So, The Hero and his team are cornered by enemy forces on all sides. Do they fight their way out or at best make a Last Stand? No. Somebody in the group suggests they willingly surrender, claiming that this way, they'll live to fight another day. But what's this? Rather than being locked in an easily escapable cell, the heroes are either executed on the spot, brainwashed into new minions for the Big Bad, or suffer a Fate Worse than Death, or in this case, a fate worse than if they had fought back.
The reason this can happen varies: the villain could either be wise to how dangerous the heroes are, they could find this too good an opportunity to do away with the heroes for good, they might despise those who won't fight to the end, seeing them as Dirty Cowards, they might promise to agree to the heroes' terms of surrender, only to reveal they lied later on, or are just plain cruel and want to Kick Them While They're Down.
Needless to say, this is a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! moment for the one that suggested surrendering, usually the Cowardly Lion. To rub salt in the wounds, it could be revealed later on that the heroes actually had a fighting chance, and in rare instances, could've possibly won if they hadn't given up.
This can also apply to Hostage Situations such as Put Your Gun Down And Step Away, Hostage for MacGuffin, and Friend-or-Idol Decision, where the hero gives into the villain's demand, only to find the deal had some details that weren't mentioned and the villain didn't intend to honor his half of the bargain anyway.
In some cases, the person who suggested surrendering was actually The Mole for the other side who had tricked the heroes into giving themselves up.
In rare moments, a villain can be on the receiving end of this. In this case, it shows that the heroes have become just as bad as the villains, especially if the villain in question wanted to defect to the good guys. The heroes may justify this as I Did What I Had to Do or that A Real Man is a Killer. Alternately, if the villain has a history of faking his surrenders, the heroes may wise up and decide to frag him anyway; if they couldn't trust the villain to honor their surrender before, why do so now?
Similar to Pacifism Backfire where trying to avoid a fight causes a confrontation to intensify. A rare moment where Honor Before Reason is actually in the right. Not to be confused with I Surrender, Suckers! or Poisonous Captive where the one surrendering is doing so as part of a plan, though the two can mix if the enemy sees through the scheme. Not the same as Stupid Surrender, where one surrenders without realizing they didn't have to. Can be the karmic fate of a Dangerous Deserter who tried to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here!, resulting in Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves. Can go hand in hand with Leave No Survivors. Compare Run or Die or Captured on Purpose. Contrast Defiant to the End, Last Stand, and Stand Your Ground. You Said You Would Let Them Go is similar where one makes a deal with the villain for the safety of their friends, only for the villain to pull a double cross. For those who protest the notion of surrendering turn out to be in the right, see Strawman Has a Point. If the person who suggested the idea genuinely thought it was smart, that makes it It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time and Not Quite the Right Thing. See also Violence Really Is the Answer.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Black Lagoon: One mook facing Revy throws down his gun and says "I give up!", and she sadistically replies "You give what?". When he sputters incoherently, Revy shoots him anyway while keeping her usual Slasher Smile.
- Chainsaw Man: When Quanxi's party run into Makima, they immediately give up, with their leader begging for mercy on the rest. Makima barely spares a word before decapitating all of them, and for Quanxi even death wasn't an escape.
- Fire Punch: After Togata kills Ivan and rips out his cybernetic endoskeleton, the two of his minion still alive surrender. Then Togata casually picks up Ivan's pistol and shoots them both in the head.
- Remina: When a bloodthirsty mob surrounds Yasumi's apartment, one cowardly member of Remina's group tries surrendering to them. He's promptly shot and killed by a member of the crowd, causing the others to flee.
- In Monster Rancher, during the Searchers' first encounter with Pixie when she was one of the Big Bad Four, Pixie forced them to give themselves up because she had a hostage. The Searchers at first wanted to go out fighting, but Holly and Hare reasoned that it was their fault Pixie took a hostage. Reluctantly, the Searchers surrendered for now to come up with a new plan later... only for Hare, Tiger, Suezo, and Golem to be chained up so that they can be taken to Moo and turned into Baddies, much to Holly's shock. Even worse, Pixie refused to release the hostage afterwards.
Comic Books
- A villainous example of this was what instigated Hank Pym's first and most notorious fall from grace in Avengers #212. After a supervillain called Elfqueen attacked Washington, D.C., Captain America managed to talk her down only for Hank to attack her anyway by mistake and almost ruin their chances at peace. This leads to the rest of the Avengers court-martialing him and temporarily suspending him from the team, and Hank has an emotional breakdown that leads to him trying to earn his place back through Engineered Heroics as well as striking his wife The Wasp, forever cementing his status in the public consciousness as a wife beater.
- The page image comes from Deadpool Volume 6 #24, where the villain Madcap infects Deadpool and cyborg S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Emily Preston's families with a deadly bioweapon, leading the two to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against him and his Hydra mooks. Including the one that attempts to surrender, as you saw.
