Conspicuously Public Assassination: Difference between revisions

{{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]}}

 

 

If the Target employs [[Swiss Cheese Security]], they deserve it.

 

 

* 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.

* 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.

** 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.

 

* 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.

* 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.

* 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 event—notably the award ceremony on Liberation Day, the one occasion he can be certain the President of France will turn up, no matter what threats have been made against his life.

 

* The Master does this to the President of Gallifrey in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S14/E03 The Deadly Assassin|The Deadly Assassin]]'', having first lured the Doctor into a position where he can take the fall for the assassination.

** The Marshall has one carried out in ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S15/E05 Underworld|Underworld]]''.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Espionage Tropes]]

[[Category:Murder Tropes]]