Pragmatic Villainy / Live-Action TV

Pragmatic Villainy in live-action TV.

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• In Alien Nation, Aphossno, the Overseer scout, helps Cathy develop a therapy against a genocide-attempt genetically engineered from a "Purist" (anti-Tenctonese human bigots) group — because the Overseers can't profit from dead "cargo" (he plans not only to re-enslave the former Tenctonese slaves, but also to enslave humanity, since the Overseer military technology, he says, is vastly superior).
• Angel:
  • In "Sense and Sensitivity", Wolfram & Hart refuses to help mobster Little Tony any further after he attempts to shoot up a police station following the escape they engineered for him. They consider him Too Dumb to Live and it would be next to impossible to acquit a Cop Killer.
  • In "Why We Fight", during World War II, Angel convinced Spike and the other vampires to spare the crew of the submarine they were on because none of them knew how to operate it. If they hadn't worked with the crew, they would have been trapped on the bottom of the ocean.
• Arrow:
  • Damien Darhk refuses Lonnie Machin membership of H.I.V.E. because of his chaotic methods — in the comics, Machin is known as Anarky.
  • The Big Bad of Season 6, Ricardo Diaz, doesn't want to destroy Star City, like so many others. No, his goal is to take it over instead. This gets subverted when he ends up so obsessed with destroying Oliver that he loses his massive advantage just to get revenge on Oliver for giving him a few setbacks. Of course, this is the same guy who waited twenty years to get a chance to kill his childhood bully.
• Babylon 5: In the beginning, Narn ambassador G'Kar had the appearance of a pantomime villain, so it came as something of a surprise when he saved Commander Sinclair's on-again off-again girlfriend Catherine Sakai's life from the Walkers of Sigma 957. This is the first clue that, under all the nationalistic bravado, he was actually a decent guy. (In the end, G'Kar's Character Development would actually lead him to become one of the series's secondary heroes.)
  G'Kar: There was no profit — no advantage — in letting you fall to an untimely and most uncomfortable death. It would distress the commander to no good end.
• Big Sky: Ronald gets an earful from his accomplice for kidnapping the Sullivan sisters, as one of the main reasons they’ve gotten away with their scheme is that they stick to runaway women and sex workers few people will miss as victims. Taking two pretty teenagers with families that will miss them is bound to trigger Missing White Woman Syndrome and draw a lot of attention. And he doesn't think that their customers in Canada want anything to do with the sisters.
• Black Lightning: Tobias Whale quickly decides not to sell the highly addictive drug Greenlight after seeing it in action. Greenlight users have an obscenely high mortality rate, and Whale reasons that dead customers can't be repeat customers.
• In the Blue Bloods episode "Officer Down", The Mafia joins in on a manhunt for a Cop Killer who was affiliated with them. Discussed later: Grandpa Henry notes that the Mafia had explicit rules against killing cops when he was on the force because cop killers put the whole department on edge and make doing business difficult.
• Boardwalk Empire:
  • In the words of Jimmy Darmody: "You can't kill everyone, Manny. It's not good business." Of course, Jimmy's temper and ruthlessness sometimes means that he takes steps that make everyone else think he is going too far and being impractical himself...
  • Both Arnold Rothstein and his Bastard Understudy Meyer Lansky are tremendous examples of this. They're constantly advising their more passionate associates to keep their attentions firmly on business rather than vengeance, vice, or emotion.
• The Star Wars streaming series The Book of Boba Fett has multiple examples as Boba and his chief henchwoman Fennec Shand exercise their mercenary ethic and sensibility in taking over the remnants of Jabba the Hutt's empire. He has this thesis statement for the series in the fourth episode, "The Gathering Storm" in a conversation between Boba and Fennec in a flashback:
  Boba Fett: How many times have you been hired to do a job that was avoidable — if they only took the time to think, how much money could've been made? How many lives could've been saved? [...] I'm tired of our kind dying because of the idiocy of others. We're smarter than them. It's time we took our shot.
