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- Parodied in Adventure Time: Banana Guard Academy, where the villainous Compulord can be relied upon to lose his temper with his minions and order them all to kill themselves every ninety-three minutes precisely.
- From Asterix and the Black Gold: Dubbelosix, a Druid spying for the Romans, has to get the secret of magic potion and stop our heroes from procuring an ingredient. Asterix, however, outgambits him, and Dubbelosix and his superior both end up sentenced to death in the arena, covered in BEES!
- Black Moon Chronicles: Lucifer makes his displeasure at Haazheel Thorn's failure to give him the world on a platter known quite emphatically: he eats his soul like it was a piece of candy.
- In Blake and Mortimer:
- Damdu to Olrik. "Guards! Seize this traitor and tie him to the first rocket to launch!"
- Olrik himself doesn't tolerate failure and get rid of anyone who doesn't deliver the goods.
- Bloodquest: In Part II, Khorne himself smites his warriors for failing to claim the Blood Angels' souls after they venture out of his domain.
- Bone: After the Hooded One botches the ritual to free him by hunting down the wrong sacrifice, the most recent in a string of screw-ups, the Lord Of Locusts responds by stripping her powers away and utterly eviscerating her. Since the Lord is a powerful Necromancer, he simply revives the Hooded One once it’s clear he still needs her for the time being, but he warns that there will not be anymore second chances and keeps her on a shorter leash for the rest of the story.
- Empress: Morax executes Chief Bozz with his bare hands when he fails to capture Emporia and the children.
- Judge Dredd: Zigzagged in "No Future". When the Dark Judges accidentally wind up on the wrong planet due to a teleporter mishap, Judge Death sneers "You failed me, Mortis!" and proceeds to strangle his fellow Dark Judge until the latter can offer an explanation in apology. Since both master and minion in this scenario are actually zombies and thus immortal, it's not really clear what this would have accomplished beyond Death just trying to vent his anger.
- The current trope image is from Lady Death by Avatar/Boundless showing the Death Queen arbitrarily executing one of her minions by blowing up his head for allowing the rebels to escape. She makes an habit out of killing her men whenever they disappoint her.
- Les Légendaires:
- Cruelly double-subverted by Darkhell in Les Légendaires: Origines, when one of his generals fails to bring him back Princess Jadina for the second time. Darkhell grasps him and raises him above a pit of lava. The general begs him for mercy, and the following scene ensues:Darkhell: I sometimes happen to give a second chance...
General: T-Thanks, master...
Darkhell: ...Never a third one. (let him fall to his death) - A even more horrifying double-subversion happens in the Anathos Cycle to Dark-Jadina. After bitting the dust against the real Jadina, they go to Anathos and beg him for mercy. Anathos states he forgives them... and then he blows their head off.
- Cruelly double-subverted by Darkhell in Les Légendaires: Origines, when one of his generals fails to bring him back Princess Jadina for the second time. Darkhell grasps him and raises him above a pit of lava. The general begs him for mercy, and the following scene ensues:
- Subverted and played straight in Mandrake. The evil organization "8" has a strict policy to kill anyone who fails; however, so many have been defeated by Mandrake that they no longer kill those that fail against him because of the enormous losses it would mean.
- Samurai Squirrel: When one of Mordak's Ninjas returns to him and informs him they failed in their mission, and that Nato-san now has the medallion, Mordak's response is to kill him and have his wizard, Chaing burn up his body.
- In early issues of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Robotnik often did this to robots who messed up. Likewise, Eggman shows aspects of this from time to time.
- Star Trek: Early Voyages: In "The Flat, Gold Forever", Commander Kaaj is about to kill Kir after he loses track of the shuttlecraft Icarus containing Captain Pike. However, Virka tells Kaaj that Kolj gave Kir the wrong coordinates and Kolj is therefore the one to blame. Kaaj then shoots Kolj dead with his disruptor. Virka did this so that Kir would be in her debt.
- Star Wars:
- While a competent and highly skilled agent, Count Dooku's Dark Side Adept Asajj Ventress was prone to failure because she specifically targeted Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, who were out of her league. After spending months healing from a particularly brutal loss at Anakin's hands, Ventress is found by Obi-Wan and immediately attacks him, moving far from her master's side across a battlefield. With the Republic forces closing in and Ventress too far away, Dooku comments that she had failed him too many times and orders her shot. She survives, though.
- Averted by General Grievous—who has a reputation for tearing off his subordinates heads for failure—of all people in Star Wars: Kanan. He doesn't Kill Coburn Sear for failing to kill the Jedi, he doesn't even berate him or injure him for his failure.
- Transformers:
- Shockwave, as portrayed in most comics, is the ultimate aversion of this trope. Motivated by logic and reason, and utterly aware of the dwindling numbers available to the Decepticons (in a race that cannot reproduce without the Matrix), Shockwave hates to let soldiers go to waste. He can and will harshly reprimand failure (as he does with Frenzy in "Mind Games"), but doesn't ever kill them. Insomuch, that after usurping leadership from Megatron, then soundly beating the ex-leader — he leaves Megatron alive and makes him swear loyalty to him, not fearing from any retribution. Perhaps the best example, though, is in DW comics "The War Within - Ages of Wrath", where Rumble and Frenzy have seemingly caused an explosion that destroyed most of his work in his lab, Shockwave only questions the two and then sends them away to get back to work... In leaving, Rumble and Frenzy even remark that had this happened with Megatron, he would have ripped them apart in anger.
- Shockwave even gives failed minions time to explain themselves — and accepts logical reasoning. When Megatron — his subordinate at the time — led a suicidal attack on the Ark, resulting in the deaths/capture of many Decepticons, Shockwave prepares to promptly execute him. But after Megatron points out that Shockwave made a bigger blunder by allowing the Autobots to steal the secrets of Combiner technology, Shockwave not only accepts his excuse, but relinquishes Decepticon leadership back to Megatron!
- In another situation, after Soundwave let Buster Witwicky, whom he was ordered to capture, go away free despite him having the upper hand, Shockwave comes to the conclusion that Soundwave is either a traitor, or defective, and has outlived his usefulness. But when Soundwave explains Buster's mind needs to re-unite with Optimus so the Decepticons can tap into its secrets, Shockwave accepts this without question.
- Pa in Varmints has several outlaws gather onto a train for what they think is a job. In reality, he placed them all there so he could off them all at once for various reasons from incompetence to betrayal.
