King Edward Longshanks: Archers.
English Commander: I beg your pardon, sire, but won't we hit our own troops?
Longshanks: Yes. But we'll hit theirs as well. We have reserves. Attack.
English Commander: I beg your pardon, sire, but won't we hit our own troops?
Longshanks: Yes. But we'll hit theirs as well. We have reserves. Attack.
There are a lot of ways to have a character Kick the Dog or cross the Moral Event Horizon. In a war movie or battle sequence, if you want to show that a general, king, or commander is evil (really evil, not a Punch-Clock Villain and way beyond a Designated Villain), all you have to do is show their casual—if not complete—disregard for the lives of their own troops by either knowingly ordering them into certain slaughter or giving an order that directly results in their deaths. Retreat is, of course, forbidden; they expect Attack! Attack! Attack! without a second thought, and a Last Stand before retreat. (And they usually do it from perfect safety.) General Failure will often upgrade this from a last resort to their preferred tactic.
After a moment like this, the character might as well have asshole branded on their forehead. Bonus points if they refer to his troops as being trash or somehow subhuman, or if they do it not because they sincerely believe that doing this is necessary to win, but in pursuit of their own glory/making a name for themself. A We Have Reserves commander is very much a Bad Boss and a reason why there is such a high mortality rate among Redshirt Armies, Faceless Goons, Mooks, and the like.
Note that this does not have to be done strictly in a war setting, and works just fine if, say, the Big Bad or The Dragon decides to sacrifice someone in a Quirky Mini Boss Squad, or a small band of mooks. Employing this under such circumstances when they probably do not, in fact, have reserves, is a form of the Villain Ball.
Callousness is necessary for it to be a suitable Kick the Dog moment. A general who throws troops into a battle knowing they will all die but also knowing a victory here will save more lives can be pardoned for it if they show that they are aware of the cost (Drowning My Sorrows and Past Experience Nightmare are popular tropes for demonstrating that awareness). After all, one cannot get through a real war with zero casualties, and some number of losses must be accepted. The same thing applies to a commander of a stricken vessel who sometimes must seal off sections of a ship and doom the crew inside lest the entire ship is lost. An inexperienced officer who inadvertently does this may only be a moron or having a moment of panic while in command for the first time, and might still be redeemable if they show Character Development because of it or improves their tactics.
The likelihood that the troops of a commander who does this trope regularly would probably fold like wet paper on the battlefield (few are willing to get themselves almost certainly killed just because someone said so) should logically be an issue, though the likes of fighters being organisms led by a Hive Mind, cultures relying on sheer zealotry, or other rationales may address this. Robotic warriors likewise will often be depicted with little to no intelligence or sapience to prevent them from mindlessly marching forward into battle.
In more fantastical settings, most Necromancers and other undead-using sorts will gleefully send legions of their troops off to get re-killed, on the basis that no actual lives are being lost. Well, except for the enemy's. And that just adds to your own numbers. The dead do not kill, they recruit. (Depending on how the necromancy is represented, even the destroyed undead can be somewhat reconstituted.)
Sub-Trope of Wicked Wastefulness, which is about wastefulness in general being shown as evil. Compare Zerg Rush (where the opponent overwhelms you with sheer numbers), Cannon Fodder (a low-skill enemy with little planning that dies easily), Redshirt Army (when the good side employs this), Expendable Clone (where a character is their own reserves), and both Hammerspace Police Force and I Fought the Law and the Law Won (where law enforcement is the "reserves" in question). Also compare The Pawns Go First (when the formidable Big Bad sends out Mooks rather than engage in the fight himself). See also You Have Outlived Your Usefulness and You Have Failed Me for similar moments from a Bad Boss, and Gideon Ploy. Shoot the Messenger also relies on the Big Bad feeling that their mooks are completely expendable. Contrast Can't Kill You, Still Need You and Mook Depletion. The Neidermeyer is the most likely type of officer or leader particularly to use this tactic; Sergeant Rock and A Father to His Men (who may invoke The Men First) are at the opposite end of this scale. Subtrope of Quantity vs. Quality.