• The Boys:
  • When confronted by a group of protesters against him for accidentally killing civilians overseas, Homelander has an Imagine Spot of massacring the entire group of protesters with his laser eye beams just to silence them; but decided against it, noting that would be a bad public relations move on himself and Vought and would rather repair his own public image instead. Plus his massive Inferiority Superiority Complex left him with a pathological need to be liked, which mass murder isn't exactly conducive towards.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive Stan Edgar was content with the multi-billion dollar media empire he ran and frowned upon Homelander and Stillwell's idea of putting superheroes in the military. He's eventually proven right after the aforementioned collateral damage incident nearly ruined their public image, leading him to chew out Homelander. In fact, because of the constant amount of trouble the company has to deal with covering up the antics of Psychopathic Manchildren, in Season 3 he declares his intent to move away from superheroes entirely and instead of putting supes in the military, turn the military into supes for billions of dollars in government funding.
• Averted in Breaking Bad, and it serves to deconstruct Walt's Even Evil Has Loved Ones with Jesse. While not taking the pragmatic route does give Walt a humanizing aspect, the fact remains that for most of the early seasons, Jesse is The Millstone who causes trouble for Walt. It all finally comes to a head when Jesse tries to kill the dealers who murdered Tomas. Walt saving Jesse instead of letting him die at the hand of rival dealers results in his relationship with Gus deteriorating, and things keep getting worse from then on.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • A humorous version of this comes up in Season 6 when a vampire refuses to drink Buffy's blood because she's been eating a lot at a crappy fast food joint. Eating her at that point would likely make him feel sick. She also smells terrible.
  • An earlier episode had someone spared because the taste of steroids in his blood disgusted the vampire. Also, they were special steroids that were slowly turning him into a sea monster, so it's understandable.
  • Back in the 1800s, Angelus called Spike a moron for picking unnecessary fights and attacking humans in public. All that leads to is them getting run out of town by an angry mob, and they have to wait a generation before it is safe to enter that town again.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Spike helped Buffy foil Angelus and Drusilla's plan to destroy the world not because it was right, but because destroying the world would deprive him of the various entertainments he liked such as sports teams, rock bands and alcohol, not to mention all the people to eat. Earlier, he also calls out Angelus for his constant Bond Villain Stupidity, particularly when he kills Giles' Love Interest Jenny Calendar and hides her corpse in the former's bed; he freely admits that he loves a good slaughter, but Angelus' mind games are going to backfire and leave them with a very pissed off Buffy.
  • In Season 5, it's established that some vampires run "brothels" where humans pay to be bitten non-fatally as they get a rush from it. The vampires are just as soulless as any others, but because they don't kill, they don't attract the wrong sort of attention from monster hunters (at least, not until Buffy discovered that her current boyfriend, Riley, had been frequenting one such brothel, and got mad enough to burn it to the ground).
• Dexter: The Code of Harry that Dexter Morgan follows through most of the series is designed this way. In order to channel his killing urges in a productive manner, his adoptive father trained him to target only killers who've escaped the system. Despite the intentions of justice that Harry had, ultimately the goal is for Dexter to channel his urges without getting caught. Killing serial killers is simply more convenient and "justifiable" than wanton murder.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Dominators", Rago spends more time reigning in his Stupid Evil underling Toba than he does threatening the heroes. It's not that he's any less evil than Toba — he's just acutely aware that they've barely got enough resources to do the job they were sent to do, and if Toba keeps using the Dulcians as target practice their energy reserves are going to run dry.
  • "Bad Wolf": Rose winds up on a killer version of The Weakest Link in the future. One of her fellow contestants is a jerkass named Rodrick who, playing to win, keeps Rose in the game because, as a Fish out of Temporal Water, she comes off as very stupid since she gets a lot of questions wrong. This way, he easily wins the final, gets a cash prize, and avoids disintegration while being deeply unpleasant about it all the while.
