Ungrateful Bastard / Film

Ungrateful Bastards in Films.

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Films — Animation

• In Beauty and the Beast, Gaston stabs the Beast moments after the Beast decides to let him go (rather than dropping him off the roof). Admittedly, the Beast isn't actually saving him, but he's sparing him when he doesn't really have to, so it's still pretty bastardly. It's also the very last act he ever commits.
• At the end of Dinosaur, when Aladar finds out that Kron is planning on making the Herd continue to use the old entrance to the Nesting Grounds, now blocked off by a huge landslide, by literally making them all climb over the ravine, which will put many of their lives at risk, and persuades them all to take the safer, new entrance to the Nesting Grounds Aladar and his friends found while still trapped inside the cave, Kron refuses to listen to him and tries to kill him. And then when the Carnotaurus arrives and attacks the Herd, while Aladar encourages the Herd to "stand together" to fight back against the Carnotaurus, Kron on the other hand proceeds to scale the ravine alone, thus grabbing the Carnotaurus' attention. Aladar and Neera, Kron's sister then try to get Kron to safety, but Kron still refuses to listen to them, and as a result Kron is killed by the Carnotaurus anyway, which after one final battle, is sent falling to its death in the ravine below.
• Amos Slade in The Fox and the Hound is bent on shooting Tod, even after the fox saves him and Copper from a bear. He realizes that he is doing wrong and spares Tod's life after Copper gives him a Heel Realization.
• Appears in Megara's backstory from Hercules. She sold her soul to Hades to save her boyfriend's life, and he thanked her by dumping her for another girl almost immediately after. Crushed, she gave up on love and became the cynical Broken Bird she is for most of the film.
• In the finale of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney), Judge Claude Frollo throws Quasimodo off the wall of Notre Dame but is dragged along with him. Esmeralda catches and holds Quasi's hand who holds Frollo. Despite having learned that Frollo had murdered his mother, Quasi is unwilling to let his adopted father go. Frollo manages to get to safety and immediately tries to kill the heroes. He fails and pays dearly for it.
• The Incredibles:
  • Superheroes go into hiding to escape being sued by the people they saved.
  • Buddy Pine was an extremely devout fan of Mr. Incredible who's implied to constantly butt in on his heroics, and in one instance, he almost gets killed, with Mr. Incredible's rescue inadvertently causing great damage, kick-starting the Superheroes Registration Act which forces Mr. Incredible into retirement and hiding. Yet years later, as Syndrome, a billionaire who owns his own company, private island, and paramilitary force, he has the gall to say he got the short end of the stick that day.
• In Incredibles 2, the Big Bad, Evelyn Deavor, doesn't show any gratitude for Helen saving her in the climax, pointing out that it doesn't make Helen right. Helen, not at all put out, points out, "But it does make you alive."
• Cera in The Land Before Time. Littlefoot's mother saves her and Littlefoot from being eaten by Sharptooth. Even after this, she remains racist against "longnecks", even going so far as to call Littlefoot's mother stupid, which causes a fight between the two. She gets over it, however.
• The Lion King:
  • At the end of The Lion King (1994), Simba actually chases Scar to the top of a cliff, causing the evil lion to plead for his life, and that the hyenas were behind the death of Mufasa, Simba actually tells Scar to "run away and never return", but Scar responds by throwing burning embers into Simba's face and attacking him while he is temporarily blinded, but Simba quickly recovers and eventually sends them off Pride Rockwhere Scar finds himself cornered by his furious hyena lackies he betrayed, who finish the job on him.
  • Originally, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride was going to end with Kiara trying to save Zira from falling to her death in a river below, but she refuses and prefers to commit suicide by deliberately falling to her death instead.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Barnyard Dog's whole role from the short "Daffy Duck Hunt" amounts to this. His plan to catch Daffy Duck relied on being ungrateful by making him take pity on him through his claims that Porky would abuse him if he didn't get him and with the promise that if he plays dead and hands himself over, he would release him afterwards. Sure enough, Daffy is uncharacteristically compassionate and plays along which ends with Porky putting the supposedly dead duck on ice. This suddenly makes the dog feel conflicted (in typical cartoony angel-devil fashion) about betraying the one who helped him which makes him act on impulse and take him out of the freezer only to get a little warmth without even asking himself what is the point since he doesn't plan to let him go, but then he gives the answer on his own and blocks all exits, ultimately playing it straight.
