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Conspicuously Public Assassination: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''Ronnie Kray, one of the two Kray Twins who basically run organized crime in London, commits the murder he'll finally be sent away for when he walks into the Blind Beggar pub and shoots George Cornell in the head... Kray would manage to get away with this for three years by virtue of the fact that nobody was actually stupid enough to testify against a man who walked into pubs and shot people dead, this being [[Trigger Happy|a sort of tautological behavior]].''|[http://tardiseruditorum.blogspot.com/2011/03/ready-to-outsit-eternity-ark.html Philip Sandifer]}}
So there's the Evil Overlord sitting on his throne, when a figure in black suddenly appears looking like Death himself. He strikes a fatal blow and the crowd is so shocked (and/or the victim so [[
If the Target employs [[Swiss Cheese Security]], they deserve it.
There is some [[Truth in Television]] here, as oftentimes the assassin is intended to be caught or killed. This is called a "lost" assassination and is popular among terrorist groups, the insane, and groups manipulating the insane for plausible deniability.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Used in the final episode of ''[[Code Geass]]'', in which {{spoiler|Suzaku dressed as Zero}} kills {{spoiler|Emperor Lelouch}}. In this case, it makes a lot of sense why everything occurs so neatly, as {{spoiler|[[Genre Savvy]] Lelouch planned his death to ensure a better world, and deliberately made himself the most stereotypical, [[Large Ham|over the top]] [[Evil Overlord]] he could be, just so he could unite the world in their ''hatred'' of him}}.
* Some of the hits the ladies make in ''[[Noir (anime)|Noir]]'' are like this. One example was at a party; Kirika hurls a fork across the room into the neck (and apparently the spine) of a military target. They ''do'' use stealth in the sense of "nobody suspects the flower girls", but... really. Another hit involved taking out the target while they were still in police custody, but Chloe got to them first. Actually, it seems the most dangerous hits tended to be the ones where they ''tried'' to be sneaky, because this allowed for the would-be ambushees to ambush them.
** At one point Mireille gets the drop on one of the leading members of the [[Ancient Conspiracy]] simply by waltzing into his office and shooting the guards.
***
** [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Madlax]]'' gets away with assassinating the head of the military during a speech by sniping him from farther away than his security thought possible. (Apparently they'd never heard of [[w:Carlos Hathcock|Carlos Hathcock]].) The elite [[Cold Sniper]] assisting with the security arrangements immediately figures out what happened, but she isn't able to stop Madlax before she gets away.
* In ''[[Naruto]]'', assassinations seem to be composed mostly of grand, elaborate battles with huge elemental attacks that shred the landscape and are visible from several kilometers away. Appropriate for the show that practically ''defines'' [[Highly-Visible Ninja]].
** In hindsight, this explains why a attack described as sounding like a thousand birds and is a glowing ball of lightning was developed as an assassination attack. In part one, it seemed silly. Compared to part two? Subtle.
** Justified, in part, in that a lot of the victims will be [[Glass Cannon]] types, or more durable than that, who are perfectly capable of wielding that much
** To be fair, very few actual assassination attempts happen on-screen, and practically all the successful ones happen off. Zabuza has to defeat Kakashi and co. to kill the relatively harmless bridge builder; Orochimaru assassinated the Third Hokage in the middle of a massive invasion, but the invasion was the real plan anyway, and he wanted to humiliate his old mentor in battle; Sai was going to kill Sasuke in his sleep but decided to spare him (and Sasuke was awake anyway); Sasuke tries to kill Orochimaru {{spoiler|and succeeds}} when he is seriously ill and nearly on his death bed, and still has a dangerous fight on his hands; Jiraiya has no idea what Pain looks like and is intercepted by him first....and so on. On the dlip-side, Sai is carrying around a handbook of a whole list of people he has managed to kill, and is implied to have been subtle about it (at the very least, nobody knew he was the killer).