  • The Monks from "The Pyramid at the End of the World" are Reality Warpers who are powerful enough to conquer Earth and rule it through fear but consider fear an inefficient means of control. Instead, they reveal to humans that Earth is on an inescapable path towards the mass extinction of all life, and offer them protection in the form of a Deal with the Devil, so that they can be seen to rule with humanity's consent.
  • Harrison Chase in "The Seeds of Doom". He never paid Amelia Ducat for a painting she did. When she turns up at his mansion demanding her money while he's messing around with the Krynoid and trying to kill the Doctor and generally doing a lot of illegal and immoral stuff, he decides not to kill her or take her prisoner because the authorities might come nosing around his property looking for her. So to get rid of her in a way that doesn't bring any heat down on himself, he pays her what he owes her.
• Scorpius from Farscape is incredibly goal-oriented, and rarely lets petty things like "emotions" get in the way of his mission. Thus, even when John Crichton has utterly demolished his base, ruining his plans for revenge against the Scarrans, he states the following when John asks if he is considering following through on his earlier threat to glass Earth.
  Scorpius: To what purpose? Vengeance against you? The only vengeance I cared about is no longer within my grasp!
• The very reason the Flander's Company was created in-universe: after years spent slaughtering each other with no control, both supervillains and superheroes became aware of the high mortality rate, and villains widely agreed that, as fun as it was to kill indiscriminately, it really was more lucrative and beneficial for them to follow Contractual Genre Blindness in exchange for getting paid. The few times the option or returning to the old system is suggested, most villains make it clear that none of them really miss that time.
• The Flash (2014): Captain Cold avoids killing civilians and cops if he can help it (but if he has no choice, he'll do it without hesitation) because he feels it's not worth his time and the attention from the cops.
• A French Village: Müller stops the French gendarmes from raiding a resistance group and simply killing them not out of compassion but since he wants them alive to answer questions. Most are later killed despite this though as they try to escape.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Despite generally being Stupid Evil, there are a few moments when even Cersei Lannister realizes that petty revenge is a bad idea.
    • She is clearly appalled by her son Joffrey's decision to have Ned Stark executed, knowing full well that a tame wolf is better than a dead one and that Ned's survival was the only way to prevent war with the North, and indeed she had preferred simply stripping Ned of his lands and titles and having him exiled to the Night's Watch. There is an element of Even Evil Has Standards here, albeit expressed in a cruel Ironic Echo: since Ned planned to exile her and her children rather than allowing them to be murdered for Cersei's crime of adultery, it is sort of fair to "only" plan to exile Ned rather than killing him.
    • In the second season, even she seems taken aback by Joffrey's order to kill all of her late husband and his supposed father Robert Baratheon's bastard children in King's Landing, not necessarily because of personal standards, but because something like murdering children and babies draws the wrong type of attention. She even seems offended that her brother Tyrion initially thinks she was the one who ordered it, though this is Adaptational Heroism, as in the books the purge of Robert's bastards was all her idea and Joffrey was unaware/uncaring of it, making for another point where Tyrion had to rein her in. However, she's also too prideful to admit Joffrey was wrong to do so.
  • Roose Bolton:
    • Roose was genuinely shocked and upset when Locke arrived with Jaime Lannister missing his sword hand. He's fine with torture but pointless brutality is obviously distasteful to him. Not because of morality but because it risked damaging his attempt to curry favor with Tywin Lannister, and that's a man even Roose doesn't want to cross by maiming his eldest son.
    • Roose is furious at his son Ramsay's torture, castration and mutilation of Theon Greyjoy into madness — because it has destroyed Theon's usefulness to him as a valuable hostage. Roose originally wanted to exchange Theon for Ironborn-occupied Moat Cailin, but King Balon Greyjoy would never consider giving up this strategic stronghold for a useless heir since Theon can no longer sustain their line, though Ramsay notes that he already made the offer before but Balon didn't even consider it. He makes this point rather firmly to Ramsay, who flays people for not paying their taxes.
    • Roose also points out that Ramsay's habit of offering mercy to enemies who surrender, then torturing and executing them anyway, means that now no one is willing to surrender to them.
