Leave No Survivors: Difference between revisions

** The guys they weren't taking any prisoners of did just slaughter a village, so it's not entirely an out-of-nowhere [[What the Hell, Hero?]] moment.

* ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia|The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe]]''

* In the film version of ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'', this happens twice. Saruman orders his Uruk-hai in the second film to '''"leave ''none'' alive!"''' in the battle of Helm's Deep, and the Witch-king orders his minions to slay everyone in Minas Tirith.

** Also, Aragorn himself tells the men to show no mercy, "because the enemy will show none"

* From the ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' films:

** In the first film, of course, the cursed crew of the ''Black Pearl'' is famous for leaving no survivors.

** ''Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest''

** Also in ''At World's End'':

* ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'': The standing order of the Dread Pirate Roberts, though with a condition: Only those who attempt to fight back are killed.

** Not to mention the threat the heroes use to clear out the men guarding the castle gate on their way to rescue Buttercup.

* ''[[It Happened Here]]'' ends with [[La Résistance]] massacring captured members of the British SS, as part of its [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized|deconstruction of heroic resistance tropes]].

* In ''[[Judge Dredd (film)|Judge Dredd]]'', Judge Griffin says this in so many words to his people who are investigating the shuttle crash.

* ''[[We Were Soldiers]]'': The Viet Minh commander gives this order after defeating a French column during the film's prologue.

* In ''[[Red Tails]]'', "Pretty Boy", the German fighter ace, typically opens the fight with some order or another. By the final battle, he has lost all pretense of gentlemanly chivalry and simply orders his men to show no mercy.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'':

** Minbari policy during the Earth-Minbari War was to destroy any and all combatants, regardless of their ability to fight back or if they surrender.

*** They did leave many core colonies untouched as they made a beeline for Earth. However, it's likely they would've gone back to mop up every surviving human after Earth was no more.

* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Classic]]'' TOS.

* In ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'', upon having the Cardassians rebel, the female [[Shape Shifter]] gives the order to kill every last one of them. Her only response to being told "That's going to take some time." is "Then I suggest you begin at once." Fortunately, our heroes manage to prevent it being completed (in part because most of the guards at Dominion HQ were sent out to kill Cardassians), but over eight hundred million are still killed during the attempted genocide.

* Comedic version: In one episode of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', a shuttle crashes and most of the gear on board is wrecked. While trying to find something worth salvaging:

(Cat smashes the guitar to smithereens against the wall)<br />

'''Kryten:''' Not even Mr. Lister's guitar survived intact! }}

== Music ==

* In the video for [[Lady Gaga|Lady GaGa's]] song "Telephone", featuring [[Beyonce]], the two of them kill off an entire diner full of people. Well, except for their [[Summon Backup Dancers|backup dancers]].

 

 

* Every game that requires the player to eliminate all enemies to advance to the next level/unlock a new area/complete a mission falls into this trope. (Aversions fall under [[Instant Win Condition]].)

* ''[[Command and Conquer]]: Red Alert''

* In ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'', [[Monster Clown|Kefka]] gives an order to this effect in one of Terra's flashbacks during a ''training exercise'' (for [[Tyke Bomb|her]], not the helpless [[Red Shirt|troops]] being cut down, but it still comes off as unnecessarily callous).

* The player character in the ''[[Free Space]]'' expansion pack ''Silent Threat'' gets to do this in the first two missions, in order to protect a fragile alliance with an alien race after a friendly fire incident (the second mission: one ship was scripted to escape the first mission, so you went to its destination and killed everything there).

* The Alamo, The Battle of Thermopylae, and several other [[Last Stand|Last Stands]] where the defenders were so effective (and/or annoying) that the victorious attackers finished off whatever survivors, wounded, or captured noncombatants they got their hands on afterward.

* The Massacre of Glencoe was ordered by King William of Orange with the line:

** The part about leaving those over 70 was not mercy; in those days it was rare to find anyone much over 50 and the understanding was that anyone 70 or over would probably die on their own without someone to provide care for them.

* This is frequently applied by a force that manages to defeat one much larger than them - they can't maintain so many prisoners, so the logical thing to do is to kill them all.

* Famously happened during the Albigensian Crusade against Catharism in southern France. Asked by a soldier how to tell the difference between Cathar heretics and good Catholics, the [[Church Militant|Papal legate]] [[Knight Templar|Arnaud Amalric]] replied:

** Though it's debatable [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|if he said]] any such a thing, as there doesn't seem to be any record of him saying those words until about 50 years afterwards.

* Arguably the result of any protracted siege in history. The soldiers, after watching their mates getting killed in various horrific fashions over a period of weeks or months, work out their frustrations on the defenders and civilians inside.

** The city of Carthage was completely destroyed by the Romans at the climax of the Third Carthaginian War. The Carthaginian citizens were either slaughtered or captured as slaves; none were spared.

** Roman deserters were always killed if captured by Rome. There were accounts of ex-Roman soldiers at Carthage building a great bonfire in the Basilica before it fell, and leaping into the flames to avoid mandatory crucifixion for their desertion.

* The Battle of Little Bighorn.

* Most of [[World War II]] in the Pacific Theater was this, especially after the tide turned and the Americans began their slow advance towards Japan. The Japanese refused to surrender in any significant numbers, preferring one [[Last Stand]] after another, while at the same time refusing to take any prisoners when one of their counterattacks was successful.