  • In the Babbit and Catstello short "Tale of Two Mice", Babbit orders Catstello to get him some cheese, even though the latter is frightened of the cat just outside and almost got killed by it. After Catstello nearly gets killed by the cat several more times, he finally gets Babbit the cheese he wants. Then Babbit tells him it's Swiss cheese, which Catstello knows he doesn't like. For Catstello, this is the last straw; he slaps Babbit silly and starts literally shoving chunks of the cheese down his throat, telling Babbit he's gonna learn to like it.
    Catstello: [looking into the camera with remorse] Ohhh, I'm a baaad boy!
  • In "Ali Baba Bunny", Daffy's response to Bugs Bunny pretending to be a genie and saving him from Hassan's anger is to mock the rabbit's phony spell instead of saying "thank you". When Bugs saves him a second time, Daffy runs back to the cave to claim the treasure without a word of gratitude. He gets his comeuppance, however, when he discovers a lamp with a real genie inside and accuses the genie of trying to steal the treasure, trying to forcibly shove him into the lamp.
    Genie: Duck, you have desecrated the spirit of the lamp! Prepare to take the consequences!
    Daffy: Consequences shmonsequences, as long as I'm rich.
  • In "Well Worn Daffy", Speedy Gonzales and his mouse amigos are quite thirsty, but they spot a well full of water in an oasis, which, unfortunately, is jealously guarded by Daffy, who not only refuses to share the water, but who manages at every turn to foil the mice's attempts to take it. In the end, he decides to leave the oasis, taking some of the water for himself and his camel and blowing up the well with dynamite to deprive the mice of their needed water once and for all. However, Speedy manages to tie the lit dynamite to Daffy's camel's tail as they leave. With Daffy gone, the mice start drinking the water from the well, hooking the hose up to the well to get at it more easily. Daffy and his camel return, quite thirsty and pleading for water, just as Speedy and his friends had done. Speedy is happy to oblige Daffy — by playfully spraying the water in his face with the hose. Daffy is none too pleased.
    Daffy: There's only one thing worse than a smart mouse, and that's three smart mice!
• Mulan: Chi Fu. Mulan destroyed nearly the entire Hun army singlehandedly, yet as soon as it's revealed she's a woman, he immediately decides that she deserves death (though, in some fairness, it was illegal for a woman to be in the army at that time, and the penalty was death; she avoids it only because she had saved Shang's life shortly before, and he repaid his debt by sparing her). After she goes even further and saves the emperor (who is also his boss) from the Hun survivors, he's no better. Shang has had enough of him though.
  Chi Fu: That creature's not worth protecting.
  Shang: She's a hero.
  Chi Fu: 'Tis a woman. She'll never be worth anything.
  Shang: [grabs his collar] Listen, you pompous...
• Even Captain Hook from Peter Pan counts as this. After Peter Pan wins the sword duel with Hook on the condition that he doesn't fly, by instead jumping and tying him up in with his own pirate flag, Hook begs for mercy and Peter agrees to spare his life and let him leave Never Land on the condition that he never returns, but not without forcing him to call himself a codfish out loud to humiliate him. Then, as Peter rejoices his victory, Hook takes the opportunity to attempt to strike him with his hook-hand. Of course, Peter quickly dodges his attack, Hook loses his balance and falls into the jaws of the crocodile.
• In "The Pied Piper", the city of Hamlen is swarming with rats. The mayor and his citizens are desperate to rid their city of rats. The titular piper helps them solve their rat problem by luring the rats out Hamlen with his magic pipe. Being the nasty people they turn out to be, the mayor and people have every nerve to mock the piper. They dismiss his efforts as a silly feat for playing a tune, insisting that the rats left their city by their own accord. The mayor reneges giving the piper the bag of gold he offered as a reward and tosses him only one coin. The piper immediately takes revenge by leading the citizens' children out of Hamlen.
