Kick the Dog/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • MacGyver was romanced by a female assassin. How were we told that she wasn't going to be charmed by his goodness and turn good? She killed a dog.
  • Likewise, the charming suitor of a friend of the family on 7th Heaven was revealed to be a wife beater after he threatened to kill a dog.
  • In the pilot of the teen drama Hidden Palms, Cliff is revealed as being unhinged when he is shown kicking a pug.
  • In the miniseries which launched the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, Caprica Six's villainy is announced when she kills a baby seconds into her first onscreen appearance. However, in a move typical of the series' tendency to favour moral complexity over black and white morality, on her reintroduction during the second season, Caprica develops into a much more layered and sympathetic character. Despite her having not only kicked the dog but committed genocide. On the third hand, it was often theorized that Caprica had killed the baby out of either dispassionate curiosity, or even a strange desire to save the baby from its inevitable death in a nuclear holocaust.
    • In the DVD commentary, it was revealed that the scene was a strong candidate for being cut in editing -- however, the actress, Tricia Helfer, had such a strong expression of ambiguous guilt and grief walking away from the site of the killing that it was kept.
    • A lot of fans thought that Tom Zarek ordering the execution of the entire Quorum of Twelve during The Mutiny fit this trope, even though his ruthless action makes sense in a coup where you have to seize power first and worry about how it looks afterwards. The problem was while Zarek had been accused of any number of nefarious deeds, most famously blowing up a government building, the audience had never actually seen him commit an atrocity until that point.
    • Played literally and also subverted in the spin-off series, Caprica. Graystone, suspecting (correctly) that the virtual equivalent of his dead daughter is currently inhabiting his giant killer robot, gives her a gun and orders her to shoot the family dog in order to prove it. Subverted in that the gun was loaded with blanks, and it turns out she could tell, but since he didn't know she could tell, this is enough to convince him that the robot is not his daughter. (Even though it kind of is.)
  • On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Giles' books contain an anecdote about Angelus nailing a puppy to the wall. Buffy finds such a story shocking enough that she refuses to let Giles tell her any details, saying, "I don't have a puppy. So skip it!"
    • Also, it was on Valentine's Day.
    • The very next episode, Angelus kills Willow's pet fish as part of his campaign of terror on the Scoobies.
    • Angel, Drusilla, and Spike then spend several episodes announcing that they are feeding on puppies and babies For the Evulz. Mostly Offstage Villainy, but Drusilla did carry around a puppy for the express purpose of feeding on it later.
    • Later, after much Badass Decay, a defanged Spike keeps his hand in the evil game by dealing black market kittens to demons.
    • In Season Three, the Mayor is Affably Evil (he likes the Boy Scouts, thinks children are the future, and gives his best girl a flower print dress because she should feel pretty). It's easy to like the guy. When he sees his girl in a coma, he gets upset and the audience connects with him even more. Then he tries to smother an unconscious Buffy. Not cool.
      • This later gets an Ironic Echo in Angel, where Wes betrays Angel and accidentally gets Angel's son taken by his enemy and then to a hell dimension, and Wes gets his throat cut. In the hospital, Angel tries to do the same thing to Wes, except with a pillow instead.
    • Willow in season 6 episode "Tabula Rasa" thinks it's a great idea to brainwash her girlfriend and friends to forget all the trouble's they've had, most notably the ones she's personally caused by being too dependent on magic to solve her problems. Yeah, that ought to do it.
    • A better example of Willow kicking the dog is during her time as Dark Willow. OK, so tracking down and killing Warren, the man who murdered her girlfriend, is almost understandable. However, she kicks the dog when she decides to hunt down and kill Jonathan and Andrew, two Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains who were working with Warren, but had no idea how evil he was, and certainly had no part in Tara's death (being in jail at the time).
    • Warren was seen as a Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain just the same as Jonathan and Andrew right up until the moment he murders his ex-girlfriend after trying to basically rape her. This is also his Moral Event Horizon even before what he did to Tara.
