Blofeld Ploy

""I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say 'And here is the price for failure,' then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.""

- #45, Evil Overlord List

The hero is in a situation they cannot escape. The villain is holding a loaded gun. They put the gun to the hero's head, make like they're about to kill him or her, then shoot an underling who has annoyed them.

A variant can occur in which the person who is threatened is a major henchman, and the person who is killed is one of the rank and file.

Obvious, but always shocking.

Named after Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who did this on multiple occasions in the James Bond films- though, in point of fact, Blofeld would scare the random mook or equivalent and then kill the actual guilty party, or at least the one who appeared to be. So he either inverts his own trope, or just plays it intelligently.

See also Fake Kill Scare, Stab the Scorpion and Bait and Switch Gunshot.

Film
"Sanchez: I guess it's time to start cutting overhead."
 * James Bond
 * Blofeld does this twice in You Only Live Twice, and the second one is pretty funny, in a gallows humour kind-of-way.
 * In Thunderball, Blofeld electrocutes one of the henchmen sitting at his conference table for embezzling money from him, only after grilling another (and totally innocent) henchman for the reason why their drug trafficking ring had turned in such poor profits. Showing that it applies to things other than just failing to kill a "00" Agent.
 * From Russia with Love; Chess Grandmaster Kronsteen looks on smugly, confident that fellow underling Rosa Klebb is being held terminally accountable for their scheme's failure - only for the poison blade to change direction at the last moment. Klebb lives to scheme another day. Ironically Kronsteen was right -- his plan worked perfectly; it was the assassin picked by Rosa Klebb who stuffed it up. Of course only Bond was in a position to know that.
 * And then there's Licence to Kill. Sanchez guns down his financial advisor, Truman-Lodge, after Bond destroyed three of their four gasoline/crack cocaine tankers. Also part of a Villainous Breakdown. Then again, Lodge should have known better than to have pushed the Berserk Button of a murderous drug kingpin who was holding an Uzi at the time.


 * In The World Is Not Enough, Renard confronts Davidov, Elektra King's head of security, for Bond escaping the parahawk attack earlier that day. But when he says "Kill him", the gunman instead shoots Mikhail Arkov, a nuclear scientist, and Davidov is forced to take his place. (The two look nothing alike, however.)
 * In The Punisher film, John Travolta's character executes this very trope.
 * Subverted in the movie Mission Impossible 2, where Sean Ambrose, the villain, has his gun against what seems to be Ethan Hunt's head (Hunt is the hero). It is expected that he will kill McCloy, whom he is talking to. However, he instead shoots and kills Hunt.
 * In Mission Impossible 3,
 * Justified in Crimson Tide, where the submarine commander is trying to get the key to the nuclear launch control, but the Executive Officer has convinced Weps not to open the safe or give the captain the key. When the captain shows up, he puts his sidearm against Weps head, and tells him he will shoot him if he doesn't give him the key. It then occurs to the captain that he can't shoot Weps, he's the only one that knows the combination to the safe with the key. So he picks another sailor on the boat, puts his sidearm to the head of the sailor, and tells Weps that if he doesn't open the safe and give him the key in three seconds, he will shoot and kill the sailor.
 * Non-gun example from The Butterfly Effect: The protagonist is kissing his girlfriend in a movie theater and her overprotective, sadistic brother starts toward them, enraged. A bigger kid trips him before he gets there and he falls on his face. He slowly gets up, looking at the protagonist with an expression of fury... then turns and brutally beats the kid who tripped him. As security escorts him out, he turns and smiles at the protagonist. Brrr.
 * In the movie Mystery Men Casanova Frankenstein . Convinced me.
 * A variation of this occurs in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Towards the end of the film when everyone has arrived at the temple, Donovan looks like he's about to shoot Indy, but instead shoots Indy's father Henry Jones Sr, in a bid to motivate him to get the Holy Grail for him.
 * It's arguable Skeletor does this in the live-action Masters of the Universe film when his Quirky Miniboss Squad fails to get the Cosmic Key. Blade asks for a second chance, and Skeletor replies that isn't gonna happen, only to then instead kill Saurod. It's worth noting however that seconds before Skeletor attacks, Saurod starts drawing his gun, although it's difficult to miss. Possibly Skeletor intended to kill Blade only to notice Saurod's potentially hostile move, and killed him instead because of this.
 * A variation occurs in Prince Caspian. The Big Bad is upset with his Dragon, but he just wounds the Dragon, then forces the Dragon to kill the mooks.

