- Rev. Bem in Andromeda, being a Wayistnote priest and a Magognote tries to avoid killing people despite being an obligate carnivore who needs to kill his prey in order to digest it. In fights he usually just paralyzes people with his venom and generally refuses to eat anything but fish, even if it means starvation. However, the first thing we see him do is work on salvaging an incredibly powerful warship, to sell it to a dictator with imperial ambitions. He's also more than capable of killing in self-defense during a Magog invasion of the Andromeda... but when the killings go even a little beyond immediate self-defense, otherwise justifiable due to the situation, he spends weeks going into months in recrimination.
- Sheriff Andy Taylor of The Andy Griffith Show almost never used a gun, preferring to outwit criminals. Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife was more willing to use his sidearm, but carried it unloaded so that he wouldn't accidentally shoot himself when attempting to draw it.
- In an episode of the show, it's revealed that Andy doesn't use a gun because the last time he did, the criminal ended up without the use of one knee. Andy gets a letter from the criminal saying he's coming by for a visit. Though most of the town urges Andy to take up his gun again, Andy can't bring himself to do so. The end of the episode reveals that Andy did the criminal a huge favor, the loss of his knee made the crook start his life over. The criminal became a model citizen and wanted to give Andy a gift, a hunting rifle. Guns are both good and bad.
- The "no gun" policy on Andy's part was most likely meant to convey the almost total lack of violent crime more than anything else, in keeping with the Idyllic Small Town setting.
- Andy did carry a gun when one was necessary, such as when a dangerous criminal was on the loose. By him not carrying a gun, the show seemed to convey a message that he could solve most of the problems he encountered through reason and communications rather than by pointing a gun at someone.
- Andy also uses a rifle, pistol, or shotgun when he sees fit. At one point, he recklessly points a shotgun at a shyster handyman in a ploy to scare the handyman away.
- All of the above said, it's shown that when Andy does get a gun, he's a crack shot with it, managing to shoot out a tire on a speeding vehicle with Barney's pistol. He doesn't have a problem shooting crows, though.
- Becoming this was major part of Character Development for Oliver Queen in Arrow. He starts out as a Terror Hero in season 1 who kills criminals without hesitation, but after that led to multiple innocents getting killed, he takes this approach instead from season 2 onward, avoiding killshots whenever possible. He still took out a few bad guys when the situation forced him to, but it's clearly a last resort. For better or worse Oliver fell out of this trope in season 5, believing that his nonlethal approach caused the Near-Villain Victory in season 4, but he resumes it eventually.
- "She's a hero, you see. She's not like us." - Giles sums up Buffy the Vampire Slayer nicely. She has killed several humans throughout the show in direct combat, in self-defense, and when she had no other choice.
- Which makes it even more Egregious that she (and the other Scoobies) tear into Faith for accidentally killing one human (who happened to be working for the Big Bad of that season). This is part of what leads to her Start of Darkness.
- Burn Notice plays with this trope. Michael is not so much against killing as he is not wanting to draw attention to himself by killing. It seems like he doesn't like the idea of outright murder, but he has killed people when pushed. Besides all of that, he is more then okay with the bad guys dying so long as the innocent are protected.
- In the last episode of season 2, he and Victor, his new assassin-turned-ally, are trapped on Victor's houseboat. Carla has just shot Victor, and he is dying. He asks Mike to kill him and save himself, which Mike refuses to do (either on principle, or because Victor is the one person who understands what he's gone through). In the end, they both take the gun and put it to Victor's chest. Although it is unclear who pulled the trigger, Michael is visibly shaken by Victor's death.
- Although when he found out that Strickler arranged to have Fiona killed, Michael didn't even hesitate to shoot him dead on the spot.
- Strickler was holding a gun on Michael at the time. The 2nd half of Season 3 shows Michael being unwilling to kill even criminals who are trying (due to a misunderstanding) to kill him.
- In Chuck, the protagonist refuses to even carry a gun, though he is not adverse to the use of nunchucks. Chuck generally prefers tranq guns, if he has to carry a weapon at all, or his Intersected Kung-Fu skills, though when presented with no alternative at the end of Chuck vs. the Other Guy, he did shoot to kill with tight grouping in order to prevent his opponent from killing a drugged-up and paralyzed Sarah. He has since not killed anyone on-screen. Note that this doesn't stop him from doing things like tranqing enemies and leaving them to die in explosions...