Examples:
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Blogs
- Hamster's Paradise: The harmsters reproduce in large numbers and mature quickly as a way of coping with a high mortality rate. It's the reason why they have such a severe Lack of Empathy towards their own kind as any of the sick or elderly can be easily replaced so they see no reason to care for them.
Comic Books
- Beast Wars: Uprising: The Builder Assembly, even facing very imminent death, are unable and unwilling to let go of this mentality, sending their last few troops still able to move to fight and die to hold the Resistance off just a little longer. When Ratbat tells Rodimus to have his troops pointlessly hold the line, Rodimus finally decides "screw you" and quits, taking his soldiers with him. This proves to be the smart idea, both for Rodimus, his troops, and the Resistance.
- Black Science: Peterson's dimensionaut team returns from a successful foray. During the debriefing, one of their finds breaks free and begins slaughtering the team. Mr Block seals the door instead of allowing them to escape or fighting back against the beast. He then calmly orders a backup team out on a new mission.
- Blake and Mortimer: Olrik's forces take heavy losses when they attack the British's secret base, much to the protest of one of his officers. Olrik brushes it off as they have plenty of reserves.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer: In the Season Eight "Retreat" storyline, Twilight allows his troops to be massacred by the three Wrathful Goddesses because he's curious to see the goddesses in action. When one of his subordinates calls him on it:
Twilight: They're mortals. Got to die sometime.
- Captain America: One storyline uses this trope to contrast a Card-Carrying Villain with a Noble Demon. When Baron Zemo sends waves of Hydra Mooks to get captured as a distraction while he breaks Codename: Bravo out of the Raft, Zemo comments that this is what Hydra Mooks are for, but Bravo replies that he respects the sacrifice of his soldiers.
- Fables: The comic shows a battle involving a General who states his willingness to sacrifice gladly a hundred thousand men to kill any one enemy, and who demonstrates this by piling corpses against the castle walls high enough for troops to climb all the way up and then taking one enemy's head before retreating.
- The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: In a short appended to one tale, Fat Freddy's Cat has a particularly successful campaign against the cockroaches that live under the oven. From memory, paraphrased:
Junior Officer: General, the entire brigade has been wiped out!
General: There's plenty more where they came from. - Harlem Heroes: The Siberian Wolves Aeroball team are suicidal in their gameplay tactics. It's telling that, in a sport requiring a minimum of seven players, with subs, they have over thirty.
- The Immortal Iron Fist: This is how Xao treats his Hydra underlings who also consider themselves expendable, calling themselves a Legion.
- Paranoia: Low-level Troubleshooters are seen as disposable meat shields by their superior officers. In issue #3, two dozen "cherries" (red-level troops) are ordered to charge an enemy position without any armor or weapons.
- Preacher: Herr Starr does this at least once, sending a US tank division against the Saint of Killers. Starr's reaction to them being butchered mercilessly by the guy who replaced the Angel of Death is to shrug, say that he didn't really expect it to work anyway, and call down a nuclear strike on the spot.
- Starr's former Bad Boss, D'Aronique, similarly ordered waves of his own men into certain death against the Saint. Although at least D'Aronique had no idea who the Saint was, his callousness to the deaths of his men is horrifying.
Grail Officer: Requesting permission to withdraw the next charge, sir.
D'Aronique: Denied. Instead you will lead it.
- Starr's former Bad Boss, D'Aronique, similarly ordered waves of his own men into certain death against the Saint. Although at least D'Aronique had no idea who the Saint was, his callousness to the deaths of his men is horrifying.
- The Punisher MAX: One particular arc sees Frank Castle tasked with infiltrating a nuclear missile base in Siberia and rescuing a six-year-old girl whose blood contains an experimental super virus. However, the mission goes awry and Frank has to fight his way out of the missile base. The Russian military's attempts at trying to prevent his escape amount to sending out as many conscripts as humanly possible in the hopes that it will work. It doesn't.
Frank Castle: Russian military never was too sentimental about spending lives.
