You Have Failed Me.../Live-Action TV

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Examples of You Have Failed Me... in Live-Action TV include:

  • Happened to more than one Weyoun clone in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
    • Played with in the series finale. When the Cardassians revolt against the Dominion, the nameless changeling has all of the Cardassians in the Dominion military complex executed. Her right hand man, a Cardassian, protests that he has not turned on the Dominion even as he is dragged off to be executed. The changeling replies that she is making sure he never will.
    • A variation occurs as well in "Sacrifice of Angels" where Damar kills Ziyal, the daughter of Gul Dukat, after learning she turned traitor and tried to help the Federation retake the station; using Dukat's own words on how traitors must be dealt with as the reason why he had to do this. Dukat suffers a complete mental breakdown as a result.
  • Doctor Who:
    • Subverted in "The Pirate Planet". The villainous Captain hisses "When someone fails me, Mr. Fibuli, someone dies!"—then kills a random extra instead of the person who actually failed, because he's the Captain's right-hand man and is too useful to kill just out of pique. Of course, the Evil Overlord List specifically says not to do this, but the Captain is just too awesome to care.
    • Played straight in another pirate story, "The Smugglers". The Doctor and Jacob Kewper have played a superstitious pirate, overpowered him, and gotten clean away. Captain Pike very calmly dispatches the pirate in question.
    • An interesting variation is in "City of Death." Two of Count Scarlioni's henchmen have actually successfully recovered his wife's bracelet which the Doctor stole. "Good," he tells them. "But not good enough." He then has them killed and replaced with two different guys. Considering they got the bracelet, it's anyone's guess as to why he thinks they underperformed. It certainly can't be punishment for not being discreet, considering their replacements are just as brazen.
  • Double-subverted in the Stargate Atlantis episode "Irresponsible": Genii commander Kolya aims his gun at a mook who failed to capture Sheppard and pulls the trigger, only for the gun to click as if empty. The mook thanks him and Kolya lets him go, saying it's his last chance... before angrily giving away his gun for repair.
    • Played straight with Anubis and Ba'al in Stargate SG-1. He actually says exactly those lines.
    • Ra does this at one point in the Stargate movie.
      • And they wonder why they can't get the Tau'ri to take them seriously....
  • In SciFi's Tin Man miniseries, Azkadellia's actual reply to the general who let Dorothy DG escape is a sympathetic "You did your best", but considering she immediately followed it up with a fatal Life Energy drain, the meaning's the same.
  • 24 season one example: One of the girls kidnapped by a sub-villain as part of a plan that's waaay too complicated to describe here gets away and is hit by a car, so only Kimberly is taken instead. Said sub-villain says he killed the other girl, but his boss already knew that she'd been taken to a hospital. He takes a page straight from the Darth Vader book of villainy:

Sub-villain: [Stammers] Well, the thing is that... maybe she wasn't quite dead.
Boss: Well, I'll tell ya. [...] You're either dead or you're not dead. There's no such thing as "sorta dead". Here, let me show you. [Shoots him on the spot, turns to other, more sympathetic underling] You've just been promoted. Congratulations.

  • Wiseguy: A Mafia boss is annoyed that an outside contract killer has messed up a hit. The killer replies that he emptied "an entire clip from an Uzi" into the victim. The boss retorts that the proper way is to shoot someone in the back of the head and stuff their body in a trunk...and then does exactly that to the hitman.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Lonzak barely manages to avoid this fate in the Captain Proton holodeck program.

CHAOTICA: Where's Proton?
LONZAK: He... err... escaped.
CHAOTICA: FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! You shall PAY for your incompetence! Seize him!
SATAN'S ROBOT (clanking menacingly towards Lonzak): SUR-REND-DER!
LONZAK: But Majesty, I have brought prisoners!

  • Darken Rahl seems to be getting in the habit of this in Legend of the Seeker, usually by feigning understanding, taking the other person's hand, then slicing them from the wrist to the elbow and letting them bleed out.
    • He only did it once, in the pilot, to his general, who was supposed to kill the Seeker as the baby but failed. And the blood didn't go to waste - he used it immediately to send a message to his troops.
  • "Offering their life in penance" was something The Master in Buffy the Vampire Slayer demanded. One of the worst examples was when he told the Three to kill Buffy because she was killing too many of his servants, and they almost did, easily overpowering her. Angel showed up and helped her run away. As opposed to telling them to get back out there and try again and keep an eye out for Angel this time, The Master double-subverted this trope:

The Master: True, they did fail, but also true, we who walk at night share a common bond. The taking of a life -- I'm not talking about humans, of course -- is a serious matter.
Collin: So you would spare them?
Master: Hmm. I am weary, and their deaths will bring me little joy.
(motions to Darla, who stabs each of the Three in succession)
The Master: Of course, sometimes a little is enough.

