History IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim / WesternAnimation

* ZigZaggingTrope in ''WesternAnimation/{{Jumanji}}'' where the villainous Van Pelt is an InvincibleVillain with ResurrectiveImmortality so simply "killing" him isn't an option in the first place, so the heroes instead devise a plan to trap him forever in a pit, which would potentially be a FateWorseThanDeath. The problem is that Van Pelt is not simply a person, but an actual creation of the game itself, so when their plan actually does work, Jumanji responds by literally transforming ''Peter'' into the next Van Pelt, and Peter Van Pelt gloats that if the other characters kill him, they will just transform into Van Pelt as well. The only way to get Peter back was to rescue Van Pelt from the prison they put him in, making it a bit of an intentional SpaceWhaleAesop.

** When Zuko reveals he knows how to find the man who killed Katara's mother, Aang tries to talk her out of seeking revenge on him. She ignores him but ultimately doesn't go through with it when she has him at her mercy because he's NotWorthKilling.
** In the series finale, Aang, a pacifist monk, agonizes about how he can stop main villain Ozai without killing him. When Aang consults with the avatars of his former lives on what to do, the show subverts this trope: as Chosen One, Aang's duty is to protect the world - if the only way to save countless lives and stop Ozai is to kill him, Aang must do it, even if it means sacrificing his own personal convictions. Even the previous airbender Avatar, who shared Aang's pacifist spiritual beliefs as an Air Nomad, told him that an Avatar has to place the good of the world above his own spiritual well-being, and if a threat to the world is so extreme that it's impossible to defeat non-lethally, it becomes his duty to kill.

[[spoiler:The Titan]]: Well, you assume Belos's goal comes from a genuine place. But that man doesn't care about anything except his need to be the hero in his own delusion. And because of that, he fears what he can't control.

* Team Firebender Wheeler and Team Waterbender Gi play out this trope on ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'' when Gi's trying to drown the gang member who shot her friend.

* Subverted in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/MightyMax''. Norman is facing down a rival barbarian who killed his family. The bad guy uses this line because it's the last card in his deck. Norman smiles and says "I can live with that", then knocks him off a cliff.
* Used in the ''WesternAnimation/DungeonsAndDragons1983'' episode "The Dragon's Graveyard", where Hank refuses to finish Venger on the grounds that if he did, "We'd be no better than you are."
* Subverted in the ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode "[[Recap/TheAdventuresOfBatmanAndRobinE20BatgirlReturns Batgirl Returns]]". When Catwoman is about to drop Roland Daggett into his own vat of acid, Batgirl calls out "If you drop him you'll be just like him!" to which Catwoman replies [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids "Oh]], [[ShutUpKirk grow up"]]--and lets go. Daggett survives, being saved by Batgirl.
* Appears once in the 2003 ''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 TMNT]]'', when Angel stops Casey from killing Hun, but the rest of the series says it's okay to kill villains, and in fact the turtles do kill (or sort-of-kill) a number of villains during the series.
* Used three times if not more in ''WesternAnimation/BeastMachines''. One is when Optimus Primal was thinking of using the Plasma Energy Chamber to destroy Megatron and everything else technological on Cybertron, in order to stop his tyranny. Cheetor flat-out tells him "You fire this thing, and you're ''no'' better than he is!". Another time is after Botanica joins the Maximals and uses it as her justification to not get involved with the actual fighting: "The more we fight like Megatron, the more we become like Megatron". Fortunately she realizes that it's also her world and her fight, so she joins the battle in time to save the others from Obsidian and Stryka. A variant, though not actually about killing, when [[spoiler: Tankorr is revealed to have the spark of Rhinox, and he is awoken to this, he decides both the Maximals and Megatron need to go and he, Tankorr, should be ruler. Cheetor decides to reformat Tankorr to make him Rhinox again, but Optimus stops him, saying "Rhinox has made... his choice. If we tamper with his mind, then we're no better than Megatron. Let him go."]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E22 Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish"]] has Burns sending assassins after Abe, trying to drown his grandson, etc... and yet, when Abe has Burns cornered...
-->'''Burns''': Don't kill me!
-->'''Abe''': [[Awesome/TheSimpsons I ain't gonna kill ya. That'd be cowardly. Monty Burns cowardly. I just wanna watch you squirm.]]