- Max, of Dark Angel, hated guns because Colonel Lydecker shot her sister Eva to death with one. She never used any "cheats" (devices that aren't technically guns), but she did beat the crap out of the bad guys and sometimes killed them through fisticuffs.
- Doctor Who:
- The Doctor's level of pacifism varies by the series and incarnation, but they've become increasingly a Technical Pacifist. Although they often kill the Monster of the Week and have wiped whole races out on occasion, they always insist on giving them a chance to stop their destructive ways, even if it means possibly sacrificing themself in the attempt. The Doctor also has a vicious streak that occasionally comes out when they're angry, which can be scary enough that some enemies who have pushed them that far have wished they were dead instead of what happened to them. The Doctor isn't proud of this behaviour, which is where the companions come in. The Doctor also Doesn't Like Guns, though on rare occasions they're seen carrying them for various reasons, and in some versions is a crack shot.
- Lampshaded in "The Doctor's Daughter", where Ten's distaste for his clone "daughter" Jenny being a soldier is rebuked by the fact that he was a soldier, in the Time War, and has killed numerous beings and even whole races, both personally and by manipulation.
- Lampshaded the same way in "The Caretaker", where the Twelfth Doctor refuses to believe that Clara and Danny could be together because Danny was a soldier. Perhaps even worse as Danny has now moved on and is a teacher, while the Doctor still kills people regularly. Danny points out the Doctor isn't a soldier at all, he's something far worse: an officer. He mostly keeps his hands clean because he gets others to do the dirty work.
- Done to nearly suicidal levels with the Sontarans in "The Poison Sky", when he designs a self-destructing weapon with an activation button and teleports both it and himself to their ship to give the ultimatum instead of just putting it on a timer. He realizes his mistake too late when it's made very clear that for a race that cares about honour in battle above all else, being known as the crew that gave their lives to kill one of the most (in)famous people in the universe is one of the highest honours you could possibly imagine.
- This trope was invoked by Davros in ''Journey's End''; he observes that while the Doctor might be personally reluctant to commit acts of violence, they frequently associate with violent people as allies (e.g. Jack Harkness, River Song), or they enable their companions to become more violent as a consequence of adventuring (e.g. Martha, Rory). The Doctor doesn't carry a gun, but it could be argued that they empower other people to pick up a gun, as it were.
- The Equalizer has no problem with firearms, but prefers to use psychological warfare to inspire villains to recant or confess. His reluctance to kill is more because he's trying to atone for his past as a trained government spy/killer.
- Firefly:
- Shepherd Book won't kill people, due to it being against the teachings of The Bible, but those teachings are a "mite fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps." He's also shown beating the crap out of people a few times. He's also implied to have a violent past which he gave up and this is confirmed in an Expanded Universe graphic novel when the other characters remark about how, for a Shepherd, he's very good with a gun.
- Also, the con-artist Saffron.Saffron: I didn't kill him.
Mal: No, I doubt there's many you kill. Just put them in a position to die easy.
- In Gotham, Bruce Wayne becomes this at a fairly young age. After his parents are shot when he is twelve, he spends a significant amount of time trying to find their murderer so he can kill him. Upon meeting him, though, the killer expresses relief that one of his victims finally caught up with him, and doesn't try to stop Bruce from shooting him. This leads Bruce to realize that he's a man, not a monster, and he decides that he believes it is wrong to kill people in revenge. This later leads to the belief that it is wrong to kill criminals at all, something that he is prone to taking to ridiculous extremes, just like his comics counterpart. Also like his comics counterpart, he is completely fine with beating the ever loving crap out of them, or hitting them with batarangs, which could both potentially be deadly if Batman wasn't careful.
- Kung Fu (1972)! Caine did plenty of beating-up, but never any permanent damage. Except that one time.
- Leverage: Elliot Spencer fits the sub-trope of "doesn't use guns" technical pacifist. But in the season 3 finale, after being backed into a corner and being told to survive, he reluctantly uses his opponent's dropped handguns
, and kills 15+ assailants. He says he doesn't use them because of his "past". It is also likely that he dislikes guns because he believes it makes things too easy.- Nate threatens to kill Dubenich (who killed his father) and Latimer in the Season 4 finale, but eventually puts the gun on the edge of a dam and walks away, leaving the two of them to fight over it. It's implied that they both killed each other.
