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A variant of [[Leave Him to Me]].
{{examples}}
* ''[[Naruto
▲== Anime and Manga ==
▲* [[Naruto|Akatsuki]] want all the Jinchuuriki alive because killing them would kill the Biiju [[Sealed Evil in a Can|sealed inside them]], which is what they're after. In something of a subversion, this doesn't stop them from trying to ''cripple'' them (Kisame suggested cutting off Naruto's legs to keep him from running away, and later tried to actually do it to {{spoiler|Killer Bee}}).
** Well, in Naruto's case it would kill the fox; not all the seals work like that, but having a free bijuu rampaging around is...inconvenient.
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]''- [[Big Bad|Father]] and the [[Our Homunculi Are Different|Homunculi]] want Ed and Al alive. {{spoiler|So that they can be used as sacrifices, of course.}}
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** Riza survived. Even after her coded message was intercepted. But then, she was being used as a leash on Roy, and Pride seemed to enjoy messing with her.
==
* In an early issue of ''[[Daredevil]]'', the Masked Marauder tells his men to capture "Daredevil" (in reality Foggy Nelson, whom the world is convinced is old Hornhead), but makes especial note that "Once you have him helpless, leave him for ''me''! The Masked Marauder must have the honor of actually ''finishing'' him!"
* A more reasonable variant in a 1950s or '60s newspaper comic, when the villain told his troops to take [[Tarzan]] "alive if you can -- dead if you must!"
* [[Power Parasite|Parasite]] is one of the few members of [[Superman|Superman's]] [[Rogues Gallery]] that doesn't want to kill the Man of Steel. No, he wants to keep Superman alive so he can keep feeding off of him for his powers.
==
* Darth Vader from ''[[Star Wars]]'' is fond of this.
** In ''[[A New Hope]]'', to his men on Leia's ship: "...and bring me the passengers,
** In ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]'', to the bounty hunters:
{{quote|
''[Fett looks down dejectedly]'' "As you wish." }}
*** [https://web.archive.org/web/20161104111320/http://moviepilot.com/posts/2299242 There's] even a [[Wild Mass Guessing|good hypothesis]] as to ''why'' he singled out Boba Fett.
* In ''[[Dragonheart]]'', the villain wants the dragon captured alive, because killing the dragon means killing the villain.
* Averted in ''[[The Three Musketeers (1993 film)|The Three Musketeers 1993]]'', with [[Tim Curry]]'s Cardinal Richelieu declaring a bounty on the titular Musketeers: "One thousand gold pieces on each of their heads, dead or alive!" (Steps away, then returns) "...I prefer dead!"
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** It's good to know that Frollo is, at ''least'', not a necrophiliac.
* In the first ''[[Blade]]'' movie, after spending the entire movie trying to kill Blade, [[Big Bad|Frost]] realizes he needs him alive for his plan.
{{quote|
'''[[The Dragon|Quinn]]:''' [[Double Take|Wait, what]]? }}
==
* [[Big Bad]] Lord Hong from the ''[[Discworld]]'' book ''[[
* Saruman does this "off screen" with the Uruk-Hai in the ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' saga. He wants the hobbits that they capture alive because he believes that one of them is carrying the One Ring that Saruman wants.▼
▲* [[Big Bad]] Lord Hong from the ''[[Discworld]]'' book ''[[Discworld/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]'' orders his army to capture Cohen and the Silver Horde alive, so he can spend months or years torturing them.
▲* Saruman does this "off screen" with the Uruk-Hai in the ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'' saga. He wants the hobbits that they capture alive because he believes that one of them is carrying the One Ring that Saruman wants.
** And in case you wonder why alive, he fears that if the orcs killed the hobbits and searched the corpses, one of them might realize just how powerful item they have in their hands and try to claim it for their own rather than bringing it back to their master. That, and carrying the Ringbearer doesn't have the general negative psychological effects that carrying the Ring has.
*** The hobbits are also wanted alive so they can be interrogated. The leaders of both Saruman's and Sauron's orcs say as much.