    • Roose's entire motivation for legitimizing Ramsay, who was born out of wedlock. While he does not think highly of him, Roose knows that he is in need of an heir, especially if he is not able to sire an heir from his new wife Walda Frey.
    • He later points out that by repeatedly raping and abusing Sansa Stark, thus driving her to escape her marriage to Ramsay, Ramsay made the same mistake that he did with Theon, thereby costing the Boltons the chance at having a marriage and heir that would allow them to control the North.
    • Overall this deconstructed with him: He's capable of being a pragmatic villain and would love for his subordinates to be, but his ruthlessness, treachery, and general psychopathology ensure that only sadists, sociopaths, and the psychologically broken are willing to work for him. His approach to child-rearing also seems to have some amount of responsibility for transforming his only viable heir into a raving sadistic maniac.
  • Tywin Lannister was the reigning champion of this trope.
    • His mindset is best exemplified after the Wham Episode in Season 3, in which he arranged for Sacred Hospitality to be broken, and he muses "Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner."
• The Handmaid's Tale:
  • The creators mentioned that the reason the adaptation dropped Gilead's white supremacist ideology was that in a situation where infertility is rampant, the regime would require them not to discriminate against women on the basis of ethnicity and need all child-bearing women to fulfill their goals.
  • Gilead also spares lesbians, female intellectuals, and politicians if they are fertile, but in the case of fertile lesbians, they subject them to an alternative punishment instead if they get caught having sex with women.
  • Climate change is also mentioned to be very rampant in the series to the point that there is no snow in Boston now during the winter. The Gilead regime took steps to combat climate change, from limiting their industrial production to war production to cutting carbon emissions by 78% in three years, and establishing an "entirely organic" agricultural model. This is more or less to do with the fact that climate change can have a negative impact on fertility rates and Gilead hopes that reducing the climate change effects can boost their fertility rates. In fact, it's said that the widespread sterility is a result of "environmental toxins", making this a top priority.
  • Gilead is also willing to help other nations establish their own Handmaid programs, as evident with their "trade deal" with Mexico that basically involves sex-trafficking.
• Hannibal: When Hannibal is killing with the intent to eat the victim, he minimizes their stress and suffering. He's not showing them kindness: a stressed animal releases hormones that cause the meat to taste off. When he's killing for other reasons he will readily be as brutal and violent as required.
• Hightown: Osito is unhappy in Season 3 when his partners shoot down a rival dealer in a Gangland Drive-By as this can bring in too much heat from the cops to his operation. He has no problem with killing, having also previously been a hitman, but is also smart and paranoid about business.
• House of Saddam: After Uday kills one of his father's confidants (he insulted Uday's mother by introducing Saddam to a new mistress), the enraged Saddam unleashes a beating on his son. While chewing Uday out, Saddam claims that he's upset not by Uday's violent behavior, but that there's no point to it.
  Saddam: You think violence is a pastime!? It is a tool! What are we? Barbarians?!
• Intergalactic: Verona hates Ash, the cop who had arrested her so she ended up on the prison transport. She saves her even so however as Ash is able to pilot it, which no one else can (Just in Time as well).
• In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Basco ta Jolokia is perfectly fine with letting kids die, blowing up schools, and even killing his own Morality Pet to get what he wants. However, he decides to spare (and in one case, save) the Gokaigers because they're all after the same treasure and it's easier to let them do the heavy lifting for him^*Especially since the last "key" to the treasure is held by a group of ninja who don't want Basco to find them but do want to help the Gokaiger.
• Kamen Rider Drive: What sets the Heart Roidmude apart from the other villains is that he's a pragmatist, meaning he frowns upon killing minions who've failed since he only has 107 minions to work with, and ultimately allies with Drive once it becomes clear that Tenjuro Banno is a threat to both humanity and the Roidmudes.