- There's also the end of the Cross My Heart Job, where the villain planned to steal a heart transplant for a sick child for himself.
"I didn't kill you, Mr. Chesney. God did. I just made sure it took."
- The Lone Ranger used guns, but only to disarm his opponents in the least painful way possible. Presumably, he was one of the inspirations for Vash the Stampede.
- MacGyver (1985), obviously. Vocally and obviously hates guns, but this is for personal reasons, related to a childhood accident in which one of his friends was killed. He isn't averse to hitting people (with fists, or with a variety of heavy things) and, for a "pacifist" (which he's not really), he's awfully fond of creating explosives. Granted, given the show's style, there also wasn't a lot of obviously fatal collateral damage to all the homemade bombs he set off.
- He also doesn't hesitate to put people in what would, in reality, be very dangerous situations: shocking them with high voltage, suspending them high up in the air by flimsy cords, driving towards them at high speeds, slamming them headfirst into heavy objects, blinding drivers of fast-moving vehicles, hiding unconscious bodies inside heavy machinery, and so on. Probably the most egregious example of this is when he set up a trap that shot a bunch of automatic weapons at cars full of people... but aimed them at the tires.
- Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H is supposedly a pacifist (owning to his Hippocratic oath as a doctor) but he is known to punch people who disagree with his moral and ethical views of the world. Hawkeye even removed the (perfectly fine) appendix of a gung-ho colonel to keep him from causing more casualties. The colonel would have continued to attempt to take an objective even after being ordered to stand down. He felt horrible about it afterward, though. It was a genuine (and acknowledged) ethical grey area for him. Another episode has Hawkeye and Potter driving a jeep after getting drunk, when they come under enemy fire. They get out of the jeep and take cover, and Potter hands Hawkeye his sidearm and tells him to use it. Hawkeye protests that he will carry books, carry a tune, carry on, carry over, and even harikari (or possibly Harry Carey— so hard to tell with puns!) if desperate enough, but he will not carry a gun. Potter tells him to think of it not as a weapon, but as an angry noise-maker, and convinces Hawkeye to fire it in the air to at least give them some covering fire.
- Mission: Impossible: The Impossible Missions Force, in any assignment to "permanently deal" with some threat, are rarely the actual killers: they typically set up a situation where they con the target into betraying their own side (and get caught), or con the other side into believing the target has/is/will betray them. As an added bonus, when dealing with criminals instead of foreign intelligence agencies, they'll often ensure that the local cops show up just in time to catch the killers red-handed. By contrast, the characters in the films do kill, though they try to avoid it whenever possible. Whenever it's not possible, they are remarkably effective at it.
- In Nichols, Nichols was a soldier for 18 years and became sick of all the killing he saw. As sheriff of Nichols, he refuses to carry a gun, preferring to outsmart his opponents. He is not above throwing the odd punch if he has too, however.
- Threatened by Jesus of all people in the Red Dwarf episode "Lemons".Jesus: Just because I'm a man of peace doesn't mean I won't punch your teeth out!
- Stargate-verse
- In Stargate SG-1, the Goa'ulds' zat'nik'tel are primarily for stunning (and torture). And they kill on the second shot. Stunners are all over the place in Stargate, and most SciFi. Plot-handy without necessarily being a statement.
- It's also more convenient for capturing victims alive because you're a species that relies on living inside hosts to survive. The Zat's other two settings ("kill" and "disintegrate the body") are more for direct combat and assassination.
- The writing staff realized pretty quickly that disintegration would require an ungodly amount of energy, so that function was quietly dropped after a few episodes. Also mocked in "Wormhole X-Treme!" when one of the characters on the set of the Show Within a Show calls "three shots disintegrate" the "stupidest thing I've ever heard".
- The Nox are ordinarily Perfect Pacifist People, but, in "Pretense", Teal'c expects the Goa'uld representatives on Tollana to sabotage the planet's surface-to-orbit defense grid. He talks the Nox representative Lya into using her powers of invisibility to hide one of the cannons in question. When the inevitable happens and the hidden cannon saves the day, Carter questions her actions:Carter: I thought the Nox were pacifists.
Lya: I only hid the weapon. I did not fire it.
Carter: Ah. Pretty fine line you didn't cross.