(Frank finishes slaughtering the current wave of Russian troops)
Frank: I'm not too sentimental either. - The Red Star: Maya comments on how Command had always succeeded by sending more men to die, and they thought it would work this time, too.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Following the Genesis Wave arc botching his plans, Eggman resorts to his plan B of robotising the whole planet. The clincher in this however is that he knows that any machinery that cannot be robotised will explode on exposure, meaning almost certain destruction for all his enemies either way. Sally points out it's suicide as that would detonate all his own troops in the process, which Eggman shrugs off, noting with a Slasher Smile, there's no making an omelette "without cracking a few eggs". Even Sonic and Sally, who trash Eggman's goons in droves, are utterly repulsed by this.
- Superman:
- In Krypton No More, Superman and Supergirl fight a warrior alien race called the J'ai that has this mindset. They don't care for casualties because they reproduce very, very quickly.
- Inverted in Last Daughter of Krypton: Reign is a blood-thirsty Super Supremacist, but she cannot afford any of her three henchmen, which is because she reluctantly forfeits a battle when one of them gets poisoned.
- A Mind-Switch in Time: Euphor's reaction to his minions getting killed by their own powers is uttering "How tragic! Oh, well— There's more where they came from!" and transforming another person.
- Transformers: Generation 2: Played absolutely straight by Jhiaxus, in which his response to staggering losses is to throw another wave of troops into battle with the Warworld and the Swarm.
- Unknown Soldier: One story features Col. "Bloody" Barton, who has such disregard for the lives of his men that his tank squadron is about to mutiny.
- X-Wing Rogue Squadron: In the arc "Battleground: Tatooine", the Imperial captain Semtin heads to Ryloth after a criminal he wants; the Rogues follow. The relative sheltering this criminal, bribed by both sides, decides to have them compete in a not-quite Combat by Champion to see who gets him, and the Rogues impress the judge
◊, but the Imperials did fulfill the stated goal. Plus, Semtin bribed the judge, snuck in and grabbed the criminal, and fled with him, abandoning fourteen seasoned troopers on Ryloth, where they faced being sold into slavery. The troopers, who gained a great deal of respect for the Rogues during the contest, immediately pull a Heel–Face Turn and go after Semtin, who had this to say before he was shot.
Semtin: I told you the mission would involve sacrifices! You should be willing to give up your very life for your Emperor!
Sixtus: For the Empire, yes! For the personal gain of its officials... never! - X-Men: In Days of Future Past (1981), Sentinels don't care how many you kill. Destroy one Sentinel, destroy a hundred, a thousand, it does not matter. Their number is overwhelming.
Fan Works
- Arai-san Mansion:
- In Chapter 19, a Giant Otter sacrifices herself while dealing with an Anomalous Giant Otter, and is turned into flowers upon being stabbed. Shortly after, dozens of the Otter Exploration Squad show up and beat it up, but it turns out there are more Anomalous Otters.
- In Chapter 35 one of the Otters gets stuck in the Portal Picture. Others just leave a bottle rat and some food on the floor, register a loss and move on. She manages to escape and decides to leave the building altogether.
- Blood Lord Issei (Rewrite): One of the major advantages of the Azrallian Empire is their numbers. They could lose 1 million men, and still not be crippled. By the time Chapter 36 rolls about, Amaterasu is left dumbfounded that they have to deal with 400 million Azrallians after several large defeats, with Susanoo admitting that between the disasters and the rot of dissent, combined with Issei ordering his forces to provide aid and relief to the humans Amaterasu abandoned, they have around 500,000 defenders to call up at best.
- The Dissonance of The Earthling Saiyan: Subverted by Aqua as the head of the remaining Resistance Army forces. While the previous leaders of the Red Ribbon Army and Resistance Army were prone to sending out squads of soldiers into situations they knew they had no chance of winning, Aqua sees this as a waste of resources and refuses to allow her underlings to do it.
Unnamed Soldier:: Major! The fighter jets are set and-
Aqua: Seriously. How dumb can y'all be? They take down those things like how we would swat a fly. No form of vehicle can do anything against them.
Unnamed Soldier: Oh.
Aqua: And please. Stop sending so many soldiers out there. It's suicidal. The population is low enough. - Dungeon Keeper Ami has most Keepers using this strategy. Their minions know it, but they go along with it anyway. Subverted for Keeper Mercury, who cares about the wellbeing of her employees. Double Subverted with Mercury's ice golems, since she can just make new ones whenever she runs out of them.