  Piper: You're dishonest and ungrateful. It really is a shame that the children in this city should grow up to be the same.
• After saving a man's life in Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, Pocahontas gets knocked down by that same guy, and to add insult to injury, he calls her a savage.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The Ethical Bug tries desperately hold onto his belief that there’s good in everyone, until he meets Jack Horner, but he tries to find some sort of Freudian Excuse stemming from his childhood. Jack Horner summed up his general attitude when he said the following line:
  "You know, I never had much as a kid. Just loving parents, and stability, and a mansion, and a thriving baked goods enterprise for me to inherit. Useless crap like that."
• The Sea Beast: Captain Crow and his crew risk their lives fighting dangerous sea beasts and saving other hunters from certain death, but the King and Queen have the gall to be upset over them not specifically killing the Red Bluster.
• The titular character from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.
  • His plan after his best friend took his place and risked his own life for Sinbad's sake? Go to Fiji. When called out on this, he says that he didn't ask Proteus to defend him and even believes that, since Proteus is the King's son, he'll be set free by the King (which would have happened had Proteus not insisted that Sinbad will come back).
  • After Marina has saved Sinbad and his men by piloting the ship away from the sirens? Sinbad just yells at her for causing damage to his ship and chipping the paint, causing Marina to shut herself in a cabin. Very shortly afterwards, his crew weren't very happy at this, nor his dog Spike. After seeing their disgusted glares, Sinbad knocks on the cabin door and when she answers, he grudgingly thanks her and the rest of the crew return back to work.
• In The Swan Princess 2, Derek saves Knuckles from falling off a cliff, only to be pushed down the same cliff by him a few seconds afterwards.
• The Thief and the Cobbler: Zigzag presents Mighty One-Eye with the three golden balls, which the prophecy states that the One-Eyes need to invade the golden kingdom. Mighty One-Eye doesn't seem to care at all, and immediately orders Zigzag to be fed to the alligators. Zigzag survives, and he's not happy.
• Toy Story:
  • Woody has his moment in Toy Story 2. Buzz and friends go to great lengths to get up to the apartment and rescue him from toy collector Al, who is preparing to send him to Japan. The most prominent expression of this is when Buzz gives a heartfelt speech about how he once taught him that life was only worth living if he was loved by a child and he came to rescue him because he believed him. His response? "Well, you wasted your time." Although Woody does see Buzz's point and tries to leave with him almost immediately afterward.
  • Lotso in Toy Story 3. Woody and Buzz risk their lives to save him near the end. Then when he has a chance to save them with no risk, he deliberately leaves them to die in the incinerator. He eventually pays the price for this big time.

Films — Live-Action

• The Deep (1977): Treece saved Coffin's life when he "washed up on the beach" after the Goliath sunk, but Coffin is willing to betray and endanger him during the treasure hunt.
• In The Departed, when Barrigan saves Sullivan from being arrested the very next thing he does is shoot his rescuer in the head.
• In The Dictator, even after Nuclear Nadal saves Aladeen from being decapitated by angry Wadiyan refugees, Aladeen complains to him again for making a nuclear weapon that is round and not pointy.
• The two rats in Dr. Dolittle are explicitly not grateful to the good doctor after he saves one of them.
  "You want gratitude? Get a hamster!"
• In Dracula Untold, Vlad's people try to burn him alive the moment they find out that he's a vampire and they don't care who he is or what he had done to save them all — to them, he's just a monster. Vlad calls them out on the spot. When Vlad's vampire army has finished off the Ottomans, they turn their attention to try and kill Ingeras. They forgot whose boy that was.
• Happens in Escape from New York and Escape from L.A., both of which end with Snake screwing over an ungrateful president. In the first one, the president shows no respect for any of the people who died in the process of getting him out of New York. The president in Escape from L.A. makes the president in Escape From New York seem like a nice guy.