Lya: Yes it is. - Averted in Stargate Atlantis: Sheppard (hero) fights Michael (villain) on the roof-tops. Michael falls, and before Sheppard can rescue Michael, along comes Teyla. Michael had threatened Teyla's baby. Teyla stomps on one hand, then the other. Michael falls, but because he is a wraith, a creature with fast healing abilities who can survive multiple gunshots to the head and chest, he may have survived the fall. Awesome!
- In Stargate SG-1, the Goa'ulds' zat'nik'tel are primarily for stunning (and torture). And they kill on the second shot. Stunners are all over the place in Stargate, and most SciFi. Plot-handy without necessarily being a statement.
- Starfleet officers from Star Trek are like this. When they go on away missions, they almost always have their phasers set on "stun."
- Commander Spock from Star Trek: The Original Series. A Vulcan vegetarian scientist, dedicated to logic and pacifism. However, if logic dictates that the only way to prevent greater violence does require some violence...
- Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is an android with the strength of ten men and a programmed sense of respect for sentient life, meaning that he can incapacitate just about anyone who threatens him or the Enterprise. It's not until he's captured by a Collector of the Strange who's willing to murder his own mooks that he's finally willing to kill in order to save lives.
- Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. As a police officer he does not like to kill (he has a personal rule of never using a phaser), but he is more than willing to fight hand to hand. His shapeshifting abilities and experience in combat allow him to be more dangerous unarmed than a rabid, bat'leth-swinging, disruptor-toting Klingon. He also has a certain amount of pride about this; upon being told Klingons attacking the station would likely come after him in hopes of making themselves worthy of song, he muses that if any one Klingon warrior did kill him in combat, it would be an act worthy of an entire Klingon opera.
- In Ultraman Cosmos, Ultraman Cosmos is a pacifist and normally makes a token effort to subdue and calm down the monster he's fighting to the point his Luna Form has no real Finishing Moves that can kill. If faced with a monster he cannot subdue peacefully, or is truly evil, he has to switch to his more combat able Corona Mode, which can still calm monsters down if needed. His Eclipse Mode reflects this as well, with a finishing beam that only kills evil beings, passing through everything else. His support team, EYES, also tend to take this perspective on monsters, trying to subdue them, while the military tries to kill them, which often ends up re-enraging said monster EYES took care of. This actually comes back to help as on several occasions, the monsters and aliens they've spared or helped do come back to help out humanity, leading to a rather epic Gondor Calls for Aid moment in the third movie after Cosmos is killed by Ultraman Justice.
- One of Mr. Chapel's codes in Vengeance Unlimited was that he did not kill his marks. However, he did use stuff that went boom (and called in favors from people who knew how to use stuff that went boom) to scare the bejeezus out of his marks.
- Walker, Texas Ranger: The titular Texas Ranger, Cordell Walker. Even after he's beaten the bad guys to a quivering pulp with his martial arts skills, and always in self-defense and to protect others who can't protect themselves, he always tries to make sure they are brought in alive. However, there are some moments where Walker has to invoke lethal force, from shooting his lifelong nemesis, Victor LaRue, dead in a packed courtroom before he could rape and kill Alex to creaming the traitorous bodyguard of a billionaire's kidnapped daughter with his own murder weapon.
- The Walking Dead:
- Hershel is a man of peace, and at first refuses to kill the walkers, believing them to just be very ill. When that reality is shattered, he is shown to be a very skilled shooter, even though he doesn't care much for guns.
- Morgan reappears in season 5, having gone from the insane survivalist in season 3 who had no qualms with killing other humans to the policy of Thou Shalt Not Kill, even against Always Chaotic Evil humans. He doesn't, however, let his new motto of "all life is precious" stop him from using his staff to beat the hell out of people, and still doesn't object to killing zombies.
- On White Collar, Mozzie is a generally non-violent type, probably due to the influence of his old mentor Mr. Jeffries, who taught Mozzie to fight his battles with words, and Neal, who just doesn't like violence at all. Mozzie can babble and bluff his way out of almost anything. Hurt or kill someone he cares about, and he will put a six million dollar bounty on your head without a second thought.
- Gabrielle from Xena: Warrior Princess had no problems with beating people up, but throughout half of the series had a taboo about personally killing people, despite travelling with Xena, who was a walking Cuisinart. Then Gabrielle is converted by Eli, priest of the One True God, so she throws away her non-lethal staff because it is too violent and starts killing people with sais which are not violent at all because One True God says so.
