You Have Failed Me.../Western Animation

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Examples of You Have Failed Me... in Western Animation include:

  • Phaeton, the Big Bad of Exo Squad had a habit of summarily executing his generals whenever they really screwed up. But since he could easily clone them, he could easily replace them... with themselves.
    • Although, he does give them a few chances first. Typhonus, for example, attempted to betray Phaeton, accidentally convinced the Pirates to ally with the Exofleet, and then got his own fleet annihilated before Phaeton finally got rid of him.
  • In the second episode of the Double Dragon cartoon, the Shadow Master kills two underlings (Abobo and Willy) for failing him by trapping them in the Shadow Mural. Particularly annoying, as he never does this to his goons later. Maybe he just realized that if he killed somebody for every failure he'd run out of men fast.
    • The only other time he does such a thing is in the Season 2 episode "Shadow Conned", when Countdown revolts against the Shadow Master by freeing the Shadow Khan from his shield. He does so by trapping Countdown in the Khan's shield.
  • An early Birdman villain in the employ of F.E.A.R., the Ringmaster, seems to be terrified of finding himself on the receiving end of this when he is captured. In "Murro the Marauder", a nameless mook gets the Trap Door treatment after being thwarted by Birdman in his attempt to steal a secret formula.
  • In The Emperors New Groove, Yzma does something even worse than killing her lackey Kronk: she insults his spinach-puff recipe.
  • Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: One of the Jokerz mouths off to the Joker for not telling them his plan after they fail a heist...

Bonk: * Finishing his rant* I want out!
The Joker: * Pulls a gun* If you insist...
Bonk: Take... Take it easy, man -- I was just kidding!

The Joker: So was I.

The Joker: Ooops... No I wasn't.

    • Said underling was named Bonk and was voiced by the always cool Henry Rollins (when said group of Jokerz appeared on Justice League Unlimited under the control of Chronos he was voiced by the equally cool Adam Baldwin instead). And also, Chronos did kill one of them, but it was the portly Chucko instead.

Chronos: Do you know what killed the dinosaurs?
Ghoul: No... Sir.
Chronos: Well Chucko does.

  • Phobos, the season one Big Bad of WITCH, punished his Mooks heavily for failure, to the point where by the end of the season, one of them defected to the side of the heroes after they found him injured following a battle, knowing full well what Phobos did to those soldiers he discovered had been wounded. He even took a break from the Final Battle to punish his right-hand Giant Mook Cedric, transforming him from a giant snake monster into a tiny, pathetic one. This would later come back to bite Phobos in the ass in season two, after he regains his power and gives Cedric one more shot. Cedric returns the favor by stealing all of Phobos' power by eating Phobos alive during the penultimate episode.
  • Prime Evil, the Big Bad of Filmations Ghostbusters, was quite fond of saying this to his ghostly minions, often exacting some kind of "humorous" punishment on them. (Example: Fangster, a werewolf ghost, gets inflicted with vampire fleas.)
  • Black Mask from The Batman killed his Number One and told a random Mook "You! You're my new Number One." The first just because he was pissed and he shot, the second questioned anti-gravity spray working and was made a test subject.
  • In the Kim Possible movie, Drakken says this to his sidekick Shego after she failed the mission, but he's really just being dramatic. She replies "Why are you all, 'You have failed me for the last time!' Are you kidding me with that?" Then they get down to the new evil plan.
    • In another episode, WorldWide Evil Empire head Gemini tells one of his underlings: "You have failed me for the last time." The underlings response? "Um, I just started last Thursday, so I haven't actually failed you bef--" Gemini cuts him off with "Silence!" then sends him down a trapdoor anyway.
  • Subverted in Cat City. After each failure, Mr. Teufel, The Dragon, invites his semi-competent secretary "for a few words". The latter survives, but appears in ever-increasing number of bandages.
    • Teufel's boss, however, has the mounted heads of Teufel's precedessors on his wall.
  • Lord Nebula of Captain Simian and The Space Monkeys uses the phrase constantly to terrorize his toady Rhesus-2 (along with a few hard knocks). It's not an idle threat because his predecessor, Rhesus-1, was threatened constantly as well; he was eventually shot with a death ray and reduced to a ribcage in a pile of red goo.
  • Robotnik does this to a Swatbot in the Sonic the Hedgehog episode "Hooked On Sonics."
  • At the end of The Princess and the Frog, after Dr. Facilier's plot is foiled, rendering him unable to pay off his debt to his "Friends on the Other Side", said "Friends" show up to collect anyway... by dragging Facilier to his childhood trauma-inducing doom.
  • In one episode of Conan the Adventurer when a snakeman fails to obtain a piece of Greywolf's magic staff, he is executed by Wrath-Amon by being thrown into a pond with a tentacle-watcher thingy and being eaten alive. Thus, becoming probably the only snake-man being really killed on screen.

Dreggs: Your pet is a messy eater.

  • The Shredder from the newer[when?] TMNT series would always kill his Mooks when they failed him. For minions he couldn't replace, well, it varied. Stockman would lose a piece of him every time, until he was just a brain in a robot body which would be punished with electric shocks. Everybody else usually got off without so much as a slap on the wrist. Sharp contrast to the older cartoon version that would just berate Bebop and Rocksteady for their stupidity, and then send them back again.
  • Averted in Transformers: The Movie. Unicron invokes the trope name, then gives Galvatron the 411 and sends him off to the Planet of Junk to try again.
  • When an intern pulls a Critical Research Failure regarding the Olympics on Total Drama Island Chris MacLean ejects him from the plane without a parachute.
  • Dr. Zin from Jonny Quest does this a lot to his minions. This is taken to the extremes in Jonny Quest vs. the Cyber Insects, in which he has three head scientists. Each time one of them fails, he kills that scientist then promotes another of them. The first one he fed to the insects, the second he throws into a pit of acid, and the third he froze in liquid nitrogen and breaks him into pieces.
  • In Star Wars: The Clone Wars this is what Count Dooku tells Ventress when he "fires" her from the services of the Separatists.
  • Sometimes Subverted with the Monarch and his henchmen in The Venture Bros. He frequently kills his henchmen for minor infractions, by accident, or simply because he's having a bad day.
  • An episode of Stroker and Hoop has a ninja mook terrified of this trope after failing to kill the main characters. The head ninja points out how horrible for morale it would be to murder his henchmen every time they mess up... and then slices the mook in half.

"Send in some more ninjas, please."

  • Pirates of Dark Water villain Bloth 'rewards' failure by tossing the offending minion to 'The Constrictus' a mutant monster that lives in a pool on his ship. However, he seems willing to allow second chances to those who escape that fate, and the rest of his crew make bets on whether or not the victim will survive. The only mook to succeed against the Constrictus was Konk, but he lost a leg in the process.
  • Subverted in Visionaries-Knights of the Magical Light, where Darkling Lord ruler Darkstorm regulary sends his loyal toadie Mortdredd down the Trap Door - even when he succeeds in his mission, or just whenever he feels like humiliating the guy. Showing a brain-dead kind of loyalty, Mortdredd never even complains and just climbs back from the pit - often to be thrown back again.
  • In one episode of Phineas and Ferb, Agent P avoids Doofenschmirtz's Piano (and Piano Player) Drop trap thanks to the maid's carelessness. Doofenschmirtz had this to say:

Doofenschmirtz: "Oop! Ooo! Oh, I told Nancy to keep the backdoor locked! Note to self... My evil deed for tomorrow: fire the maid."

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