• Ernest Goes to Camp has the Second Chance Boys, who constantly belittle Ernest, taunt him, bad-mouth him, play mean pranks on him, and take advantage of the fact that he's the only one who's nice to them. She gives them a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech, pointing out how Ernest is quite literally the only person at the camp who gave them a chance, treated them well, trusted them, and was nice to them while all the other campers, counselors, and even she had written them off as being Beyond Redemption and either disregarded or mistreated them. Thankfully, it gets through to them:
  Nurse St. Cloud: You know what dumb is? Dumb is not knowing who your friends are. Ernest is the only person in the world who cared about you. He tried to help you. He stood up for you when nobody else in the world even wanted to know you. Ernest is losing everything he cares about — his home, his job, everything — And all you can think about is what you want.
• In Ex Machina, even though Caleb helped her escape, Ava left him to die of starvation in the facility.
• Lieutenant Dan subverts this in Forrest Gump. Initially he is not only ungrateful, but downright angry with Gump for saving his life. This was mostly a pride thing, though, as he was the first in his family not to die in battle and didn't know what to do with his life afterwards, especially after losing his legs. If anything, by the end of the movie he becomes grateful to Gump for not just saving him, but giving him a reason to live. Even before the end, he actually respected Gump and considered him his best friend. He was angry at him for saving him because he had to live without legs, but that didn't mean he truly turned against him.
  "I never thanked you for saving my life."
• In From a Whisper to a Scream, after immortal hermit Felder Evans saves his life after he is shot, Jesse Hardwick can think of nothing but stealing Felder's immortality-granting potion, and eventually sinks Felder in the swamp, knowing that, as an immortal, he'd be left in an And I Must Scream situation.
• Halloween (2007): Kamado Cruz was very nice to Michael. When Michael makes his escape from the institution, he brutally murdered Ismael when he tries to usher him back to his room. In the second film, he brutally murders a woman who apologizes to him after her father and husband beat him up.
• In Hellboy II: The Golden Army the civilians swing from Muggles to Ungrateful Bastards ridiculously soon after the Masquerade is broken. Although the fact that Hellboy would seem to them to have gone from "cool urban legend" to "scary demon with huge guns who attracts enormous, destructive plant monsters"... And this is why the comics has him being public knowledge since day one (that's since the 1950s).
• Horrible Bosses: Even though Dale saved Harken by giving him his epinephine medication for a peanut allergy, Harken still acts hostile towards him just like with everyone else. Harken's wife's even lampshades this.
• In Karate a Muerte en Torremolinos, Jocántaro kills Malvedades during the end credits.
• In Looney Tunes: Back in Action:
  Kate: You can't fire me! My company made $950 million dollars.
  CEO It's not a billion.
• In Lord of Illusions, Nix's cult have spent the better part of 15 years trying to revive him from his imprisonment in the afterlife. Upon his resurrection he murders them all for having proven themselves unworthy of him.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: When King Théoden is about to personally execute Gríma Wormtongue for his crimes against the Rohan crown, Aragorn intervenes and stops him (albeit because Gríma has caused enough death more than anything else). When Aragorn does this, and even nonverbally offers Gríma a chance at atonement, how does Gríma thank him? With a Spiteful Spit before fleeing.
• The No Budget fantasy film The Lords Of Magick has a nobleman horribly mutilated and murdered by bandits, before being resurrected by two passing wizards. Said nobleman's response is to immediately have the wizards arrested for practising the forbidden art of necromancy, without any mention at all of reporting the people who actually killed him.
• In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, InGen's dinosaur capturing party rescues Ian and his team, the supposed good guys in the film, after a T. rex destroys all of their equipment and leaves them dangling off of a cliff. They then provide all of the information Ian and co. need to get help and personally escort them there, despite heavy losses to their own ranks (most of which directly caused by Ian's group). Despite all of this, Ian's team still feels the need to spend every minute of screen time possible heckling and sabotaging them. Nick Van Owen even steals the bullets from them as they leave the island, leaving InGen's team helpless against the attacking dinosaurs. That's manslaughter, or at the very least depraved indifference.