Literature

 * A less fatal version happens in the book and movie Holes, in which the villain, Miss Walker, tells Caveman about her rattlesnake venom nail polish, which is "perfectly harmless... when it's dry." She raises her hand up to Caveman's head, then spins around and smacks Mister Sir, who was standing behind her.
 * A variant of the variant on this trope occurred in the Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Darksaber. Durga the Hutt, former Vigo of Black Sun, has his henchmen's chairs wired so that they can be electrocuted at any time. After accidentally punishing the wrong underling, he decides that it serves just as well as a warning as it would have been if the one who had actually been at fault had died.
 * We also learn in this book that Palpatine had a particularly sadistic variant of his own. When the first Death Star blew up, he had the chief engineer brought before him and had him brutally killed for the design flaw Luke exploited. But because he was too valuable to The Empire, he then had him resurrected as a clone (complete with memories of the death) and put him in charge of finishing the new Death Star....and everytime something went wrong with the construction process, regardless of whether he was really at fault or not, Palpatine would do it all over again, each time using a new method of slow and painful execution just to spice things up. The guy remembers Palpatine cackling like the madman he was every time he did it too.
 * In the first book of The Thrawn Trilogy, the Grand Admiral pulls a very interesting You Have Failed Me. A tractor beam operator was unable to capture Luke Skywalker, and tries to make excuses, blaming his immediate superior (both of which were Contest Winner Cameos). Thrawn turns and questions the ensign who trained him, and everyone knows someone's going to die. While reprimanding the ensign he has the tractor beam operator killed, then explains that the operator was executed for borderline insubordination, failure to adapt, and as a lesson in the difference between mere errors and worse mistakes.
 * There's then a Call Back to this in the third book, where a very similar situation happens, but this time - because the tractor beam operator took full responsibility, used his imagination, and tried an innovative solution, even though it didn't work - Thrawn instead promotes him and orders him to keep working on a way around the method Luke used to escape the tractor beam. Finally, in the Hand of Thrawn (set a decade later) another character indeed uses that method...and the Empire has a way to stop it.
 * In the Alex Rider book Eagle Strike, Damian Cray orders Yassen Gregorovich to kill Alex and Sabina, but Yassen refuses, saying he "does not kill children". Flustered, Cray snatches away the gun and shoots Yassen instead of Alex and Sabina.
 * Faith of the Fallen has an example where a military commander orders a witch to show the people how ruthless the Imperial Order is, presumably by burning alive some children. She orders the soldiers to burn alive the commander - to demonstrate the Order won't hesitate to kill anyone.

Live-Action TV
"Good morning everybody! This is a hold-up! I repeat, this is a hold-up! No funny business, or this will happen to you! [Shoots one of his own men] Get the money!"
 * Pretty much what happens with Gus and Victor on Breaking Bad. Walt and Jesse conspired to have Gus's meth cook Gale killed so they will be indispensable to his operation. Gus can't afford for his supply line to dry up while finding another meth cook...but he also can't let Walt and Jesse think he's soft. Gus proceeds to get a box cutter leaving Walt and Jesse nervous they were about to die but Gus but slits his henchman Victor's throat and drops the bloody corpse right in front of them as a warning not to defy him again.
 * Parodied in Season 4 of The Kids in The Hall, in a skit called "Things To Do", where a bank robber ends up shooting all of his henchmen as examples.