• In Kamen Rider Zero-One, Gai Amatsu wants desperately to win the competition against Hiden Intelligence to wipe it off the map and is responsible for corrupting the Ark and unleashing Metsubojinrai and almost causing a robo apocalypse. However even in the competition he is firmly against anyone cheating, wanting to win fair and square. Or so he claims, at least; by the end of the arc it's revealed that he's been cheating in every single round of the competition, but the heroes are unable to prove it before it's too late and he successfully ruins Hiden Intelligence's public reputation, then wins the contest via the most blatant cheating method of all.
• Luke Cage (2016): Shades always has his eyes set on the bottom line, in contrast to the more emotional and distracted crime bosses he advises. Most notable in season 1 when Diamondback takes a big gamble by taking a bunch of hostages, which Shades criticizes. When Diamondback calls on his men to execute any hostage who gives them lip, Shades turns and scowls at him.
• Malcolm in the Middle: In the episode "Grandma Sues', Ida's attorney walks away from her lawsuit after realizing the family's homeowner's insurance policy is cancelled, making his potential contingency fee worthless. His closing quote says it all: "Now, I don't mind tossing innocent people into the street. I just don't do it for free!"
• The Mandalorian: In the first season finale, Moff Gideon explicitly spells this trope out while offering to spare Mando and his allies if they surrender the Asset to him; he has no compunction about killing them, but he acts in his own self-interest and at the current moment the best way to act in his self-interest is to avoid a wasteful, dragged out gunfight by offering mercy in exchange for his objective. If they refuse (which they do), he'll just have his troops murder them and take the Asset off their corpses, but if they take the offer, he's all too happy to let bygones be bygones.
• In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk Goes to Jail", it's revealed that the titular detective's Arch-Enemy Dale "the Whale" Biederbeck follows this philosophy — he won't commit a crime unless it benefits him in some way. Specifically, Dale is accused of murdering a fellow inmate who was already on death row; the man owed him $1,200, so the cops think the financier either killed him for the money or to send a message to the other inmates about how powerful he is. Dale scoffs at these ideas: he's already insanely rich ("I wouldn't bend over to pick up $1,200...I mean, even if I could"), and his reputation most definitely precedes him, especially in the criminal world. He even hires Monk to solve the case and clear his name in exchange for information on Trudy's death... which is ultimately revealed to be part of an elaborate plot to get Monk framed for a murder that Dale is planning years from now.
• Part of Me: Gerardo constantly butts head with Elena about her Evil Is Petty ways, as she's actually out to hurt and humiliate those she dislikes while Gerardo is just a Gold Digger that wants a quiet and comfortable life.
• Samaritan of Person of Interest is willing to eliminate anybody it considers a threat or hindrance to its plans, but if they cease to be a threat will let them go.
• In the Power Rangers Zeo "King for a Day" two-parter, Prince Gasket brainwashes Tommy into thinking he's the leader of the Machine Empire and that the Power Rangers are his enemies. Jason ends up being forced to fight him in a gladiator arena and struggles to reason with him. As all this is going on, Lord Zedd and his group are watching the fight and enjoying themselves... until Zedd realizes that Gasket's success will mean the Machine Empire gets to conquer Earth, while they get nothing. Much to Zedd's horror, they have to help the Rangers beat Gasket in order to have any chance of conquering Earth themselves one day. Finster proposes teleporting the remaining Rangers to the arena to wreak havoc with Gasket's plan.
  "So, I use the Power Rangers to destroy my enemies? I like that idea, Finister. I like it a lot! I'm glad I thought of it. Brilliant!"
• The Punisher: In season 1, Billy Russo refuses to let Lewis Wilson join his private military unit after Curtis Hoyle informs him that Lewis is sleeping in a foxhole in his backyard and nearly accidentally shot his own father. He's concerned that Lewis will be a liability, but it could also be a case of Even Evil Has Standards, as Russo has been shown to have empathy for fellow Marines and may not have wanted to subject Wilson to further trauma.
• In The Rookie (2018), Oscar Hutchinson is a notorious criminal who meets Nolan during two past escape attempts, but when he and Nolan are caught in a prison riot, Hutchinson agrees to help Nolan rescue the prison warden after she's taken hostage by other prisoners. As Nolan observes, Hutchinson is an opportunist; he can't escape in the current riot, but if he helps the warden now, Nolan and Harper will put in a good word for Hutchinson to receive certain privileges later.