• In Man of Steel, a younger Clark saving a school bus full of children from drowning is met with much fear and hatred from the townspeople. Subverted by Pete, who rats Clark out to his mother, who in turn confronts the Kents. However, Pete seems to have done so out of a sense of awe and appreciation, and is visibly sheepish about it. His mother herself goes in the opposite direction and declares Clark a savior and a sign from God. Later, Pete is not only nicer to Clark, but doesn't reveal his identity when Zod calls on Earth to do so.
• Maximum Overdrive: Wanda certainly seems to think this of the trucks.
  Wanda: WHERE'S YOUR SENSE OF LOYALTY, YOU PUKEY THINGS!? WE MADE YOU!
• In Million Dollar Baby Maggie's mother and sister, who object to her buying a house for them for fear of losing their welfare and instead insist on money.
• MonsterVerse:
  • Kong: Skull Island: Colonel Packard during his Sanity Slippage. He doesn't give a damn that Weaver, who Packard has already subconsciously singled out as an enemy due to her profession, saved him and his men from a Skullcrawler in a Boneyard, later repaying her by pointing a gun at her face when she tries to talk sense into him.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Mark Russell is so full of self-pity and anger over his son's death, he makes the rest of The Team, the very people whom are currently trying to find his kidnapped ex-wife and daughter, the recipients of his misdirected outbursts over his son's death, and he at one point even directly accuses them of forgetting about his ex-wife and daughter out of pure anger. Not a very nice thing to do when the difference between getting your family back safely and never seeing them alive again is dependent entirely on these people.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: Apex Cybernetics are this overall with their plot to to kill Godzilla and usurp his dominance using Mechagodzilla. They don't give a damn that Godzilla is the chief reason why all their worthless troublemaking asses along with the rest of humanity weren't all killed by King Ghidorah in the previous film — to Apex, Godzilla's in the way of their Evil Plan to enslave or exterminate all the Titans on Earth so they'll be in control of everything, and their chief technology officer Ren personally wants to kill Godzilla because of daddy issues.
• In The Phantom, The Dragon Quill was once saved by the 20th Phantom, after he was attacked by a rabid monkey. Quill said that he would lead him to the Sengh Brotherhood's hideout. Instead, he stabbed the Phantom in the back, stole his belt and took it to the Brotherhood, who initiated him.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: Angelica is horrified at Jack for sacrificing her father Blackbeard by switching the chalices and even tries to shoot him as he maroons her on the island...despite the fact that he saved her life by doing so.
• In the B Movie, Prayer Of The Rollerboys, Corey Haim saves the life of The Dragon to the boss of a roller blade gang, who also happens to be Haim's childhood friend. Out of jealousy, the dragon spends the rest of the film trying to sabotage Haim's place in the gang.
• In Project X (2012), some bullies grab a little person and throw him into an oven. Costa forces them to leave and pulls him out, only for the midget to punch him in the nuts.
• Rim of the World: The Purge Mask gang leader; the kids save him from jail and certain death at the aliens' claws and he repays them by trying to kill them in order to steal and sell the crypto-key.
• Riot Girls: Nat is upset that Scratch killed to protect her from rape, and asks if it was really necessary. Scratch is incredulous, and they briefly fall out over this. Nat later apologizes and they make up though.
• In Saving Private Ryan, "Steamboat Willie" is spared by the platoon... only to rejoin the German forces and help kill the main character, Miller. No wonder shortly after he surrenders he gets shot. By the same guy who argued with the squad that he should be let go, in fact.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • Subverted in the finale of the first Spider-Man film, where Spidey seems to get a lot more respect than he ever did in the comics. Just when it looks like the Green Goblin is about to end his career, the villain starts getting pelted with garbage by angry New Yorkers standing on the Queensboro Bridge. The New Yorkers scream profanities at the villain, one says "C'mon, you're gonna attack a guy who's trying to save a bunch of kids?!", and then one New Yorker shouts, "You mess wit' one of us, you mess wit' ALL of us!" Apparently, this was added in as a Shout-Out to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to reflect the general feeling New Yorkers had following the crisis. Still, for Spider-Man, this was really something.