- HZD Terraforming Base-001 Text Communications Network: Sylens mentions that the Eclipse dealt with rule-breaking on their own text network very simply: They killed the offenders.
Sylens: They had more loyal officers than they had Focuses. From their perspective, the math was simple.
- Invaders of Irk: Seems to be the attitude Tallest Spork has, with him pointing out just how massive the Irken military is nowadays. Deconstructed slightly by the High Council who, while they do see the point, are well aware that kind of attitude will only bite the Irken Empire in the long run, especially considering just how many races they have yet to conquer.
- Invader Zim: A Bad Thing Never Ends: Lex has no problem using his DIR units as body shields or cannon fodder, smugly noting that the "D" stands for "Disposable", and that he has plenty of them to throw around.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness shows this side of Fairy Tale:
- Kiria's plan in Act III, which involved infecting dozens, if not hundreds, of his agents with Blackheart and then sending them back in time. Between Blackheart's one-hour time limit before it kills the infected and the life-stealing cost of Chrono Displacement after twenty-four hours, those minions were doomed no matter what.
- In Act VII, Xia-Long casually talks about all of the "peons" they've had to sacrifice to feed Kurumu's clone while he's watching her rape a scientist he brought to her for just that to death. Then, when Moka's Ax-Crazy clone breaks free, he throws a soldier to her to save his own worthless hide before dialing up the others and telling them to send ALL of their henchmen down to try to contain her.
- Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K:
- The Separatists created an army of Robot Soldiers and Mecha-Mooks specifically so they could be replaced quickly and cheaply, allowing them to drown the enemy in a tide of bodies.
- The Republic struggles to keep itself from viewing its Clone Troopers in the same light, largely because, while they can be manufactured in short periods and large quantities, they're both more expensive than droids and they take much longer to produce.
- The Invading Refugees from the Imperium are struggling to get out of this mindset, as they no longer have the trillions upon trillions of Imperial Guard reserves to draw replacements from.
- Tarkin's Fist: The New Empire only has the man power it brought with it, and has no means of reinforcing those numbers. The Earth capitalizes on this by taking advantage of the one resource they have to spare; their larger population. The Chinese Army resorts to human wave attacks in their assaults on Imperial positions. The American Army in the Siege of Las Vegas hugs the Imperial frontline as tightly as possible, causing extensive casualties on the American side. Justified as this prevents the Empire's ships from bombing the American positions without killing their own troopers.
- The Unbroken King: Maeron's combat strategy relies on utilising his hordes of barbarian followers to wear down his enemies' defences, before dispatching the well-trained bannermen of his allied lords to mop up what is left. Ultimately though, it turns out this attitude extends to everybody, as Maeron just loves war and destruction for its own sake, and doesn't even care if he wins.
- White Sheep (RWBY): Young Grimm (especially those spawned from the Fertile Blood of Jaune and his sisters) are basically mindless, barely even animals. Therefore, while Jaune and the others don't like doing so, they don't lose much sleep over sacrificing young Grimm in droves. When Jaune threatens to destroy Atlas in order to get Yang back, Ironwood immediately realizes that all their incredible military technology will count for little but delaying the inevitable—Jaune has more Grimm than Atlas has bullets.
Live-Action TV
- Andromeda: The Magog employ this tactic, as their worldship has trillions of them and billions of swarm ships. Lampshaded in the first episode of season two:
Rommie: We have driven off the first wave of Magog assault ships.
Dylan: Yeah, but the Magog can always send more. Magog suck. - Subverted on the game show Beat the Geeks. In the first season, part of the Rules Spiel in the second round was a warning to the titular Geeks that they could be removed from the show and replaced if their performance slipped. However, this never happened in either of that show's two seasons.
- Blackadder: This is outright stated to be the entire basis of British tactics in the First World War. Bonus Bastard Points for the instructions, "Climb out of the trench and walk very slowly towards the enemy," the phrase "Operation Certain Death", the apparent fact that it's taken Field Marshall Haig three years to realise that, "Everyone gets killed in the first ten seconds," and the portrayal of Haig formulating his battle plans in the last episode by setting up toy soldiers on a table and sweeping them off. It is best to avoid making comparisons between this fictional portrayal and the real-life Haig.