* In ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]'', an assassin knows about the Jackal quote, so he simply decides not to worry about escaping. He smuggles a rifle into the country as a decoy, and his ''actual'' plan is to infiltrate the crowd and run up to his target with a combat knife and flower bouquet full of explosives. Fortunately, the heroes are [[Badass]] enough to figure it out [[Just in Time]] and stop him.
* [[Playing with a Trope|Played with]] in ''[[Princess Principal]]: Crown Handler'', where the second movie begins with the third in line to the throne being shot during a public procession. It turned out to be [[Only a Flesh Wound]]... {{spoiler|and to have been staged}}.
== [[
* In ''[[Fables]]'', Boy Blue assassinates {{spoiler|The Adversary}} in front of hundreds of witnesses. The fact that memory altering charms exist and that {{spoiler|the Adversary is a giant, easily fixed puppet}} make this a slightly less than successful murder.
** They actually went for the far simpler [[Kill All The Witnesses]] approach.
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== [[Film]] ==
* Although the general setup is a ''[[The Manchurian Candidate (novel)|The Manchurian Candidate]]''-style sniping, {{spoiler|Colonel West}}'s attempt in ''[[Star Trek VI]]'' counts due to using a [[Energy Weapons|phaser]] with a bright blue beam. Possibly [[Justified Trope|justified]] because {{spoiler|he is disguised as a Klingon in order to incite war, and therefore ''must'' be seen for the plan to work}}.
* ''[[Road to Perdition]]''. The man Tom Hanks is after is under the protection of the Chicago mob, so he steals a pile of their money, agreeing to return it if they let him have his revenge. We then see Tom Hanks entering a Chicago hotel, walking past mob guards on all floors who make no attempt to stop him, entering a room where he casually shoots dead his target, then walking out again.
* Subverted in ''[[Terminator (franchise)|The Terminator]]''. The T-800 Model 101 decimates a local police station and in the sequel, the local police get some pictures of the T-800 and immediately recognize that this is the same suspect that destroyed the police station in The Terminator.
{{quote|
"What, do you come off an assembly line?"
"Exactly." }}
* [[Gangs of New York]] Vallon attempts one of these on Bill the Butcher. Some of his exposition monologue earlier in the film even hangs a lampshade on it, saying "When you kill a king, you don't use a knife in the dark... you do it where the whole court can watch him die." It doesn't go so well...
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* ''[[The President's Analyst|The Presidents Analyst]]'' opens with a US spy knifing an Albanian double agent and dumping the body into a garment cart on a busy sidewalk on New York's 7th Avenue - note this is filmed ''on location'' and nobody gives it a second glance!
** [[Completely Missing the Point|Well yeah. They saw the cameras.]]
* Narrowly averted in the climactic scene of ''The Emperor and the Assassin''. The eponymous assassin chases the eponymous emperor Qin up and down his throne room, dagger in hand, in front of hundreds of courtiers. Emperor Qin finally fights off and kills the assassin all by himself after minutes of this, and then turns on his courtiers, supposedly his loyal supporters, and says "None of you did anything." It was one of the most brutally effective [[Despair Event Horizon|DespairEventHorizons]] ever filmed, as he realizes that he is now the sole ruler of all China, but that [[
== [[Literature]] ==
* Mario Greymist's assassination of [[The Emperor]] in Steven Brust's [[Dragaera]] book ''Five Hundred Years After''. That character definitely has a link with death- grey is the in-universe color of death. (It is also associated with the Greymist Valley, which is located just above Deathgate Falls.) Justified in that Mario was allied with the prospective claimant to the throne and would have been rewarded if all went according to plan.
* In Richard Condon's ''[[The Manchurian Candidate (novel)|The Manchurian Candidate]]'', the assassination of the presidential nominee was planned not only to occur on live television during the convention, but at a specific point in the nominee's acceptance speech.
