There Is No Kill Like Overkill/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: More force is used than necessary to kill something.

  • Straight: Shooting an unarmed person with a minigun, then settting him on fire, then punching him in the balls
  • Exaggerated: Running someone over in a tank, then backing up, shooting them with 17 miniguns at once, and then covering the entire area in napalm.
    • Killing a fly with the Death Star and that's after you cut it to pieces and eletrocuted it.
  • Downplayed: A character uses an AK-47 when a pistol would be more appropriate.
  • Justified: The victim is extremely hard to kill.
    • Alternatively, the attacker really hates the victim.
    • The victim is so dangerous that the attacker wants to make sure that he stays down for good.
  • Inverted: Using the least amount of force necessary to get the job done.
  • Subverted: The Protagonist packs a minigun for an assault on the Big Bad's fortress, but switches it to semi-automatic mode.
  • Double Subverted: ...And then switches it to full auto when too many Mooks show up.
  • Deconstructed: The heroes use so much ammo that they run out and are quickly killed.
    • Alternately, going all-out with the weaponry causes so much collateral damage that heroes fail their mission.
    • The heroes are considered insane for being so excessive and everyone else is wary around them.
  • Reconstructed: The heroes bring more ammo to account for their increased use.
    • The heroes have an explicit license to do whatever it takes to complete the mission, collateral damage be damned.
    • The heroes fail to overkill one villain and their side pays greatly for it when he returns to wreak havoc. Now their allies understand that it may be grisly, but some things are better safe than sorry.
  • Parodied: The victim is killed by a massive barrage of teddy bears, soft pillows, comfy chairs and water balloons.
  • Averted: The main characters are snipers, and are slow and methodical with their firing.
  • Enforced: "The show will be more awesome if the characters do way more than necessary."
  • Lampshaded: "Isn't all this a bit much?"
  • Invoked: Bob brings a minigun when everyone else brings a pistol
  • Defied: Bob kills every enemy with a single shot.
  • Exploited: Alice first send her minions in to take care of Bob. After they're defeated, Alice ambushes Bob, knowing that he is left exhausted.
  • Discussed: "Why do we always have to be absolutely sure that every bad guy is dead?"
  • Conversed:
  • Played For Laughs:
  • Played For Drama:

I just riddled the villain full of bullets, set his body on fire, called in an air strike, and as I was driving away to escape said air strike, ran his dead body over about four times.

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