• In Shooter, this is Atlas as described by one of its higher-ups. "We may not have a moral code in the traditional sense, but there are rules. We don't kill indiscriminately."
• The various gangs in Sons of Anarchy sometimes set aside blood feuds in favour of profit.
• The Sopranos:
  • Tony rips into Richie Aprile for selling cocaine along his garbage routes. Not because, like a typical pop culture mobster he has a moral objection to drugs, but because he doesn't want to draw the DEA's attention to the sanitation unions, which are the backbone of his criminal empire.
  • Tony doesn't want his son A.J. to get into any sort of criminal activities, especially not anything related to the mob, and keeps him as far from it as possible. A large part of the reason why is simply because he knows that a spoiled, sheltered, and intellectually unremarkable kid like A.J. would not survive being a crook (Tony doesn't want his son to join the US Army for the same reason). As a result, he grooms his nephew Christopher to be his heir instead.
• In Stargate SG-1:
  • The System Lord Yu agrees to add Earth to the Asgard Protected Planets Treaty, votes against Anubis's re-admission into the ranks of the Goa'uld System Lords, spares Teal'c's life after a failed assassination attempt, and eventually cooperates with the SGC against Anubis. However, he does all this because he has no interest in our region of the galaxy, he knows Anubis is not going to peacefully integrate into the System Lords, he expects Teal'c to go back and kill the man who planned the assassination attempt after revealing that man isn't who Teal'c thought he was and Anubis eventually grows into a threat too large to be faced alone. Daniel Jackson explicitly points out that, despite their past relationship, Yu is not to be trusted or liked, only counted on to make a practical decision not hampered by the normal Goa'uld Stupid Evil mindset. In the later seasons, though, he begins to descend into senility (wrecking the aforementioned Enemy Mine with Earth because he mistakenly sends his fleet to the wrong system), before being unceremoniously offed by the Replicators in "Reckoning".
  • His rival System Lord Ba'al goes in the opposite direction, in that he started out as your typical God-Emperor Goa'uld supremely confident of his own invincibility and prone to holding the Villain Ball. Over time he became more sane, while at the same time becoming more competent, not being above allying himself with the heroes against greater threats. By the time of Stargate: Continuum, he's openly berating the rest of his fellow System Lords for wanting to destroy Earth, arguing that Earth would be more valuable as a protectorate.
• Stargate Atlantis keeps the trend going with the Wraith, who almost never annihilate a human culture completely (the only exceptions being if they become simply too much of a threat, like the planet who found a way to make humans poisonous to Wraith) since they still need a source of nourishment.
  • Most of Todd the Wraith's interaction with the Atlantis Expedition is flavored by this. He doesn't betray them because he knows they're more valuable as a long-term ally (the few exceptions being when he desperately needed to, such as with the Attero device, which would exterminate the Wraith completely unless it was destroyed immediately). He was also willing to work with the expedition to develop the gene therapy that could eliminate the Wraith need for feeding on humans since losing that dependency would grant his hive an enormous advantage over every other hive.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • The Ferengi are a Planet of Hats based on greed. They've never had slavery as an institution or practiced genocide — because people who are enslaved and/or dead can't buy things; though some of them don't mind selling people as slaves to cultures that do have slavery, or selling weapons of mass destruction to genocidal warlords. Their second onscreen appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation even uses this to invoke the "what profit vengeance" Aesop, with one DaiMon's crew deposing him for wasting their resources in an obsessive attempt to get revenge on Picard, because this cut severely into their profit margins.
    • And yet, they are still a He-Man Woman Hater society that doesn't allow females to work or even wear clothes...until Ishka convinces Grand Nagus Zek, who in turn convinces the rest of Ferengi society, that barring more than half the population from participating in the economy is terrible business. I mean, just look at the incredible business the hoomans do in women's jewelry and clothing!