Fan Works
- Arcanum: After fighting off the Grimm invading Vale's Azure Archives, Wildmage Adam Taurus surrenders to the White Arcana, and is beaten nearly to death by them and their accompanying Huntsmen. He only fights back once, to warn Ruby not to interfere. The White Arcana justify this, claiming that the only way to guarantee he can be taken to the Sanctum safely is by beating him unconscious.
Film — Live Action
- In Con Air, the plot is triggered when Cameron listens to his stupid lawyer's advice to plead 'Guilty' to his Crime of Self-Defense, on the grounds that the judge would show Cameron mercy. The judge then turned out to be a Hanging Judge who decided to deem Cameron a "lethal weapon" because of his training and punished him to the fullest extent of the law.
- In Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, a group of Japanese soldiers finally tire of the endless fighting and continuing calls for self sacrifice and surrender to an American patrol. The patrol doesn't want the hassle or additional danger (not to mention feeling very vindictive after a brutal battle against them) of escorting the prisoners back to their camp, decides to simply shoot the prisoners. Double backfire when the bodies are discovered by the Japanese, as they tell their men that surrender will simply get them shot, so the bitter war ultimately grinds on.
- The Outlaw Josey Wales has a scene where a squad of Confederate rebels have surrendered, and a Union officer has them recite an oath renouncing their allegiance to the Confederacy, and also confess to being murderers. This proves to be meaningless, as a Gatling gun hidden in a covered wagon mows down the unarmed rebels on the spot.
- In The Patriot (2000), Colonel Tavington locks some people who've been supporting the revolutionaries into a church, demanding they reveal where Benjamin Martin is. At first no one says anything. Finally, one guy rushes forwards and blabs everything, believing the British will let everyone go if they get what they want. Tavington then burns the entire church down with the people inside.
- A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die!: After most of his men have been massacred, Maj. Ward surrenders to Col. Pembroke; handing over his sabre to Pembroke and reminding him of the rules of war regarding the acceptance of surrenders. However, he has misjudged the level of Pembroke's personal hatred of him and Pembroke stabs him with his own sabre.
- In Saving Private Ryan, after Steamboat Willie attacks The Squad and loses his men, he surrenders to the squad. Upham murders him in cold blood—because Upham was the one who insisted he be released before and this allowed him to rejoin the marching Nazi army... and back then he was going to be executed in cold blood after surrendering because the squad believed he was the one who killed Wade.
Literature
- In Otto of the Silver Hand, Baron Frederick is wounded in battle with Baron Conrad. As Frederick's soldiers flee, Frederick kneels before Conrad and asks for mercy. Conrad says, "Aye, thou shalt have such mercy as thou deservest," and kills him.
- While for the most part, in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, officers who surrender are treated well, if not outright rewarded, there are exceptions. Mi Fang and Fu Shiren, two Shu officers, surrendered to Wu, which led to Guan Yu's death. When Liu Bei went on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Mi Fang suggested they kill their lead officer (who also had a hand in Guan Yu's death) and surrender back to Shu, despite Fu Shiren's warning that they'd be killed if they went back. Fu Shiren was soon proven correct, as their surrender was not accepted by Liu Bei and the two of them were executed immediately.
- In Star Risk, Ltd.: The Doublecross Program, M'chel Riss is leading local troops against Private Military Contractors, and accepts the surrender of an enemy unit only to have her side machine-gun them against her wishes the minute they come out of hiding. Understandably, she later has to convince another enemy unit that she had intended to honor the surrender before they'll agree to do so.
Live-Action TV
- In the second season premiere of Black Sails, the captain of a ship being boarded by pirates orders his crew not to fight back, figuring the pirates will be merciful if they don't. The pirate captain notes that, generally, he'd have been right, but in this case he feels the need to Leave No Witnesses to what he's taking, specifically the daughter of the Carolina colony's governor, and has the crew executed.
- In The Boys (2019), Winter Soldier expy Gunpowder is subjected to the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique by an Empowered Badass Normal Butcher. Despite having told him everything and overall being one of their more innocuous opponents, Butcher beats him to death anyway for being a Supe (especially one who tried to kill him twice beforehand).
- A villain example happens in the one hundredth episode of Criminal Minds. After a brutal fight, George Foyet surrenders to Hotch once he realizes he's been overpowered. Hotch, however, doesn't acknowledge this and just keeps beating Foyet until he's dead. As Foyet is a particularly nasty serial killer who's been at large for years, escaped from prison once, has been stalking Hotch and his family for a year, just killed Hotch's ex-wife in cold blood, and only seconds prior was actively bragging about how he was also going murder Hotch's young son, who's present in the house at the time of the fight, killing Foyet through any means is truly his only course of action.
- Doctor Who:
- In "The Christmas Invasion", the Tenth Doctor thwarts an Alien Invasion and convinces them to leave the Earth alone, but Iron Lady Prime Minister Harriet Jones blows them out of the sky as they're retreating. In spite of the fact that they were Scary Dogmatic Aliens plotting to decimate the planet, the Doctor is outraged by this even though he himself said not to give second chances.