  • iCarly: During the iMeet Fred episode, Sam bashed Freddie with a tennis racquet so hard it broke, then threw him out of a treehouse. Many people identify that episode as the moment that Sam went too far. Some people went so far as to stop watching the show completely after that.
  • In one episode of Hustle, the crew are conning a woman seeking vengeance on her ex-husband. One of the reasons they take his side is that she killed his dog.
  • Agent Dobson's hitting of an already-unconscious Shepherd Book in the Firefly pilot was a very intentional Kick the Dog moment (and is lampshaded as such in the commentary track), designed to make Mal gunning him down without a second thought as he heads back on board later go down easier with the audience.
    • Soon fortified when he threatened to shoot Kaylee in the throat, after already almost killing her once by accident.
    • Not to mention that he spends the entire scene before Mal takes him down pointing a gun at the head of a traumatized, terrified River, who's on the verge of tears the whole time. And Jayne indicates that Dobson knew what the Alliance had done to River, and was still intending to bring her back to the Academy so they could keep experimenting on her. So yeah, Dobson. Good luck on getting those sympathy points, man.
    • Jubal Early from "Objects in Space" very quickly goes from witty Badass Bounty Hunter to unpleasant bastard right around the time he ties up and threatens to rape Kaylee.
  • In an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Hercules goes to the underworld where he briefly unites with his wife and children who were murdered by Hera. The family dog is there too. As Kevin Sorbo says in the commentary "You can tell she's evil. She killed my dog too!"
  • The minor character of Devo Damars from the 1991 Beverly Hills, 90210 episode "Ashes To Ashes". (Quote from Television Without Pity Mondos Extra by reviewer Cleophus Wayne: Next is the slightly sad spectacle of Devo wearing a loud dress shirt and holding flowers, yogurt, and a bag of tamales while shooing away a small dog that continues to nip at his ankles. It's quite the empowering scenario for any young black man, I must say. Two of Beverly Hills' finest slowly pull up in their patrol car. "Don't you like animals?" they ask.) Which is apparently enough to get him labeled a troublemaker by the cops, because it ends up with him getting arrested for walking around without a car (gasp!) and not knowing his girlfriend's home address.
  • Played for laughs in the pilot episode of New Tricks; DS Sandra Pullman -- a central protagonist of the series, and a decent if uptight police officer -- is forced to shoot a vicious dog that is attacking her during a raid on a triad gang's headquarters. Although the shooting was reasonable and justified given that it was attacking her, the resulting public outcry over the incident completely derails her career and makes her a laughing stock, resulting in her 'promotion' to the head of the UCOS team. To make matters worse, the incident also kick-started a chain reaction which led to some poor kidnap victim jumping out of a window blindfolded in the process... which everyone ignores, because they're too busy being outraged about the dog.
  • If it wasn't any clear after just the first few minutes of Damages, Patricia "Patty" Hewes soon solidifies her reputation as a magnificent bitch by orchestrating this trope as part of The Plan.
  • In 24, Drazen uses a hostage to get Jack to back down, and then shoots the hostage, either just for the fun of it or to have one less person to keep up with.
  • In the fourth season of the HBO series The Wire, Marlo Stanfield brazenly walks into a convenience store and steals several small items in full view of a security guard. The guard follows him outside and asks why he would do something so foolish, leading Marlo to deliver one of his most memorable lines ("You want it to be one way...but it's the other way"). He then has the guard (who took the job to support his family) murdered for questioning Marlo's actions. Later on in the fifth season, he gains the trust of "Proposition" Joe Stewart, a long-time player in the Baltimore drug trade, and supposedly makes arrangements to get him out of the country to lay low. Joe shows Marlo around his house, commenting on the history of the city. Then, Marlo reveals that he never was going to get him out of the States, and that Joe's nephew sold him out. He then has his enforcer, Chris, execute Joe while he stands watching the entire act.
