Stating the Simple Solution: Difference between revisions

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* In ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', King Cold advises his son Frieza that revenge would be easier by just blowing up the Earth from space. Frieza however rejects this notion, stating that he wants to see Goku suffer. One episode later Frieza is killed.

* ''[[Mazinger Z]]'': In one episode [[The Dragon]] Baron Ashura captured Kouji and [[Humongous Mecha|Mazinger-Z]] and gave him the "join-us-or-die" choice. After the Kouji's predictable answer, Ashura sentenced him to death, starting a bunch of giant power saws and drills to cut Mazinger-Z to pieces. [[The Dragon|The another Dragon]] Count Brocken was watching the scene through a monitor and he stated Ashura beat around the bush too much and complicated things innecessarily, and shooting Kabuto would be easier and quicker (to be fair, Ashura had not that option available in the moment).

* In ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'', Shishio and Kenshin are having their climactic duel. Both of them are severely injured and weakened, and Shishio's 15 minute-time limit for fighting has elapsed. Yumi (Shishio's lover) and Houji (Shishio's right-hand man) are watching, and Houji has a rifle. Yumi asks Houji why he just doesn't shoot Kenshin... and Houji ''[[What an Idiot!|throws his gun away]]'', on the grounds of his belief that Lord Shishio will win. {{spoiler|He doesn't.}}

* ''[[Code Geass]]'' offers a non-fatal version: when Lelouch learns that his best friend is the pilot of the [[Humongous Mecha]] that's thwarted him at every turn, his partner C.C. asks why he doesn't just use his [[Compelling Voice|Geass]] to make said friend join [[La Résistance]]. She guesses that it's either pride, sentimentality, or distaste for robbing another person of their free will; Lelouch responds that it's all three.

* At the climax of the [[Non-Indicative First Episode]] (filming a movie) of ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', Nagato confronts Itsuki, who refuses to join forces with her. Nagato's shoulder-mounted ''cat'' suddenly starts ''talking'', asking why she doesn't just use ''mind control'' on the guy already, since judging by what she's shown so far it ought to be well within her powers. But that's not in the script, so after a scramble to ''shut him up'' Nagato has her final battle with Mikuru.

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** Inverted when Soichiro confronts Mello with the eponymous [[Artifact of Doom]]; Light spends a few unpleasant moments at his desk {{spoiler|before his father's [[Only Sane Man|refusal to take a human life]] [[Broken Aesop|gets him shot]]}}. Light, of course, finds this incomprehensible.

{{quote|'''Light:''' What are you doing, hurry up and write his name down!... Now's the time to kill him! Kill him right now!!}}

* A variant appears in ''[[Bleach]]''. During the beginning of the Hueco Mundo arc, the [[Big Bad]] sends [[The Dragon|one of his minions, Ulquiorra]], to Earth to antagonize [[The Hero|Ichigo]] and test his [[Power Level]]. After slapping Ichigo around a bit and leaving him in the dust, Ulquiorra reports back to the [[Big Bad]] that Ichigo is [[Not Worth Killing]]. Another of the [[Big Bad]]'s minions, [[Blood Knight|Grimmjow]], gets annoyed and demands they just kill him anyway to be sure. Grimmjow eventually goes over his boss' head and hunts down Ichigo on his own, but the [[Big Bad]] reins him in before he can finish him off: Turns out the [[Big Bad]] had a secret plan in store for the hero.

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* Pretty much the same thing happens in the ''[[Punisher]] MAX'' storyline "Widowmaker". As seen in the earlier storyline "Welcome Back Frank", actually shooting the Punisher sometimes just makes him even more angry.

* In the Mickey Mouse comic ''Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot'', Mickey is frequently captured by a masked villain named The Phantom Blot. The Phantom Blot tries to dispose of him with various complicated death traps, which Mickey always manages to escape from. When the Phantom Blot is finally captured, Mickey asks him why the Phantom Blot didn't just kill him instead of using the death traps. The Phantom Blot than reveals he cannot stand to watch somebody die, and therefore used the death traps so he wouldn't be around when Mickey died.

* [[Cold Sniper|Deadshot's]] proposed solution to pretty much every [[Suicide Squad]] mission. Even when it [[Shoot the Hostage|isn't an assassination.]] The Wall usually relegates it to "plan B".

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* In ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo (film)|The Count of Monte Cristo]]'', ever-practical Jacopo asks this question of Edmond Dantes in response to hearing his plan to slowly destroy his enemies:

{{quote|'''Jacopo:''' Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris -- bam, bam, bam, bam -- I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?}}

:: Dantes declines, insisting that his enemies must suffer as he has suffered. In his defense, his plan does work, although it nearly fails at the end.

* In Disney's ''[[Return to Oz]]'' Mombi asks why the Nome King did not turn Dorothy and company into ornaments right away, and instead let them play a near impossible guessing game to get their missing companions back... The Nome King replies that it's more fun. The same excuse is used in the book ''Ozma of Oz'', but in that case the only reason everyone was found in the guessing game was because Billina eavesdropped.