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** A handful of Deatheaters figure out a way to do this without personal risk (which is common in Harry Potter kidnap attempts). They {{spoiler|call Dementors to eat Harry's soul. He'd technically be alive, but wouldn't fight back}}. Brilliant though it was, the plan didn't work.
* The titular [[Villain Protagonist]] of ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'' uses the [[Noble Demon]] variant as his [[Battle Butler]] leaves to deal with the [[Redshirt Army]]:
{{quote|
* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Stand]]'', Randell Flagg's second-in-command Lloyd Henreid issues this order to the people belatedly chasing after escaping spy {{spoiler|Tom Cullen}}. Although in this case it's more ''Flagg'' will want him alive, and if he isn't, everyone's gonna be very sorry...
* Both used and averted in ''[[The Executioner]]'' novels by Don Pendleton. The hero Mack Bolan is a [[One-Man Army]] conducting his personal war against the Mafia. On one occasion a mob boss demands that Bolan be taken alive and unharmed so he can torture him to death. The button man assigned to the task retorts that from what he's heard of Bolan's reputation, the boss had better be happy with getting him in any condition whatsoever. On another occasion a hitman who's discovered Bolan holed up in a motel tells his mooks that if they find Bolan "in bed with his pants down" they're to capture him, if not just blast him on sight.
* Subverted a couple of times in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]:
** In ''[[Shadows of the Empire]]'', the main antagonist Xizor orders the ''Millennium Falcon'' destroyed: "If you can disable it and capture the crew and passengers, that would also be acceptable."
** In ''[[The Thrawn Trilogy|Dark Force Rising]]'', Grand Admiral Thrawn (notable for being [[A Lighter Shade of Grey|less]] [[You Have Failed Me...|cruel to his subordinates]], as well as a [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|big fan]] of the [[Evil Overlord List]]) says of the heroes: "I want them also alive if possible. If not -- If not, I'll understand."
* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] novel ''The Hour of the Dragon'', Valerius inverts it:
{{quote|
** In "A Witch Shall Be Born" Constantius orders it for Conan.
* A big part of the reason why Galbatorix was ultimately defeated by Eragon and Saphira in ''[[The Inheritance Cycle]]''. Had he wanted to, he could have easily had them snuffed out like candles, or done so himself, well before the fourth book. But no, he was hoping to break their will and turn them to his side, hoping to use Saphira (whom he believed to be the last female dragon), to establish a new line of Riders.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* In ''[[Farscape]]'', John Crichton knows his buried knowledge is invaluable to his enemies, uses it, and ''abuses'' it to the point of strapping himself with a bomb to blow up an enemy base and getting away with it. Twice.
** Scorpius himself, who was at the wrong end of this prior to his more-or-less [[Heel Face Turn]], acknowledged the tactical genius of this move before ordering the evacuation of his doomed base.
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* Used in an episode of ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]''. In an earlier episode, Captain Archer had escaped from Rura Penthe and a bounty was placed on him. He is turned in to the Klingons by a bounty hunter, but then manages to escape in an escape pod. One of the Klingons asks if he can charge weapons, but the Klingon captain responds, "No, I want him alive." Later, in the first "In a Mirror, Darkly" episode, the Dark Malcolm Reed offers to kill the Dark Admiral Forrest and Dark Jonathan Archer replies "I want him alive."
==
* A variation of this trope occurs in ''[[Pokémon]]''. To catch a Pokémon, you must first weaken it, than throw a Pokeball at it. The catch is, if you go too far and hurt the Pokémon too much, it will faint and you will not be able to catch it. It it very frustrating trying to catch a shiny/legendary Pokémon, and hurt it too much. You might have another chance to catch a legendary, but a shiny is almost impossible to find, making them rarer than legendarys.▼
▲* A variation of this trope occurs in [[Pokémon]]. To catch a Pokémon, you must first weaken it, than throw a Pokeball at it. The catch is, if you go too far and hurt the Pokémon too much, it will faint and you will not be able to catch it. It it very frustrating trying to catch a shiny/legendary Pokémon, and hurt it too much. You might have another chance to catch a legendary, but a shiny is almost impossible to find, making them rarer than legendarys.