 * In Reilly, Ace of Spies, Reilly is lured to a crypt in London by Zaharov, a man running a private spy ring. A grave is being dug by Redgrave the man who earlier over-did an interrogation of Reilly's prostitute girlfriend and killed her. Zaharov is waiting with a loaded revolver, gets Reilly over to a corner and has him turn his back- then kills Redgrave.
 * 24 Series 3 -- Nina puts a gun to the captive Jack's head and then shoots her bodyguard.
 * And again in season 7, after Jack thinks he's been double-crossed and takes a Mook hostage. After being let go, the Mook demands that his boss kill Jack--and he kills the Mook instead.
 * An unusual twist on this in Angel, where it happens to a villain, on one of the few occasions he works with Angel.
 * In the Doctor Who serial "The Pirate Planet", the Captain berates his main Butt Monkey of an underling for not having figured out the Negative Space Wedgie from earlier in the episode. "When someone fails me," he declares, "someone DIES!" With that, his mechanical bird thingy arises... and kills a different underling. He then assigns the same task to the same underling, violating the Evil Overlord List again.
 * Possibly a subversion, because it is later revealed that
 * Also, the Captain actually likes Mister Fibully (the first underling, and general dogsbody and whipping boy), he is furious when Mister Fibully is killed and vows to avenge him, long set plans be damned.
 * In True Blood, after finding out that his werewolf Mooks drank Bill Compton's blood, the vampire king of Mississippi doesn't shoot his dragon, but one of said lesser mooks.
 * In True Blood, after finding out that his werewolf Mooks drank Bill Compton's blood, the vampire king of Mississippi doesn't shoot his dragon, but one of said lesser mooks.

Videogames
"Mikhail: You think it's okay to kill one of my employees? Niko: If he's an asshole, yes. (Mikhail, who has been pointing a gun at Niko, suddenly turns and shoots an employee who has angered him.)
 * This is how you're introduced to Mikhail in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Mikhail: I agree!"

""The penalty for failure is death... but the failure was Calo's, not yours. You may rise.""
 * Something similar to this trope happens in the opening of Brutal Legend. Eddie's blood has somehow just summoned a giant Metal (in both the musical and materials sense) demon, which appears about to impale him with one of its giant fingers. The game stops and asks if you want to show gore or not. It instead then turns and screams at three members of the Metal Boy Band he acts as the roadie for, causing their heads to fall off (unless you selected no gore, then they just faint), before turning on the one remaining member and killing him too.
 * Subverted in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, when Admiral Kareth tells Darth Malak that the assassin he sent after the player characters' party was defeated.


 * In Fallout: New Vegas, the first time you enter the Silver Rush, Gloria Van Graff is arguing with a customer who decided he wants to renegotiate a deal they made earlier; he received the weapons as agreed and they were in good condition as agreed, but now he wants to pay less after all. Gloria refuses and has one of her own goons to prove a point.

Web Originals
"Freeza: Minion 43, would you come in here for a second? I need an example. Minion 43: Private Namol reporting! An example of what, Lord FreezAAAH!
 * Lampshaded in Dragon Ball Z Abridged by Frieza while scolding Zarbon.

Freeza: You see that, Zarbon? That's you if Vegeta is not in front of me in the next 10 minutes. Bye."

Western Animation

 * In the first season finale of Transformers Animated, Megatron has his fusion cannon pointed at Optimus Prime and declares he's going to destroy the one who tried to kill him. Then suddenly  However, this is much more sensible than usual, as   had tried to kill him, and Megatron probably would have killed the Autobots (who he considered a much lesser threat) next if they hadn't taken the opportunity to run away.
 * Stroker and Hoop had an excellent parody in the Ninja Worrier episode. By the time they have reached the villain of the episode, leader of a clan of assassins, he has already killed basically all of his subordinates individually for unrelated failures. This leaves the final battle somewhat anti-climactic.
 * In the Transformers Prime episode "Deus Ex Machina", when Knock-Out tries to claim credit for retrieving the Energon Harvester, Starscream points it at him threateningly -- and then kills a random Vehicon standing behind him.