    • It was played straight earlier in the film, when calls were being made for Spidey's arrest. It was even fairly invoked by the Green Goblin, who told Spider-Man that the people of New York would hate him in the end despite everything he'd done for them — and they did. Also, it featured JJJ doing his thing in typical Paparazzi fashion.
  • In Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man saves Harry Osborn from being killed when Dr. Ock's experiment blows up. Harry, who still thinks Spidey killed his father, tells him it doesn't change anything. As he leaves the building with his bodyguard, Harry says Spider-Man shamed him by touching him.
• Star Wars:
  • Anakin Skywalker himself from the prequel trilogy lives this trope. He definitely qualifies during Attack of the Clones, where he puts the blame on Obi-Wan Kenobi for holding him back after Shmi, his mother, died in the Tusken Raider camp. In Revenge of the Sith, he has a moment of clarity and apologizes for his ingratitude towards Obi-Wan's teachings, only to dive headlong back into this when he assumes that the Jedi Council don't respect him and distrusts them even more after he's refused the rank of Jedi Master, kills all of the Jedi, including the younglings, in the Jedi temple during Order 66 after all his devoted years of serving them, and, worst of all, Force chokes Padmé Amidala, his wife, to near death, after all his years of marriage with her, because he thought that she betrayed him when Obi-Wan appears on her ship, so that the medical facility staff in Polis Massa will be unable to save her, leaving her eventual death inevitable. There isn't even any victory in his final defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan, because the victory for Anakin's former Jedi Master came off as Pyrrhic, resulting in the fallen Jedi apprentice being encased in black armor at the very end of the third prequel.
  • Leia. "When you came in here, didn't you have a plan for getting out?" No, we didn't, Your Worshipfullness, because we're two guys and an anthropomorphic dog up against thousands of enemy soldiers. To save your ungrateful skin. For whatever reason, it's Played for Laughs. Rescues are kind of pointless when everyone just gets killed on the way out.
  • Han does call Leia out when she complains about the rescue, "Maybe you'd like it back in your cell, Your Highness."
  • The Jedi themselves were on the receiving end of this. When they were wiped out nobody really cared. Served the Republic in all its forms as guardians for twenty thousand years? Led the clone troopers (who also get no respect) to victory against the overwhelming Separatist forces in the current civil war? Oh, well. No use crying over spilt milk. Expanded Universe material would rectify this by revealing that the Jedi weren't really all that liked due to the fact they tended to be selfish assholes who thought they knew better.
• Transformers Film Series:
  • In Transformers: Dark of the Moon this seems to be the case on the surface, but is subverted. While Optimus Prime kills Megatron, despite the fact that he helped him defeat a mutual enemy it's made clear Megatron's actions were purely out of self-interest, and that aside, he was personally responsible for the death of one of Prime's comrades. Even his alleged "surrender" seemed to be nothing more than an act of mockery.
  • Played horrifically straight by humanity in Transformers: Age of Extinction. The Autobots have defended humanity from invasion, even at the cost of their own world being reborn. Humanity's response to this is to help an intergalactic Bounty Hunter kill the remaining Autobots and harvest their bodies for the raw materials to make consumer goods. For profit. There have actually been camps hoping humans get wiped out in the next movie because of this.
    • Continued in Transformers: The Last Knight, potentially worse. The Autobots are still hunted alongside the Decepticons^note In Age of Extinction it's implied that the government believe only the Decepticons were being hunted, in Last Knight the Autobots are openly hunted, and Cade, the one guy willing to help them, is branded a fugitive, to the extent that when it's discovered Cade had a MacGuffin that was valued by the Decepticons, their response is to form an Enemy Mine with Megatron instead of trying to work with their former allies the Autobots.