  • The writers behind Mad Men seem to be engaged in a perpetual puppy punting contest. In Season One alone, the charming and unnervingly likable Don Draper brutally humiliates Sterling by sabotaging his meeting with the Nixon campaign in spectacular fashion. This, of course, only comes off as a prank compared to when Don drives his loving younger brother to suicide by forcing him to accept a bribe to stay out of Draper's life. And all of this is utterly blown out of the water by Joan's absolutely brutal subversion of the Romantic Two-Girl Friendship. Not only does she brush off her roommate's heart-wrenching confession with "you've had a hard day," she proceeds to bang a guy right in front of her. Now that's pretty much worth a field goal right there.
    • A notable moment involving a literal dog has the seemingly alcoholic Duck Phillips abandoning his dog to get his drink on in peace. Chauncey, we hardly knew ya.
  • Betty from Ugly Betty literally kicks a puppy in a daydream she has when she's imagining she's Wilhelmina, the shows resident dog kicker.
  • Done literally in this commercial. The dog did deserve it though.
  • Farscape. In "That Old Black Magic" Crais receives a direct order from Peacekeeper High Command to end his pursuit of John Crichton and return to base. His second-in-command Lt. Teeg destroys the message and assures him that no one else knows about it. Crais repays this loyalty by breaking her neck to ensure that no one ever will.
    • Scorpius gets one late in the second season, when he has Braca beat the crap out of Natira's assistant for wasting his time.
  • In Malcolm in the Middle, Reese has a phenomenally evil moment in "Evacuation" - he barters his way up from having the only plastic cups in the makeshift shelter to, among others, taking a man's watch in exchange for five blankets; giving an old, disabled man a blanket in exchange for his scooter and, eventually, having two diabetics bidding against one another for insulin. INSULIN.
  • Played fairly literally in the season finale of True Blood, where Drew Marshall the real name of Rene, who's committed all the murders of the women kicks Sam, who's in his dog form.
    • No love for the scene where Bill offers to shake hands with his rival Eric, then handcuffs him with silver and pushes him into concrete? And then orders someone to kill his Morality Pet and best friend Pam, in his hearing? So he'll know - and won't be able to stop it - and then he'll feel it... God damn it, Bill, you're supposed to be a good guy.
  • Heroes: In season 3, Big Bad Arthur Petrelli, a Smug Snake for the ages, is basically the Anthropomorphic Personification of dog kicking. Without any other characterization to get in the way, he can truly embody it on this plane. Let's take a look:
    • Psychically paralyzes his wife.
    • Kills off the most consistently entertaining character.
    • Gives his son a hug just to steal his god-like powers
    • Keeps threatening to re-cripple Daphne.
    • Throws Hiro off a roof.
    • Decapitates someone who was being helpful (this didn't sting too much because the other dude didn't have much characterization, it happened off-screen, and he didn't use his bare hands - I guess it would have been too interesting to show him with blood all over his suit).
    • Tells a warlord to kill his other son (who he tried to kill in the past, too).
    • Maintains only one tone of voice throughout...and unfortunately, it's not that of a Large Ham
  • Several characters on Lost have fulfilled this trope:
    • Benjamin Linus has several dog-kicking moments in season 3, in order to build him up as an unsympathetic villain before revealing he is a more complex character. This is best epitimized when Ben shakes a bunny with a pacemaker to death, but later reveals the bunny never had one to begin with.
    • Martin Keamy takes Ben's "daughter" Alex hostage in order to coax him out and into imprisonment. Ben tries to call his bluff by saying she means nothing to him. Keamy then emotionlessly shoots her in the head and walks off.
    • Phil, an annoying Mauve Shirt DHARMA Initiative security person, is present while Radzinsky and Horace Goodspeed interrogate Sawyer as to the whereabouts of Kate. When Sawyer won't talk, Phil says he knows a solution, promptly punching Sawyer's girlfriend Juliet in the face. Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse confirmed this scene was meant to be a kick the dog moment for Phil, and combined with Sawyer's promise to kill Phil for his action, all but confirms Phil will meet an untimely demise.
      • Which he does.
  • At the end of the Legend of the Seeker episode "Fever," Darken Rahl has a kill the cat moment, a cat he had been cuddling just a second before, after getting a piece of particularly bad news. Bad Darken Rahl!