* In ''[[28 Days Later]]'', Private Jones implores Corporal Mitchell to shoot Sergeant Farrell rather than stab him with the bayonet. Mitchell's refusal to do so ultimately leads to Jim's escape, as it panicks Jones into triggering his gun.

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== Web Comics ==

* Happens a couple times in the webcomic ''[[MAG ISA]]''.

* Happens a couple times in the webcomic ''[[MAG-ISA]]''.

** [http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=539726 Demon gets Claudita temporarily paralyzed] by some sort of invisible spore thingies. He insists on lecturing her about how evil their agenda is and how she's got no chance of winning or something like that.

** [http://www.drunkduck.com/MAG_ISA/index.php?p=684693 Eman was shot multiple times...] but Kyle didn't even think of shooting Eman in the head.

* ''[[Darths and Droids]]'': [http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0276.html This] strip and yes, a link to this page. May the Force preserve us, we're stuck in an infinite loop!:

{{quote|'''Boba Fett:''' ''(to Jango)'' Why couldn't you just shoot him?

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* ''[[Xkcd]]'': [http://xkcd.com/444/ Macgyver gets lazy.]

** Of course, the reason Macgyver never does that in [[MacGyver|the show]] was because he [[Doesn't Like Guns]] and [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|doesn't want to kill anyone]].

* Inverted in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', in which the evil villain is talked into ''not'' just shooting the hero and instead using an overly complex and silly [[Death Trap]] as an interrogation method.

* Discussed in the "[[Fourth Wall Mail Slot|Ask Vector Prime a Question]]" section of the ''[[Insecticomics]]'' site; Vector Prime, a [[Physical God]], ''could'' have destroyed Megatron and save all of reality rather easily in ''[[Transformers Cybertron]]''... But he states that if he did, the villain's fangirls would kill him. Later, he claims that [[Executive Meddling]] prevented him from just saving the world in a single episode, lamenting the fact that he could have spent the rest of the series on a beach getting a foot massage from a supermodel.

* ''[[Bob and George]]'': [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/041022c "Why don't you just blast me?"]

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'''Bill Cosby (robot):''' I'm afraid I can't. I think I'm actually starting to feel what you "humans" call compassion. It's an amazing feeling.

'''Stan & Kyle:''' Oh. }}

* In ''[[Superman: The Animated Series]]'', Mister Mxyzptlk's wife asks Mxyzptlk why he simply doesn't destroy Superman instead of playing games with him after Mxyzptlk expresses his annoyance with being repeatedly out-foxed by the Man of Steel. Mxyzptlk (who is a [[Reality Warper]] on level with a [[Physical God]]) decides to follow her advice... by building an overly complicated [[Humongous Mecha]] [[Comically Missing the Point|and trying to fight Superman with it]]. It works about as well as can be imagined.

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Earthworm Jim (animation)|Earthworm Jim]]'', when he sneaks up behind an [[Elite Mook]] with a ''towed howitzer'', aims it, then sighs he can't do it, since it's too easy. He then takes out the mook with a ridicilous ambush, like he did with the others. It should be noted that when it comes to shooting wildly with his raygun, Jim has little hesitation.

* One episode of ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' gives us a heroic example: The girls run up against the Ministry of Pain, a team of arch-criminals some thirty years past their shelf life. Despite Bubbles and Buttercup pointing out that they could probably arrest them within all of two seconds, Blossom insists upon being "polite to their elders" and instead brings the Ministry's old heroic nemesis out of retirement to fight them. The end result: Both superhero and villains end up getting hurt trying to fight each other and get hospitalized, with everyone (even the narrator) remarking [[What an Idiot!]] Blossom is for causing all this.

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* In the [[Legion of Doom|Masters of Evil]] episode of ''[[The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes|Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes]]'', after the Masters captured five of the Avengers, [[Genius Bruiser|Abomination]] tells [[Badass Abnormal|Baron Zemo]] to kill the ones they have captured, because the others will come. But Zemo ignores, and even berates him. He ''really'' should have listened.

{{quote|'''Abomination:''' It's a mistake to keep them alive, Zemo!}}

* ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]:'' The Eds want to watch a monster movie at Ed's place, but Sarah keeps kicking them out.

{{quote|'''Edd:''' We could just go to our house, Eddy...

'''Eddy:''' What? And ruin the plot? }}

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== Real Life ==

* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: [http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=713157 There is an old parable] about ancient Greek philosophers discussing how many teeth are in a horse's mouth. One naive young man suggests finding an actual horse and counting the teeth, much to the outrage of his peers. The consensus of the philosophers of the time was quite literally that if you had to go out and preform an experiment in order to prove your theory, then your theory was a bad one. (Thus, In ''History of Animals'', Aristotle claimed that human males have more teeth than females despite having been married twice!)

** This also explains why he thought insects only had four legs.

* Harrison Ford is credited with using a variant of "Why don't I just shoot him?" on the set of ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'', as he suffered from food poisoning and wasn't up for filming a planned long-winded fight sequence. [[Combat Pragmatist|The rest is history.]]

* From the set of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'': "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j61kIL334X8 Why don't I just zap them?]"