- In the very first episode of the first series which also criticized the craziness of war there is King Richard III who despite not being as bad in this version as in the Shakespearean one, he is still ruthless enough to be pretty casual about the lives that will be lost, calling them arrow fodder and even willing to send his nephew there because he didn't like him.
- Buffyverse:
- Spike and Holland Manners give speeches to the respective protagonists about how evil works like this: that every apocalypse they prevent will surely be followed by another one and that they have an unlimited number of soldiers on their side, all who need just one good day to kill them.
- In "Hero", Doyle describes the Scourge as such. People fight back against them all the time, but their members fully believe in their cause and are willing to die for it.
Angel: Hard to fight fanatics.
Doyle: More like impossible. - When the three wrathful goddesses are unleashed by the Slayer army against Twilight's soldiers, the general immediately wants to retreat. Twilight tells him no since he wants to see what the goddesses will do to the soldiers.
- In "Selfess", after killing one of his own, D'Hoffyrn says there are many Woman Scorned out there, so he will always have more vengeance demons.
- Quentin's view on Slayers.
- In "Chosen", the First Evil isn't too concerned when Buffy kills Caleb, its Dragon, for this reason.
The First: You killed him right and proper. Terrible loss. This man was my good right arm. 'Course, it don't pain me too much; don't need an arm. Got an army.
- Doctor Who:
- Like most tropes, this shows up, sometimes on the Planet of Hats. "Dalek" has a human example: Henry van Statten seems less concerned with his guards than he is with a certain relic they're fighting for their lives against. Subverted Trope: The foolishness of this begins to dawn on him when he orders them to take the relic alive, only to realize that nobody's left to take the order.
- Chillingly invoked in the Fourth Doctor story "State of Decay", when the guard commander asks his vampire lord to send his bat familiars to help stave off the mounting rebellion.
Aukon: I have need of them. The guards must hold the Tower to the last man.
Habris: We are outnumbered. Unless you aid us, we shall all be killed.
Aukon: (Aukon looks straight into Habris's eyes) Then die. That is the purpose of guards. Go!
- Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: Implied with Lesley, the woman in the attic. When Yellow Guy accidentally destroys their figurine of Duck, they open up a cabinet containing a bunch of copy figurines of the characters and quickly switch him out. Considering that they can seemingly control where the characters go through the figurines, and one version of Duck had been killed in Episode 2, this seems to indicate that she can easily switch the characters out for duplicates when the situation calls for it.
- Elementary: In season 5, Shinwell explains to Sherlock his relationship with his gang SBK started with one of their lieutenants taking him in and giving him a purpose. Then he helped find young men in need of a place and guidance, and inducted them into the gang. Then when he did time for the upper bosses, he saw the young men who he "gave a purpose to" coming into prison soon too. And the ones they recruited. And so on. Shinwell realizes from this to the top brass of the gang, there will always be some desperate kid who they can mold into a useful tool but discard when need be.
- The Expanse:
- The series takes place in the future, and humanity has colonized Mars, which has since broken away from Earth and become a military rival. There’s a cold war between the two planets and a delicate balance of power; everyone knows that the Martian navy has the technological advantage over Earth’s fleet, but Earth has so many more ships and soldiers that in an all-out war it’s still likely that Earth would prevail. However, both sides are also aware of the limitations of this trope; as of the start of the series, it’s estimated that in another 5-10 years Mars will have expanded its navy enough that it will negate Earth’s numerical advantage. For that reason Warhawks on Earth want a chance to go to war and subjugate Mars before that day can come... sure enough when open war breaks out between the two planets Earth relies on this strategy. The cost to both sides is devastating and the conflict is still hanging in the balance when the various protagonists manage to bring the fighting to a stop.
