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You Will Be Spared: Difference between revisions
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Usually, the villain will make this promise to anyone who helps him, or to someone they feel indebted to, are friends with, or are in love with. If the villain ''really'' likes this person, expect them to sweeten the deal with a [[Shiny New Australia]]. This is generally played for laughs, since few "realistic" villains are quite so egomaniacal that they bandy out the lives of others this way
If said to a hero, it may because they're [[Friendly Enemy|Friendly Enemies]]. An [[Omnicidal Maniac]] may either express a desire to preserve one person or event that they like, or say that it's the one thing they'll miss after destroying the world. If they believe the person or people they spare have some sort of [[Uniqueness Value]], that's [[Sparing the Aces]].
An alternative reason for a villain to invoke this trope is to leave behind a witness to tell of their misdeed, intending for it to have a demoralizing effect on the villain's enemies.
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== [[Fan Works]] ==
* In the ''[[Death Note]]'' fic ''[[A Cure for Love]]'' Light says the following to L [[Open Mouth, Insert Foot|without really thinking about what he said]] [[Murder Is the Best Solution|because killing people who annoy him has almost become an automatic response]]:
{{quote|'''Light''': [[Friendly Enemy|You're not trying to do something stupid are you?]]<br />
'''L''': I'm not doing anything stupid, Light. Apart from speaking to you.<br />
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== Literature ==
* [[Ur Example]]: In ''[[Odyssey|The Odyssey]]'', when Odysseus gives his name to the Cyclops as "Noman", the Cyclops says that he will eat "Noman" last.
* A rare heroic version in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[Have Space Suit - Will Travel]]'': just before [[Humanity on Trial]], Kip is assured that he and Pee-wee will be allowed to live out their lives. Kip asks that they be returned to Earth if humanity loses, which may have been a factor in deciding to spare for now -- although they intend to re-evaluate later.
* In ''[[Discworld/Wintersmith|Wintersmith]]'', the titular [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] offered to spare Tiffany and the Chalk (where she came from); the rest of the Disc would remain frozen forever.
* Inverted by Virigar [[Our Werewolves Are Different|the Werewolf King]] in [[Ryk Spoor]]'s ''[[Jason Wood|Digital Knight]]'', when he tells Jason Wood, "I'm minded to let you live for a while.... So you will suffer all the more while everything you value is destroyed before your very eyes!"
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{{quote|'''Mantrid:''' That will be my thank you.}}
* On ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', the demons assisting Lucifer will be killed as soon as Lucifer is finished with the humans and angels if not sooner. Any demon caught assisting Team Free Will will be granted [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|immortality]] [[And I Must Scream|instead]].
* ''[[Lost]]'' inverts the "I'll kill you last" variety. Said by Ethan to Charlie, this is a ''threat'': Charlie will see all his friends die before he's killed.
** "What They Died For" plays it straight with the Man in Black offering to spare Penny if Widmore tells him what he needs to know.
* [[Young Dracula|Ingrid]] tells her therapist this after the therapist helps her get past her [[Villainous BSOD]]. The therapist believes that her ability to make such jokes is a good sign.
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** Even though the whole point of what they were trying to do was to kill them all. {{spoiler|Saren was brainwashed into thinking he could actually have a few organics be spared so the next evolution of species/their own would be able to recover much faster.}} Then again, who would think that as the races of the galaxy would have a heads up?
** In ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' we learned that {{spoiler|a certain amount of people would be spared. [[Fate Worse Than Death|Though they]] [[Slave Mooks|probably will]] [[And I Must Scream|wish they hadn't.]]}}
* This is one of the taunts in [[Command
* Inverted in ''[[Star Control 2]]''; if you [[Nonstandard Game Over|surrender to the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za]], they will tell you that all of your crew will be spared, but your main character will be executed.
* [[Sealed Evil in a Can|Axenos]] from [[Wizard 101]] inverts this trope by combining it with [[Mercy Kill]]. Since the player (accidentally) releases him, he thanks them and promises to kill the first [[Fate Worse Than Death|so they would be spared from witnessing the horrors he'd bring about on the Spiral]].
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* ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'' uses this when Snow Song is thinking about how she'll destroy the town in a restaurant, but then the waitress gives her some chocolate cake on the house:
{{quote|'''Snow Song''': ''None'' of these drones will be spared... Except for her.}}
* In ''[[8-Bit Theater
{{quote|"Look, I don't do this... uh, ever. But you guys are basically like kittens stuck on a leaking lifeboat in a typhoon. Just run."}}
** Also, upon stumbling upon the Dark Warriors trying to steal the [[Cosmic Keystone|Cosmic Keystones]] to defeat him and gain ultimate power, Sarda asks them if they even know how to use them. Bikke tosses his keystone at Sarda, becoming the first person in the series to land any sort of hit on him:
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== Real Life ==
* The author of ''A Hundred Little Hitlers'' (about Neo-Nazis), who is Jewish, apparently impressed one Neo-Nazi so much that he told her when he annihilated all the Jews, he'd spare her.
* This trope most likely lay at the heart of the cynical German-Japanese military alliance during [[World War II]] from at least the Nazis' perspective (but possibly the Japanese as well). A paranoid, virulently racist, white supremacist country decides to team up against other enemies with a nation they probably deem subhuman when it gets down to it. [http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000120.html This article] from ''Our Dumb Century'' puts it best.
** Hitler also made offers of this kind to the UK during the early phase of the war, generally along the lines of "[[We Can Rule Together|Britannia can rule the waves and Germania the earth]]." The UK ignored them (they didn't even acknowledge they had received them), which is essentially a diplomatic way of saying, "f*** off."
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