* In the [[Discworld]] book ''[[
* Done at multiple levels in ''Crown Of Slaves'' by [[David Weber]]. During the coronation at the end of the book, Lieutenant Governor Cassetti is killed in front of thousands of people and dozens of notables from the various political groups around Torch. Averted at one level, because Scrags are instantly found with the murder weapon, but played absolutely straight at another level because {{spoiler|Thandi Palane planted the evidence of their guilt and had her guards kill them so they couldn't be questioned, such that she was standing in full view of everyone while she executed him}}.
* ''[[The Executioner]]''. [[One-Man Army]] Mack Bolan often starts his 'blitz' on a local Mafia family this way. He turns up at several mob joints, calmly states the name of his target, whom he then kills along with their bodyguards in an [[The Gunslinger|impressive display of shooting]]. This quickly gets the Mafia 'mobbed up' in a 'hardsite' where Bolan can [[Storming the Castle|destroy them with overwhelming firepower]] without worrying about innocents getting in the way.
* In ''[[The Day of the Jackal]]'' by Frederick Forsythe, the Jackal plans to assassinate Charles DeGaulle at a public
== [[Live
* The Master does this to the President of Gallifrey in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S14
** The Marshall has one carried out in ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S15
* The neo-Nazis who shoot at the president's entourage in ''[[The West Wing]]'' are easily shot by the Secret Service through the window of the office building they're in. Later we find out that they had no ID on them, implying they expected to die.
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* In Roman-occupied Judea, a group known as the Sicarii would assassinate their targets (Romans or Roman sympathizers) in public places and slip away by pretending to be one of the panicking crowd.
* [[Jeopardy!|U.S. Presidents for 400, Alex]]:
** President [[Andrew Jackson]]'s would-be assassin ambushed ol' Hickory while he was walking with his entourage in DC. Unfortunately for him, ''[[Reliably Unreliable Guns|both]]'' [[Reliable Unreliable Guns|of his prepared pistols misfired]]. What followed was [[Extreme Melee Revenge|an attempt by Jackson to beat the man into a paste with his cane]]. He had to be physically restrained to keep him from killing the man. One can only assume that Jackson was not amused by the assassin's audacity.
** Used to great effect by John Wilkes Booth when he assassinated [[Abraham Lincoln]] at a crowded theater. There were ''soldiers'' present in the audience, with sidearms. Booth managed to shoot Lincoln, jump down from the President's box onto the stage, ''break his leg'' while landing, give a [[Bond One-Liner]], run offstage, leave the theater, get his horse, and gallop away. Nobody stopped him. From later witness interviews, reactions when it happened varied from "wait, is there a gunshot in this play? I don't think there is" to "oh, it's John Wilkes Booth, popular actor, [[Hey, It's That Guy!|I know that guy]]. Why's he jumping on stage in a play he's not in?" [[Refuge in Audacity|The act was so brazen that by the time anyone wrapped their head around what had just happened, Booth was long gone]].
** [[James Garfield]] was shot in a train station. There weren't a ton of people around, but the assassin, Charles Guiteau, was a nutjob who reportedly yelled, "I did it and I want to be arrested!" afterwards, which is always helpful.
** Next was [[William McKinley]], who was shot while gladhanding the crowd at the Pan-American Exposition. One of his Secret Service bodyguards admitted at the trial that he may not have seen the assassin, Polish-American anarchist Leon Czogolsz, because he was distracted by the [[Scary Black Man]] standing behind him. (The crowd, including said [[Scary Black Man]], did attack Czogolsz, and McKinley, who knew he was dying, asked the Secret Service to stop them.)
** In the category of "attempted assassinations," [[Theodore Roosevelt]] was shot as he was about to make a
** [[John F. Kennedy]] was sort of shot in the middle of a parade. And Lee Harvey Oswald was sort of shot on national television.
** Finally, like McKinley, [[Ronald Reagan]] was shot by an apparent admirer among the crowd he was greeting. Again, the crowd and Secret Service attacked Hinckley (reacting very quickly in this case).
* Kawakami Gensai (the basis for [[Rurouni Kenshin|Himura Kenshin]]) assassinated Sakuma Shōzan in broad daylight.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Espionage Tropes]]
[[Category:Murder Tropes]]
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