- This is also in effect in the very first battle of the series. Captain Yao, commander of the Donnager, (one of the most advanced and powerful Martian warships) confidently predicts that the fleet of mystery stealth ships that seem bent on attacking the Donnager are engaging in a Suicide Mission by even trying to take them on. One-on-one she'd be right; as advanced as the stealth ships are, they are absolutely no match for the Donnager without a major numerical advantage. However, there are at least six of the stealth ships and they just keep coming and coming despite their losses, and bit by bit they beat down the Donnager until the Martian ship can no longer effectively fight back.
- Game of Thrones:
- Robb Stark's first major battle is won after he lures Tywin Lannister away with a tenth of his force knowing that this tenth is certain to be slaughtered. Robb does this because he knows that with Tywin's army distracted he can overwhelm the smaller army led by Tywin's son Jaime.
- In a possible Shout-Out to the Trope Namer, Ramsay Bolton (the main human villain of seasons 5 and 6) orders his archers to fire volleys into the battlefield where his cavalry are engaging Jon Snow's smaller, ragtag army. This serves two purposes: first, as Jon's army is half the size of Ramsay's, Jon's side can't suffer the losses while he can. Second, the dead from both sides also form a wall of corpses, which is then used to box Jon's army in and leave them with no escape when Ramsay sends in a second wave, this time made up of heavy infantry, which comes very close to completely wiping out Jon's army. However, the use of this trope ultimately dooms him, since his volleys wipe out his cavalry, leaving his infantry helpless when mounted reinforcements sent by the Vale arrive to aid the good guys.
- While power is measurable by many standards, no other family can match House Tyrell for sheer numbers. The Reach is the breadbasket of Westeros, so it can sustain a large population of people and animals (like horses). The Tyrells, by themselves, can muster about 15,000 men, cavalry and infantry, meaning that (given feudal economies), they probably hold personal fief (i.e. have no other vassals between them) over at least 100,000 peasants. And then you throw their bannermen into the mix...Much like real-life France (which they're sort of an expy for) the Reach has twice the numbers as the next largest kingdom, but they've also got twice as many hostile borders, facing the Westerlands, the Stormlands, Dorne, and a close ocean border with the Iron Islands (most other kingdoms only border two other major ones, i.e. the Stormlands border the Reach and Dorne) so the advantage evens out. Moreover, they don't have many major defensive boundaries with their neighbors: the mountains of the Westerlands, and the Red Mountains of Dorne, are a barrier to invasion by the Reach but not the other way around. The Mander River runs east-west instead of north-south, so it does not present a strong defense against invasion from the Stormlands.
- House Lannister musters 60,000 men when the hostilities begin and every time the Starks and the Tullys shatter a Lannister host (which happens in several battles), they just raise another. When the Tyrells come into the war on the Lannisters' side this is literally true, since the Reach is (in terms of area) the largest region of Westeros after the sparsely-populated North, as well as the most fertile and densely populated. Best summed up by the opposition in Season 3: Edmure Tully tells Robb Stark that they've been inflicting more Lannister casualties than they've taken, but the angry retort is "WE NEED OUR MEN MORE THAN TYWIN NEEDS HIS!" Of course, even though they've won the war, the heavy casualties ended up being proportionately high enough to leave them tapped for manpower and weakened for garrisoning Westeros.
- Stannis gives a rare heroic version of this in Blackwater, emphasizing not his callousness but the need to take King's Landing to depose Joffrey and install Stannis, the rightful king, despite the cost. Also subverted, in that Stannis truly does not have reserves. He's all-in at Blackwater and struggles to raise a new host after his defeat.
Imry Florent: We're too far from the gates... the fire... their archers. Hundreds will die.
Stannis: Thousands.
- The Great: An angry Peter tells the Swedish King that there's 12 million Russians, and he'd gladly lose 4 million of them to kill 2 million Swedes.
- The Man in the High Castle: When the Nazi German leadership is planning an imminent nuclear attack on the Japanese Empire, their analysts predict heavy loss of life in the American territories especially during the first stages of the war, in the order of tens of millions. Himmler dismisses these losses as acceptable since the Americans are a "late addition" to the expanded Nazi empire.
- The first episode of season 3 of The Musketeers opens with the musketeers at the front of the war with Spain, and Athos arguing with a general who wants them to keep charging at the enemy despite the fact the Spanish have cannon and they don't.