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'', The Monarch actually invokes this on Dean for ''tattling'' so Dean won't spill the beans about him breaking into Dr. Venture's lab just to screw around. And it ''works.''

* Invoked (in a more comedic context) in the episode of ''WesternAnimation/DrawnTogether'' that has Foxxy Love turning into a minstrel and being arrested by some CulturePolice. When she is thrown into the paddy wagon, she sees herself surrounded by a number of other politically-incorrect cartoon characters from the past, who tell her that they are all being taken to a prison facility. At the prison, after briefly being incarcerated, the caricatures are forced to board a conveyor belt that dumps them into a vat at its end, where they are [[CessationOfExistence permanently erased]]. The other housemates show up for Foxxy just in time and confront the BigBad in charge of the genocide plot (who, judging by his voice and headgear, is obviously [[spoiler: Mickey Mouse]]). Spanky Ham gives an impassioned speech, arguing that if [[spoiler: Mickey]] exterminates all the caricatures because of embarrassment at the racism they embody, he will be just like the Nazis, and thus racist himself. [[spoiler: Mickey]] briefly seems to [[HopeSpot consider this argument]], but then just laughs and starts the conveyor belt. Foxxy dies, but Captain Hero manages to reverse Earth's rotation to bring her back to life for a (sort of) happy ending.
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'': In "Speak No Evil", Fingers (a gorilla given human-level intelligence) has caught the poacher who captured and sold him and his mother, but is dissuaded from killing him when Batman points out that he's [[HumansAreBastards behaving like a human]].
%%* This happens in at least one episode of the original ''[[WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe]]''.
* ZigZaggingTrope in ''WesternAnimation/{{Jumanji}}'' where the villainous Van Pelt is an InvincibleVillain with ResurrectiveImmortality so simply "killing" him isn't an option in the first place, so the heroes instead devise a plan to trap him forever in a pit, which would potentially be a FateWorseThanDeath. The problem is that Van Pelt is not simply a person, but an actual creation of the game itself, so when their plan actually does work, Jumanji responds by literally transforming ''Peter'' into the next Van Pelt, and Peter Van Pelt gloats that if the other characters kill him, they will just transform into Van Pelt as well. The only way to get Peter back was to rescue Van Pelt from the prison they put him in, making it a bit of an intentional SpaceWhaleAesop.

* ''WesternAnimation/KidCosmic'': In the second episode, Rosa is about to squash Chuck underfoot. Papa G intervenes and tells Rosa not do do it.
-->'''Papa G:''' Heroes help, not hurt.

-->''(Gi gives up with a sigh and starts crying in his arms)''

* Actually [[LampshadeHanging discussed in-depth]] in ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''. Aang, a pacifist monk, agonizes about how he can stop main villain Ozai without killing him. When Aang consults with the avatars of his former lives on what to do, the show subverts this trope: as Chosen One, Aang's duty is to protect the world - if the only way to save countless lives and stop Ozai is to kill him, Aang must do it, even if it means sacrificing his own personal convictions. Even the previous airbender Avatar, who shared Aang's pacifist spiritual beliefs as an Air Nomad, told him that an Avatar has to place the good of the world above his own spiritual well-being, and if a threat to the world is so extreme that it's impossible to defeat non-lethally, it becomes his duty to kill.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' episode "For The Love Of Gargamel", Papa Smurf tells his little Smurfs that leaving Gargamel and Azrael in their [[TakenForGranite self-petrified state]] would make themselves no better than their enemies. It ends up becoming the justification for many a SaveTheVillain moment in the cartoon show, despite how {{ungrateful|Bastard}} Gargamel ends up being.

* Used in the ''WesternAnimation/DungeonsAndDragons'' episode "The Dragon's Graveyard", where Hank refuses to finish Venger on the grounds that if he did, "We'd be no better than you are."

'''Anakin:''' ''What?!'' He was gonna blow up the ship!ç