Shoot Your Mate: Difference between revisions

** In still another episode, a situation similar to this was presented to Will as part of his CIA psychology test. It was essentially, if you were given a gun with one bullet and told to shoot your mother or your father, who would you shoot? Sydney tells him (paraphrasing) that the answer is to shoot yourself, as attacking the mother figure indicates you would first betray your friends/mentors and attacking the father figure indicates you would betray your country. We're never shown what answer Will selected.

* A variation appears in the ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' episode ''The Die is Cast''. Garak takes the role of a [[Fake Defector]] for reasons which are complicated, and is ordered to torture Odo, both to get information and test Garak's commitment to his defection. Garak goes through with it, since someone else would have done so if Garak hadn't, and he couldn't refuse without losing the trust of the bad guys. Odo has nothing useful but in the ends admits that he does have a desire to return to the Great Link. Garak lies on Odo's behalf and says he never broke.

* An episode of ''[[Sharpe]]'' has Sharpe being ordered by the enemy commander to shoot Harper while they're masquerading as turncoats. It's more a test of Sharpe's skill than loyalty though, since the commander wants to see if he knows that the powder is too damp to fire.

* Inverted beautifully in ''[[Leverage]]'', when {{spoiler|Nate is undercover with the mob, trying to manipulate a banker they're associated with into snitching on them. Just when he discovers that it's the banker who's running the orginization, and not the mobster, Eliot gets nabbed snooping around and gets hauled over to them. Nate makes it look like Eliot is an undercover cop who is dealing with mobster. Big boss orders Mobster to Shoot His Mate. Although Mobster has never seen Eliot before, he is hesitant because he doesn't want to be a cop killer, which is seen as a sign of guilt. Things are getting heated when Eliot is suddenly shot multiple times and killed. Everyone turns to see Sophie holding a smoking gun.}} So, basically, Nate avoids getting himself in a Shoot Your Mate situation by conning the [[Big Bad]] into thinking a random Minor Bad is the defector, and forcing HIM to Shoot His (supposed) Mate. Then Sophie shows up and Shoots Her Mate. Sort of. It makes sense, really.