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation "Datalore", Lore, after changing clothes with Data and leaving him unconscious, then kicks him in the head, showing the viewers just how much a bad guy Data's Evil Twin was.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise probably wins for the most unnecessary instance of this trope. In the season 3 finale, long after it's established that the Xindi-Reptilians are quite evil, three of them open the episode by dining on live mice to celebrate their perceived victory. Presumably there was supposed to be some kind of subtext regarding their relationship with mammals, but it just comes off as cartoonish.
  • In the Doctor Who episode "Utopia," the newly awakened Master immediately demonstrates his competence as a villain by shutting his enemies out of the control centre and setting the Futurekind on them. However, his Kick the Dog moment comes when his longtime loyal assistant threatens to stop him with a gun. He turns on her with an exposed electric cable with the chilling remark, "Oh ... now I can say I was provoked." His turning on her particularly establishes his villainy, because before this it seemed possible that he had some affection for her: not killing her as soon as he awakened is something of a Pet the Dog moment coming from him. Once he has actually killed her (and it was not self-defence; she was backing away from him because she was clearly unwilling to use the gun), we know he's evil.
    • And, amazingly, the episode "The Waters of Mars" dares to do this to the much-beloved Tenth Doctor himself. The Doctor's declaration of himself as the "Time Lord victorious" who can choose who deserves to live or die is a conscious effort to prepare viewers for the fact that the Doctor's approaching regeneration is neccesary and timely. The Doctor is even called on it by the very woman he is saving, and her subsequent suicide pulls him up sharply (although the episode ends on an ambiguous note, so we're not sure if he accepted or ignored this revelation).
    • For a literal Kick the Dog moment, see "Meglos", where the mercenary kicks K-9. According to the commentary, the actor, who was best known for playing hammy villains, added this business himself because he figured the fans would be expecting it.
    • The Daleks kick dogs (or worse) left, right and center every time they appear. Just one example: In "Victory of the Daleks", they target WWII London with a pulse that causes all the lights in the city to turn on, making them a massive target for the incoming Nazi bombers.
  • The PM in Torchwood: Children of Earth kicks the dog thrice. In Day Four, just after everyone in Thames House has died, he turns to Lois Habiba, who is partly and wholly unwillingly responsible for this and asks: "Happy now?". Later, in Day Five, he orders Frobisher to turn over his own children to the 456 because it would help his story that they were duped by the aliens rather than knowingly sending their children to a Fate Worse Than Death And then, right at the end, he expresses relief when learning that at least he will be able to blame the Americans for everything that went wrong, showing far more concern for his career than for all the people who died, and all those who could have died.
  • Connor Temple of Primeval thought he'd got a stroke of good fortune when he met hot geek Caroline Steel...that is of course until she stuck the team mascot, an adorable lizard by the name of Rex, in the refrigerator attempting to freeze him to death and exposing herself to everyone (except naive Connor) as a stone-cold bitch.
  • After veering back and forth for three seasons of Arrested Development, George and Lucille Bluth cement themselves as unlikable people after learning that a woman Michael is on the verge of marrying is both mentally retarded and incredibly wealthy; they opt to conceal these facts from Michael and speed the wedding along, in the hopes that they can exploit her in order to restore their own fortune. This is only topped in the Series Finale when Lucille reveals that they only adopted Lindsey as a gesture of spite towards Stan Sitwell. She freely admits that they never actully wanted Lindsey, and kept her adoption a secret (raising her as Michael's twin) to preserve their own image. This fact puts Lucille's psychological abuse of Lindsey in a much darker light.
    • To be fair Lucille says she loves Lindsey as much her biological children and in particular loves Lindsay more than her firstborn GOB. George himself was quite protective of Lindsey as shown when he payed off guys in prison not to hit on his daughter when she visited.
  • Played for laughs in "The Body Politic," an episode of the Dawn French anthology series Murder Most Horrid. French's character literally kicks several dogs while disposing of a body.