- As the Cliffhanger between the episodes of two-parter "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel", the Doctor and his companions encounter the Cybermen alongside a small team of freedom fighters. The Doctor, knowing that the Cybermen are Immune to Bullets, convinces the group to surrender and be taken to become Cybermen (or rather escape before then). Unfortunately, the Cybermen have already determined them to be dangerous elements that are to be deleted immediately, despite the Doctor's protests that they surrendered willingly. Fortunately, they manage to escape before they could be executed.
- A villainous example occurs in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier when a member of the terrorist organization called the Flag Smashers tries to surrender to John Walker a.k.a. U.S. Agent, who at the time was working as the official successor to Captain America. Unfortunately, John was blinded with rage at them killing his ally and he ignores his pleas for his life before brutally murdering him with the shield. Sam and Bucky Barnes have to break his arm just to get him to stand down, and the whole affair results in him being treated as a Fallen Hero as the once-adoring public now vilified him and he was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army as what he did technically constituted a war crime.
- In Game of Thrones, when the Ironborns try to surrender to the Boltons in exchange so they could leave the area unharmed, the Boltons end up killing or flaying them alive regardless.
- This happens Once an Episode in VR Troopers where JB will initiate the laser lance command, upon being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, the mutant stops charging/attacking and immediately surrenders, JB then ignores the surrender finishes off the mutant anyway. Some don't surrender and continue attacking, so ultimately their choice doesn't matter.
Video Games
- In Fallout: New Vegas's Honest Hearts DLC, if you side with Joshua Graham and fight the White Legs, their leader, Salt-Upon-Wounds, will surrender, but Joshua wants to kill him and the rest of his men anyway. You get to decide whether to play this trope straight by letting Joshua execute them, downplay it by having them fight you and Joshua to decide their fate, or subvert it by convincing Joshua to let them go (this option requires a very high Speech skill, though).
- Invoked in Ghost of Yōtei when using Atsu's "Onryo's Howl". Once it activates, nearby enemies will cower, while the player's current target will start begging for mercy. In this state, however, they are essentially a free kill.
- In Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, at the end of "Deathwish", Tony surrenders to the police after all of the other Fans are killed by the Son. Unfortunately, he surrenders to Manny Pardo, a Rabid Cop, and gets brutally shot in the head.
Web Comics
- The Order of the Stick:
- Towards the end of the first arc, after Xykon is (seemingly) destroyed, his goblin mooks attempt to surrender, but Belkar decides to keep picking them off for the XP.
- A variation occurred when Roy and Belkar are arrested for not having papers to enter the Empire of Blood. The two lawyers convince them to plead 'Guilty' so that they won't enrage the judge by being stalwart of their claim that they were innocent. However, this results in the judge sentencing Roy and Belkar to gladiatorial prison for life.
- After his attack on the Order of the Stick went south, Tarquin, attempting to maintain a vital role in Elan's plot, attempts to surrender to Elan so he can be taken prisoner and attempt to manipulate Elan from inside his cell. Elan doesn't accept his surrender, nor does he save his father from falling off the side of the airship, so Tarquin is left in the desert without knowing what role he plays in Elan's story.
- Unsounded: All of Vampire's men who end up captured or surrender in the final moments of the Foi-Hellick Affair are put in the same cart, which then ends up immolated by Lemuel to kill the one individual therein who killed his friend in battle and then taunted him. They all burn to death.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation, SCP-2273 ("Major Alexei Belitrov, of the Red Army's 22nd Armored Infantry Division")👁 Image
. While on a mission inside American territory, SCP-2273 ordered its fellow troops to surrender to the Americans so they could become POWs and not have to fight any more. Instead, the Americans cold-bloodedly murdered the surrendering soldiers but kept SCP-2273 alive for some reason.
Western Animation
- In Blinky Bill's third season, the eponymous koala himself faces this dilemma when he has to choose between putting his friends and family in danger by staying in Greenpatch, or performing in the circus unwillingly under the orders of Basil Circus. He tries to get him to put out the fire he had started, but he lets it burn toward his home while Blinky is stuck in a cage. Thankfully, his step-sister Nutsy comes to the rescue.
- In Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24th and One Half Century, after coming face to face with Gossamer, Dodgers willingly surrenders to Marvin the Martian. Unfortunately, Marvin isn't allowed to take prisoners (especially cowardly ones), and attempts to blast Dodgers if not for the Cadet.
- A Played for Laughs villainous example occurs in Invincible (2021) when Kill Cannon attempts to surrender to Mark in the middle of a fight, but Mark doesn't hear him and smashes him into a truck.
- In the first Wakfu OVA, Count Harebourg captures most of the Brotherhood of the Tofu, but orders them left unharmed as a favor to Amalia. Flopin and Elely attempt to rescue them, but their effort runs out of steam while attacking the mercenaries left as guards, and surrender on Evangelyne's advice. The mercenaries decide Harebourg's orders do not extend to the two siblings, despite being them being children, and attempt to throw them into a furnace.