• Troop Beverly Hills: Velda believes Real Women Don't Wear Dresses and does everything she can to get Troop Beverly Hills kicked out of the Wilderness Girls. When she breaks her ankle and gets abandoned by her own troop during a race, the heroes help her. Instead of thanking them, she insults them. When the heroes win thanks to a Disqualification-Induced Victory, she yells about how they're not real Wilderness Girls.
• In the Underworld series, this is a very good description of Viktor, one of the oldest vampires in the franchise;
  • Marcus, the original vampire, comes to Viktor while the latter is on his death bed as a mortal warlord and grants him immortality. How does Viktor repay him? By wresting control of the coven away from Marcus, indefinitely imprisoning Marcus's brother, and having the vampires' history rewritten so that Viktor, not Marcus, is the oldest and most powerful of the vampires.
  • Lucian, the original lycan, who has been raised as a slave to the vampires from the moment of his birth, transforms into Lycan form to save Sonja from becoming werewolf kibble. Viktor's response to this is to have him publicly flogged to near-death for removing the slave collar that would have prevented said transformation. Mind you, he gave Sonja a brief lecture earlier about showing gratitude to Lucian for saving her life. When she calls him on it, he responds that letting Lucian live rather than killing him immediately is his gratitude... then decides to have Lucian killed anyway as a cautionary tale to any would-be upstarts.
  • Selene potentially all but saved Viktor, and the coven, from certain doom by breaking the Chain and making him aware of her concerns about Kraven's treachery. After literally centuries of her Undying Loyalty to him, Viktor refuses to hear any of it and orders her judged (which would almost certainly result in her death). After Selene acquires undeniable proof for her suspicions, Viktor refuses to absolve her unless she kills Michael Corvin, a newly-turned lycan who is totally innocent of any crime and is only the "enemy" because he was turned against his will.
• In Warlock (1989), the warlock's reward to the first man who offered the unconscious and time-teleported warlock shelter is to murder him in his own kitchen.
• In War for the Planet of the Apes, Caesar expresses this to Col. McCullough:
  Caesar: I did not start this war. I offered you peace. I showed you mercy. But now you're here to finish us off for good.
  • After the battle at the beginning of the movie, among the surviving soldiers Caesar allows to leave unharmed, includes Preacher, so that they can deliver a message to the Colonel. Later during the Final Battle, Preacher, who had earlier shown signs of a Heel–Face Turn, is just about to finish off Caesar when he is blown up by the gorilla, Red, who did make a Heel–Face Turn.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • Pyro towards Professor X in X-Men: The Last Stand. This doesn't sit well with Magneto.
    Pyro: I would've killed the professor if you had given me the chance.
    Magneto: Charles Xavier did more for mutants than you'll ever know. My single greatest regret is that that he had to die for our dream to live.
  • Also from Last Stand, when Magneto busts Mystique and several other mutants from the rolling prison trucks, she jumps in front of him, and gets hit with a "cure" filled dart. She turns into a regular human, and Magneto takes off with the other mutants, and leaves her to her fate.
  Magneto: Shame. She was so beautiful.
  • In X-Men: First Class, minutes after the mutants single-handedly prevent World War III, the military tries to kill them since they were deemed too dangerous.
  • Ichiro Yashida is nothing but self-serving towards The Wolverine thanks to whom he had the unique distinction of witnessing the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings at first hand and living to tell the tale. He wanted to acquire Wolverine's Healing Factor to achieve eternal youth, and attempts to argue that it's for Logan's own good since that what he (Logan) really wanted, as if his wishes would make any difference to him. At first he even seems genuinely thankful to Logan for saving his life back in WWII. When Logan says no, he shows the uglier side of him and that he would put his survival before even his savior's to the point of gloating at his face while slowly killing him.
    • Shingen shows nothing but open contempt for Logan throughout the movie (which is his natural state for every other character anyway). He never once acknowledges or thanks him for saving his father's life, if not for which he wouldn't even exist.
  • X-Men: Apocalypse: Erik—while living under a new identity—uses his powers to save a fellow steelworker, so what happens next? Another steelworker informs the authorities who he really is, which leads to the death of Lehnsherr's wife and daughter.

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