  • In one episode of Merlin, Arthur went to go get a flower to cure Merlin against his father's orders. As soon as he came back, his own father imprisoned him for disobeying orders. Arthur didn't care if he stayed in prison for days or weeks, as long as the flower got to Merlin. He even begged his father to at least deliver the flower. Uther simply crushed the flower in front of Arthur, told him to get another servant and dropped the flower just out of Arthur's reach.
  • Quite a few villains do this in Star Trek: The Original Series. In the episode that Khan first appeared, he blackmailed the crew to join him by forcing them to watch Kirk being suffocated in the decompression chamber.
    • In the same episode, one of Khan's henchmen slapped Uhura when she defiantly glared at him and would have done it again on two other occasions if someone hadn't interrupted him.
    • "Turnabout Intruder". Dr Janice Lester, while in Kirk's body, hit Kirk, who was in her weakened body at the time, when Kirk had the misfortune of entering a room with her in it while trying to warn Spock and Mc Coy about her.
    • In "The Empath", the Vians tortured Kirk and Mc Coy to provoke a reaction out of the sweet empath Gem, just to see if her species was worth being saved.
    • In "Plato's Stepchildren", the Platonians entertained themselves by using their psychic powers to force Kirk and Spock into some humilating situations. In one instance, they had Kirk lying helplessly on the ground, with Spock's feet about to step on his face. Later on, they would bring in Uhura and Chapel and force them to kiss Kirk and Spock. They even made Kirk and Spock hit them.
  • Quite a few patients on All Creatures Great and Small are victims of abuse or neglect. James puts it best when talking about a cat that's been brought in half dead.

James: Looks like he could have been mauled. Or badly kicked.
Tristan: Some kick.
James: Some people.

  • In the 1795 flashback of Dark Shadows, Victoria Winters, sent back in time from the present, is convicted of witchcraft, mostly from her apperiance in the past in modern clothing and her inability to keep quiet about future events (in a vain attempt to keep them from happening), but the case against her is helped by the REAL witch, Angelique, even though by that point she was "dead" (i.e. Invincable) and she was no longer in danger of being exposed, and Vicky wasn't a loved one of Barnabas, so it wouldn't have helped her vendetta in any way. This is augmented at the end of the flashback, when Vicky is sent back to the present and the governess she switched places with is sent back to die in her place. The present day Barnabas recognizes the other governess, implying that she suffered the exact same fate, and didn't have any of Vicky's disadvantages.
  • Iljimae: The son of China's convoy in Korea decided to get drunk and go horse riding, speeding through the public market like an obstacle course. One "obstacle" he tries to clear is a little girl, Yang-sun, Yong's self-proclaimed "wife". He doesn't clear it. She doesn't make it.
  • In an episode of the Australian show Good News Week, a rather literal example occurs, and is Lampshaded. After solving a puzzle involving a toy dog, a guest drop kicks it into the distance, saying that "Now the audience is going to hate me."
  • On Scrubs: during the episode when Dr. Cox's old high school friend comes to town, they get into a pissing contest off the roof of the hospital, ending when the his friend hits the dog they were aiming for. This is a case of pissing on the dog.

Dr. Cox: You know, I see that dog around the neighborhood. I think we killed its spirit.

  • Done rather hideously in the "Boston Legal" season 3 episode 'The Good Lawyer', when series protagonist Alan Shore uses his knowledge of his friend Jerry Espenson's Asperger's Syndrome to derail Jerry's hitherto effective defense, and shatter his confidence. Apparently done as part of season 3's overarching attempt to show that Shore's repeated statements that, despite all appearances, he was actually not a very good person were in fact true, and not merely false humility.
  • In Japanese drama Shokojo Sera (a remake of A Little Princess), the chef and his wife treat Seira and Kaito (the Expy for Becky) quite cruelly, driving Seira to exhaustion many times after she had found out her father had died, giving her no sympathy. In their first appearance, they laughed and mocked Kaito's dream to enter high school, telling him it would be better to give up. They would continue this for the rest of the series though they do get their punishment in the end.