  • After a Cardassian ship gets blown up in suspicious circumstances, one Starfleet officer notes that even so, the Cardassians are not going to pick a fight with the Federation, or even ramp up their border security, since they are more than happy with the peace treaty. It gives them expanded territory, and they now have colonies on the Federation's side of the border that will not be mistreated and do provide a conveniently discreet view of the Federation's activities from behind the lines, so they are not going to throw away the deal they've got over such a trifling incident as this.
  • During the Dominion Occupation of Bajor and Terok Nor, the Dominion treated the Bajorans far better than the Cardassians did during their previous Occupation. As was explicitly demonstrated in later episodes, this wasn't just because the Dominion had a neutrality pact with Bajor: the Dominion was all too willing to violate agreements with its allies when it was to its advantage to do so. What motivated the Dominion to keep its word was a desire to draw the starkest contrast possible in the minds of subjugated peoples between how it would treat them if they submitted, and what it would do to them if they defied it.
  • Gul Dukat, in particular, plays this trope to the hilt in both directions, claiming to have cut back on Cardassian cruelty and oppression and improved the Bajorans' working conditions wherever possible during the Occupation of Bajor pre-series. In the series itself, he regularly allies with the "good guys" every time it serves his personal best interest, including particularly siding with the leaders of a popular uprising on Cardassia whom he considers to be a legitimate new government, and helping smuggle the Detapa Council (their ruling body) to safety on Deep Space Nine during a Klingon invasion. Even in his more insane and villainous moments toward the end, one can see he always continues to do whatever he believes will serve his own practical best interest, right or wrong.
  • The Female Changeling gets an instance of this near the end of the series. The Dominion have just gained the Breen as allies, who have a weapon that totally disables any ship it hits. This decisive advantage allows the Breen to destroy a combined Federation/Klingon/Romulan armada, including the Defiant. When all the survivors are stuck in escape pods, the Changeling orders them spared; not because she's feeling generous but because, as she explains to Weyoun, the demoralizing effect the terrified survivors will have on the alliance's war efforts is worth far more than their deaths would be. Weyoun immediately sees the wisdom of this decision, though neither of them takes into account that among the survivors is Captain Sisko, whose ability to rally the troops is most substantial and whose personal attitude towards fear is that it's something that happens to other people.
• Star Trek: Voyager uses this trope as a Take That! against the Kazon villain race from the first season. When an off-hand comment about them is made in front of Seven, she recalls how the Borg ran into one of their colonies. They refused to assimilate the colony because it would detract from their perfection. They didn't even have desirable physical qualities. Even the Talaxians got praise for that.
• Star Trek: Picard: Since the Romulan population was decimated after Romulus was destroyed, the infamously xenophobic species, whose survivors are governed (sometimes loosely) by the newly-formed Romulan Free State, has to make some small concessions in terms of cooperating with other aliens. At the Romulan Reclamation Site, there are scientists of various backgrounds who are working there, including Federation citizens (e.g. Trills, Andorians, etc.), whom the now-defunct Romulan Star Empire has long viewed as the enemy. Hugh, an ex-Borg drone who's either human or a Human Alien with Federation citizenship, is the Executive Director of the Borg Reclamation Project, which is independent of the Romulan Free State by treaty.
• Suits: It's more jerkassery than villainy, but Harvey Specter won't sleep with married women — not because it's amoral, but because it's not worth the hassle.
• Invoked and subverted in the fourth season finale of Supergirl (2015). Lex Luthor has managed to get a Presidential pardon (since the President is his puppet) and is about to announce plans to use aliens for a device to power the world with unlimited energy, solving countless environmental problems. Even the heroes are forced to admit that many on Earth would be willing to ignore the use of the aliens to save their own planet. But Eve realizes Lex is going to waste almost half the power using the device to fire a laser blast across the galaxy to destroy Argo because Superman is there. Eve openly snaps at the stupidity of Lex, on the verge of finally getting the world on his side, is going to throw away all the goodwill and massive power at his hands just so he can kill Superman.
