture Ruby. Salem stares at him for a moment, and then walks away, telling him that "You disappoint me, Tyrian." Since Tyrian views Salem as a divine goddess, his response is... he doesn't take it well. Judging by his agonized and anguish cries at her disappointment, it sounds like he'd prefer if she'd physically punished him.

Web Originals

• The Adventures of the League of S.T.E.A.M.:
  • The bald villain does this to a henchman by way of Forced Transformation in "Jurassic Peril!"
  • And then he crushes a garden gnome under his foot for the same reason in "Bitter Gnomes and Gardens" (It Makes Sense in Context).
  • The fate of said villain from his peers in Season 2 finale, "Dead End".
• Parodied and deconstructed in CalebCity's "Villains that always kill their subordinates", where this tactic quickly sees the Evil Overlord run out of staff.
  You been doing this for months! Anybody that does anything even considered slightly wrong, you just kill 'em! How is this effective?!
• In Critical Role: Campaign Two, this is pulled on Obann in epic fashion. Yasha gets the HDYWTDT on him, and he cries out to the Angel of Irons, unaware that the Angel is really Tharizdun. In response, Tharizdun transforms his body into an abomination, killing his essence so that the abomination is all that remains.
• In Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Dr. Horrible is told that not only does he need to commit a murder to enter the Evil League of Evil, due to his previous failures Bad Horse will execute him if he screws this one up. It's put quite catchily, too:
  Cowboys: There will be blood/It might be yours/So go kill someone/Signed, Bad Horse!
  • Bad Horse's previous threat is hardly an improvement:
    Cowboys: So make the Bad Horse gleeful/Or he'll make you his mare...
• One story on Not Always Right has a customer come in, whining as always about something that the store can't really do anything about. The employee then says it's Murray's fault, and has "Murray" called to the front desk. When he arrives, the employee tells him what happened, ending with "you're fired". "Murray" sags and goes out of sight so he can get back to work, while the customer, satisfied that they have successfully ruined someone else's day, finally leaves. The final line notes that customer complaints have been reduced ever since "blame it on Murray" became store policy.
• Führer Katrina from v2-v4 of Open Blue, due to her perfectionist nature, had a tendency to shoot officers who botched missions. And officers who smelled like alcohol whenever she showed up for a surprise inspection.
• Syera of Springhole discusses and deconstructs this trope by stating that if a villain kills their minions for even the smallest of setbacks, it will give these minions more reasons to defect and even kill their boss before the boss does it to them.
  • They also note that if an organization with a near-ubiquitous control over its domain (like a government, for example) then that organization can easily get away with this, while if a small group tries to do the same thing, it will risk wiping itself out or attract the attention of the authorities.
  • In the "2Evul4U!!" paragraph of this article, xe deconstructs it by saying that the bosses of evil organizations who do this will have to dispose of the bodies, cover up for the families of the executed members, and deal with members who desert for this reason.
• In Star Harbor Nights, Webmistress explains she had to resort to this to cover when she accidentally killed a Mook she had meant to reward with a blissful injection, due to glitchy cybernetics.
• Survival of the Fittest:
  • After Monique St.Claire spent the duration of a fight at the small cottage hiding from the opponents and her group, Melina Frost killed her for cowardice and being useless.
  • In Version 4, Danya has long time henchman Achyls shot after he fails to report Liz Polanski acting suspiciously, allowing her to successfully disable her collar.
    Danya: That's what happens when you become a hindrance, Renee. So keep yourself out of that horrid category.
• Sawyer in Void Domain says this of his daughter and Hugo after they screwed up one of his plans. Both paid dearly for their failures.

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