* A [[Genre Savvy]] variation of this trope occurs in [[Mass Effect]] - "Spare the asari if you can. If not, it doesn't matter."
** A second even more [[Genre Savvy]] one comes from the second game - "I want his body recovered, if possible."
* In the video game ''[[No One Lives Forever]]'', Magnus Armstrong regularly orders mooks to tie up and take the protagonist Cate Archer alive. The minions appear to be [[Genre Savvy]], as they regularly ask [[Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him|why they don't just kill her]].
* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] II'', crime boss Goto has posted a substantial bounty on Jedi, with an
** The irony here is that Goto actually wants a Jedi brought to him [[Justified Trope|so they can work for him]], which deadness kind of precludes.
*** He really doesn't care though: as he puts it, "A true Jedi would have no trouble surviving such attacks...and if you could not then would be useless to me."
* Rare hero example: in ''[[Jak and Daxter|Jak II]]'' after you {{spoiler|defeat Krew}}, you discover that the latter sent [[Badass|Sig]] on an assignment to open a door in the Underport. When you get there, you see him fighting for his life and claiming {{spoiler|Krew}} set him up to open the door and {{spoiler|let hundreds of Metal Heads into the city}}.
{{quote|
'''Sig''': Then he's lucky! Because he sure wouldn't want me to catch him alive! }}
* The ''[[Mercenaries]]'' series encourages this. While your contacts don't have a problem with you killing high value targets, they pay you double if you manage to capture them alive.
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* The Player in X-COM often finds himself in the position of issuing this order whenever the squad identifies an alien with useful knowledge.
== [[Web
* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'': During the "That Which Redeems" arc, Horribus insists that Torg be taken alive so that Horribus can rip out his soul and torture it for all eternity.
* ''[[Girl Genius
* Frans Rayner in ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' subverts this when {{spoiler|Doc's father}} is making his way towards Rayner's base.
{{quote|
* In ''[[Exterminatus Now]]'', this is used to justify [[Heroic Sociopath|Lothar]] being barred from a mission. Lothar protests by saying he got [[Noodle Incident|his last suspect]] alive...
{{quote|
'''Lothar''': [[Completely Missing the Point|There, you see? I don't know what you're all bitching at me for.]] }}
* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-07-16 Master G'tang] is [[Genre Savvy]] enough to reasonably downgrade such requests.
==
* Justified in ''
▲* Justified in ''<nowiki>~Avatar: The Last Airbender~</nowiki>'', where killing Aang would just lead to some other Avatar being reincarnated and the hunt having to start all over again. However, the series is big on [[Fight Scene|Fight Scenes]] so this often led to [[Could Have Been Messy|jarring circumstances]] where Aang is nearly killed by the same people who explicitly stated that they wanted him alive moments beforehand. This up and down went on until the season 3 where the notion is dropped altogether. Even if he does reincarnate that still buys them probably a decade without worrying about him, and the Fire Nation could probably conquer the rest of the world then (especially after {{spoiler|taking down the Earth Kingdom}}).
** Toph's dad puts out a reward for finding her, but [[Arrogant Kung Fu Guy|Xin Fu]] seems to misunderstand the mission.
{{quote|
'''[[Odd Couple|Master Yu]]:''' No she's not! I'm certain her father wants her alive! }}
* Also Justified in ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers|Galaxy Rangers]]''. [[Big Bad|The Queen]] is ''very'' specific about making sure any humans are brought to her "alive and undamaged." Otherwise, they can't be [[Life Energy|used]] [[Soul Jar|to]] [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|power]] [[And I Must Scream|her]] [[Fate Worse Than Death|Slaverlords]].
==
* Police forces prefer to capture rather than kill suspects and fugitives, generally only resorting to killing to prevent other people from dying.
** The fact is that police forces in countries with Rule of Law have no authority to use deadly force except in situations where bystanders would have that same right.
* At the end of [[World War II]] right before the Seige of Berlin, Russian leader [[Joseph Stalin]] gave explicit orders that he wanted [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] taken alive so he could face trial and be publicly executed. Hitler's suicide prevented it.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Stock Phrases]]
▲[[Category:I Want Them Alive]]
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