Kick Them While They Are Down/Playing With

Basic Trope: Attacking a helpless foe shows how evil you are.
 * Straight: Jack keeps on hitting and kicking Tom while Tom can't strike back.
 * Exaggerated: Jack breaks into the hospital to kill all the wounded.
 * No Holds Barred Beatdown
 * Downplayed: After Tom is down and can't fight back, Jack... sticks a needle in him.
 * Jack hits Tom in the process of getting up.
 * Justified: Jack is sadistic and enjoys the feeling of tormenting those who are helpless.
 * Jack caught Tom trying to slaughter innocents and beat him so badly that, in his rage, Jack doesn't realize that Tom can't fight back anymore.
 * Tom is Made of Iron and/or is a Combat Pragmatist who has pulled I Surrender Suckers or Playing Possum before. Jack is Dangerously Genre Savvy enough to know that Once Is Not Enough.
 * Inverted: Being rendered helpless triggers Tom's bomb to kill Jack.
 * Alternatively, Jack barely even seems to spare Tom a thought now that he's down, and goes after whoever's next. Keep it businesslike.
 * Subverted: Tom's ability to regenerate means he's not out of the fight until dead.
 * Double Subverted: But Jack neither knew nor cared about that.
 * Or Jack made it up to justifying attacking him.
 * Parodied: Jack keeps on shooting Tom with paintballs even though he "incapacitated" him. Everyone else decries this as foul play.
 * Deconstructed: I Surrender Suckers means this risks the lives of your own comrades.
 * The hero Jack nobly refuses to finish off the wounded, but doesn't take them prisoner; his foes end up dying slowly and painfully from dehydration, hunger, and animal attacks.
 * Reconstructed: But adhering to it persuades the civilians that you are reliable, and they help you and your men.
 * He had sent help, but the other villains had attacked the help, making rescue impossible.
 * Zig Zagged: ???
 * Averted: Jack ignores Tom once he is incapacitated, as he longer poses a threat.
 * Enforced: "The only real way to tell Jack apart from Tom is that Jack will attack a helpless person and Tom won't."
 * Lampshaded: "Screw honor, I want him dead."
 * Invoked: "If I don't finish him now, he'll just get better."
 * Defied: Jack's lair is equipped with padded safety restraints which come down on a helpless person and shield him/her from further harm.
 * Discussed: "You can't trust Jack. He kicks his foes while they're down."
 * Conversed: He's wearing a black hat, of course he's going to kick -- there you go, he kicked him while he was down.

You wouldn't go back to the main entry while I'm down, would you?

-KICK-

URK!