  • On The Colbert Report, Stephen poses as "an evil Union Goon" to prove that labor unions are up to no good. He showcases his evilness by putting an adorable puppy into a (fake) woodchipper.
  • In one early A Team story, a neighbourhood besieged by gangsters suffers a mass attack complete with one gangster viciously beating a shoeshine boy for a simple mistake at that very moment. the A-Teamers consider this so despicable that the few bucks, all the shoeshine boy had to offer for their services, was considered sufficient. Furthermore, at the end, BA Baracus found the goon who hit the kid and said something like "Ok sucker, Let's see how you like it!" before giving the scum the pummeling he deserves.
  • Tales of the Gold Monkey: A common way to show that this week's villain was a really nasty guy, would be to have him kick Jack, the one eyed dog.
  • Horatio Hornblower mini-series introduces the primary antagonist of the first episode with a quick succession of such moments. In the span of his first five minutes onscreen, Jack Simpson declares himself in command of the midshipmen's berth, then steals food off Horatio's plate before ordering him to dance for no apparent reason other than his own sadistic amusement. He then punishes Horatio for questioning his dominance by getting another midshipman to wake him every half-hour during the night. There's a reason fans generally refer to the span of time spent with Simpson as "The Reign of Terror."
  • Intentionally invoked by Morgan in Chuck when he poses as a crime lord. To impress upon the other villains in the room just how evil he is supposed to be, he fakes a conversation on his cell phone in which he orders his subordinate to "Shoot the puppy!"
  • Happens occasionally on Criminal Minds, usually to more sympathetic unsubs, likely to dissuade the audience from rooting for them.
    • One of the most understandable unsubs on the show was Owen Porter from "Elephant's Memory," a high school student to whom it seemed like everyone else had ganged up to make his and his girlfriend's lives Hell, and he thus decided to embark on Who's Laughing Now?. However, he crosses the line when he stabs a little old man unrelated to his revenge to death in order to avoid being discovered.
    • Megan Kane from "Pleasure Is My Business" poses as a call girl to kill Corrupt Corporate Executives who have cheated their ex-wives and children out of support money as her father did to her. When the BAU disrupts her spree, she devolves and shoots a jolly executive who had no children and who had always been faithful to his wife.
    • In "The Thirteenth Step," Raymond Donovan and Sydney Manning are newlyweds who go on a massive killing spree with the ultimate aim of getting back at their Abusive Parents, and once it comes out exactly how abusive the parents were, it't hard not to root for them, or at least find them cool. Then it's revealed that Syd poisoned Ray's ex so that she could have him, and just in case you thought Ray was getting off easy, he threatens to blow the head off Syd's ten-year-old sister if his demands aren't met.
  • Dark Angel gets an almost literal version near the end of the second season. Joshua, who is a half-man half-dog transgenic hybrid, finally makes a friend outside his usual circle, a beautiful blind girl named Annie. Problems arise and Joshua takes refuge with Annie in the sewers. Later Annie agrees to stay behind and tell the authorities that she escaped, but Big Bad Ames White is down there, who decides to break her neck and frame Joshua, driving him to a Heroic BSOD.
  • On Glee Sebastian Smythe got two in one episode, first going on a racist tirade against Santana and then nearly blinding Blaine with a rock salt slushee.
  • On Sherlock, John Watson got one in the last episode of Series 2, after Sherlock is taken for questioning, Sally Donovan gloats about taking in John's best friend, and the chief inspector insults Sherlock in front of John - in his own home. Needless to say, many fans wanted to punch both characters in the face - luckily John himself took care of one of them.
  • In the pilot episode of Magic City it is quickly established that the union organizers are not good guys. They kill a dog that belongs to Ike's wife in order to intimidate Ike into allowing unions in his hotel.
    • Later we are introduced to the gangster Benny "The Butcher". He is quickly shown to have a Hair-Trigger Temper and this is cemented when he shoots one of his guard dogs because it is barking loudly while he is on the phone. He does so while his new wife is playing with the dog and she is splattered with its blood and brains.
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