• Crowley from Supernatural is a demon who's willing and eager to work with the Winchesters or even angels if it means furthering his goals, and doesn't Kick the Dog unless it benefits him in some way. Crowley is defined by his strict adherence to one rule: if Crowley makes a deal, he keeps his end of the bargain, no matter what. Even if breaking the deal would be more beneficial to him in the short term, Crowley won't do it. Normally, when someone makes a Deal with the Devil, they get ten years of life before their soul is claimed, and Crowley is outraged with one of his followers for abusing a loophole to come for them early because people will be less likely to make a deal if they think Crowley or his subordinates will go back on their word.
  Crowley: There's a reason we don't call our chits in early: consumer confidence. This isn't Wall Street, this is Hell! We have a little something called integrity. If this gets out, who'll deal with us? Nobody! Then, where are we?
• In an episode of Taxi where Louie is given a blank check by Jim's father to compensate for Jim burning down Louie's apartment, Louie explains that he's not putting in a ridiculous amount because he knows it won't be honored. But there is an amount that will be just low enough for Jim's dad to agree to pay it with only minimal reluctance, which Louie needs to calculate.
• Wednesday
  • The season 1 finale has the villains do this. When Ms. Thornhill, aka Laurel Gates, resurrects her long-dead ancestor Joseph Crackstone to destroy Nevermore Academy, the first thing he does is stab Wednesday in the chest, twisting the knife to make sure she stays down. After her ancestor Goody Addams heals her, Wednesday fights him and finishes him off. Thornhill's plans are ruined, but she still plans to shoot Wednesday with a gun while the latter only has a shattered sword for a weapon. Wednesday calls it "the first smart decision you've made all night."
• The Wire:
  • Played straight in Season 2 when The Greek and Vondas contemplate killing Frank Sobotka, not out of genuine malice but rather because police are using damning evidence of his corruption in order to turn him for the prosecution against them. Vondas convinces The Greek it would be more pragmatic just to buy Frank's loyalty (and silence) by manipulating Frank's son Ziggy's murder trial and preventing a conviction. Unfortunately, Frank had already made a deal with the FBI by then, and both The Greek and Vondas find out from a "friend" in the FBI while Frank is on his way to meet with them. Frank is shown with his throat sliced open at the beginning of the next episode.
    The Greek: Your way... It won't work.
  • Similarly, in Season 3, once Stringer Bell took over Avon Barksdale's drug empire, he negotiated with other Baltimore players to create a co-op; his period of control marking what was almost certainly a low point in violent drug crime, since it wasn't in the best interests of any of the dealers. Stringer had also been taking economics courses, and so this pragmatic course of action was a solid application of coordinated action to avoid the "tragedy of the commons". Unfortunately for them, Marlo's refusal to join their cartel and continued use of violence also solidly illustrated the free-rider problem and "prisoner's dilemma".
  • A more minor example is Dennis "Cutty" Wise. Cutty was a street soldier who has finally been released after a long stint in jail and gone to work for the Barksdale gang. When Cutty and a couple of other Barksdale enforcers catch a dealer stealing money from the organization, a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown begins. In the middle of it, Cutty begins to protest, saying that if they beat him too badly to work, how is the dealer ever going to pay them back what he owes? The young thugs keep going anyway, beat the dealer to death, and steal whatever money and bling he has on him.
  • There is one episode where a character wants to assassinate a Maryland state senator for stealing his money. Two other characters — both of whom are dyed-in-the-wood killers — balk at the idea. It would be near-impossible to pull off the murder of a sitting United States senator, since they have bodyguards with them at all times. And even if they did pull it off, it would bring down the mother of all attention on their organization, in such an overwhelming force that they'd be wiped out for sure. It's just not worth it to attempt downtown street revenge for an uptown business dealing gone wrong; the killers advise that the best thing to do is just let it go.
• In an episode of The X-Files, Cancer Man has the alien bounty hunter save Mulder's dying mother. When he asks why, Cancer Man tells him that his mother's death would make Mulder more dangerous, as he would have nothing to lose.

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