    • Subverted when Spike showed up and after he failed and was told he should offer his life, killed the Anointed One instead.
    • And, two seasons later, when faced with a Big Bad he can't kill, Spike is Genre Savvy enough to start fleeing as soon as he hears the words "You have failed..."
  • Angel used this as well. Wolfram and Hart was notorious for it, though they rarely did it onscreen. There was also the vampire Knox, who killed one of his best minions to prove a point about them getting soft. Vampires seemed to get this treatment a lot in the Buffyverse, especially the less modern ones.
    • Played inverted Trope when Linwood Murrow finds out about Lilah's affair with good guy Wesley. It seems like he might try to pull this in the middle of a board meeting...until Lilah mentions that she contacted one of the Senior Partners, who agreed with her that Murrow himself was doing a terrible job dealing with Angel.

Holland Manners: Are you actually telling me that you went over my head?
(Razor blades pop out of his chair, decapitating him)
Lilah: Just under it, actually.

  • Adelai Niska on Firefly does this routinely. He intimidates Mal and crew by showing them a prisoner he's in the process of torturing to death. Then he attempts to do the same to Mal and Wash after they fail to carry out the theft he hired them for.
    • Technically, he succeeds in torturing Mal to death (well, "dead" as in "heart stopped" or something, then promptly revived him so he could be tortured some more).
    • Said prisoner was also a relation of his.
  • Power Rangers:
    • Subverted/parodied in Power Rangers RPM: minion Tenaya 7, after returning from a seemingly failed mission and beginning to be condemned by her boss Venjix, outright mockingly asks if he's going to say the titular trope line. Venjix is not pleased.
    • When Lord Zedd made his grand entrance in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, he punished Rita by sticking her back in her dumpster (well, that or a different dumpster) and sending her off into space.
    • Inverted in the first episode of Power Rangers SPD. It appears Emperor Gruumm is about to punish Piggy (a "wretched, disgusting excuse for a creature", who has failed him a lot in the past) for failure. He isn't - this time, Piggy managed to do something right.
  • On Get Smart, Siegfried tells the henchmen who have failed him, "It's time to put Plan B and Plan C into action." One of the mooks asks what "Plan C" is. Take a guess how Siegfried responds.
  • Subverted in Farscape: both Scorpius and Grayza use non-lethal methods of punishment, though they are generally quite painful.
    • Played straight in the episode "Losing Time": at the urging of project leader Drillic, Scorpius sends a test pilot on a flight into an unstable wormhole- only for the pilot to melt inside the cockpit. Scorpius promptly assigns Drillic the task of piloting the second test-flight.
  • Ultraman Mebius has the target point this out—while being shot.

Mephilas: "Emperor! Have I become a useless piece in this game? Alas!" (Explodes)

  • In Flash Forward episode "Better Angels", merciless Somalian leader Abdi shoots two of his followers but spares the heroes, saying "They have failed me; you will not."
  • The Due South episode Gift of the Wheelman has the bag guy pulling this on one of his henchmen for falling for a double cross by another henchman.
  • WWE's newest[when?] Heel supergroup called The Nexus has leader Wade Barrett. On a night where each member had to fight alone, he stated that if anyone in the group lost their match, they would be kicked out of Nexus. After a series of fluke wins, there was a match between Baby Face John Cena and the weakest member of the group, Darren Young. Seeing how Darren had gotten his ass handed to him by Cena several times before, it was no surprise that he lost. So as Darren is surrounded by his former team, he tries apologizing to Wade, but then he gets mugged by all 6 of them.
  • The Ring in Chuck had Nicos Vassilis executed by gun from one of their agents for failing to retrieve the mask. Before his death, he asks how they are going to deal with Chuck, to which the Ring Elders remark "The same way we'll deal with you." just before he is shot.
  • The Leviathans on Supernatural apparently have a standard practice for this, called "bibbing". It's called this because the failed Leviathan in question is made to wear a bib, and then forced to eat themselves. When their leader gets really mad, however, he decides not to "waste a perfectly good meal".
  • Happens in an episode of Jake 2.0 with the leader of a domestic terrorist group. At the start of the episode, a teenager operative of the group ends up captured by the NSA. It turns out that he's the leader's son. The leader promptly executes the guy sent to keep an eye on his son. Subverted later on, when the guys sent to kidnap Jake to trade for the kid end up kidnapping his little brother (who stole Jake's ID to get into a bar). However, when the Mook offers his own gun to the leader to accept punishment for failure, the leader smiles and tells him that the guy didn't fail. As a matter of fact, capturing Jake's brother is a better plan than capturing Jake himself.
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