- NCIS: An interesting variation of this happened in the episode "Chimera": during the investigation aboard the ship they weren't allowed to know about. After they recover the nuclear weapon and leave, a cruise missile blows up the secret ship.
Ziva: How did they know we got off the ship?
Gibbs: Don't think they did - On Nikita, Ryan is in the command center when word comes of a Division agent being captured. Ryan immediately orders a team to start putting together a rescue plan only to find them staring at him as if he's speaking Martian. Amanda coldly tells Ryan "Division doesn't do rescues" as he realizes that Division always sees their agents as totally expendable (the first realization to him of how rogue the agency has become).
- Red Dwarf: For all Rimmer's obsession with war and military strategy, the one time he leads an army consisting entirely of wax droids, he has almost all of them charge across a minefield under cover of daylight as a distraction while Kryten and Mother Theresa infiltrate the enemy headquarters to take out Hitler and co. The nun dies, but Kryten manages to rig the thermostat to melt all of the wax droids. As a result, Rimmer's actions wipe out everyone on the planet. When he claims that the menace that plagued the planet has been vanquished, Lister counters with "No it's not. You're still here."
- Revolution: In episode 3, the Monroe militia captain Jeremy Baker's squad has besieged the rebels' hideout. The militia was armed with primitive weapons, while rebels got their hands on an advanced sniper rifle. His solution: hope that the sniper would run out of ammo before the militia ran out of men. While Baker never had any formal military training, he had spent the last 10+ years as a soldier so should have learned basic military tactics.
- Robin of Sherwood: In one episode, when Robin Hood threatens to kill some of his Mooks, the Sheriff coldly replies: "Soldiers have a way of dying; it's an occupational hazard."
- Smallville: One episode had a teaser sequence with Lex Luthor testing his latest experiment. The test involves the Super-Soldier charging down a hallway, killing mooks, breaking into a heavily fortified room, and assassinating a target. When it's over, what does Luthor say with glee? "Get fresh guards... I wanna see him do it again."
- The Sopranos: Played for Laughs in "Johnny Cakes" when the Protection Racket gives up trying to extort a franchise coffee shop after their Shame If Something Happened threat just makes the manager reply that he has no discretionary funds to pay for the "security" service they're offering, that any attempt to vandalize or destroy the store would barely even get noticed by corporate because they have close to ten thousand stores in North America alone, and that his bosses can easily replace him if he were to cooperate with The Mafia or give them anything. (And implicitly the same would happen to the next person who replaced him, and the one after that, and so on.) As the mobsters realize the sheer magnitude of the organization they're up against, they walk away empty handed and bemoan how hopelessly out of their depth they are against corporate America.
- The Grand Finale of Spartacus: War of the Damned pays homage to Braveheart. Marcus Crassus orders catapults and ballista to be fired into the melee, and when Julis Ceasar protests that they'll hit their own men, Crassus counters that they have reserves and he is tired of this war. Spartacus actually anticipated this, and has Gannicus and Saxa lead a cavalry charge to take the artillery and turn it against the Romans.
- Star Trek:
- In Star Trek: The Original Series, Kirk and Spock subtly accuse Lokai of having slipped into this mentality in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" — Lokai saying they won't put where their money where their mouth is — how they won't "fight or die" for the justice he asks.
Captain Kirk: After so many years of leading the fight, you seem very much alive.
Spock: I doubt that the same can be said for many of his followers. - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- The Vorta Keevan gives the heroes his battle plan because being taken prisoner would be better for him than being stranded and wounded with a bunch of Super Soldiers about to go Ax-Crazy from withdrawal. Particularly nasty since his soldiers are warned that they've been betrayed, but are too loyal themselves to disobey. And the genetically engineered Jem'Hadar were programmed to see themselves as disposable, all willing to attain victory for their gods The Founders at any cost.
- One Jem'Hadar mentioned that they are combat-ready days after their "births" and managing to live to twenty makes a Jem'Hadar an honored elder. In the 2,000-year history of the Dominion, no Jem'Hadar has ever lived to be thirty, (though that might have a different explanation).
- The Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager have no regard for the lives of individual drones, any more than a human would fret over the loss of a few cells. If they die, the Collective learns from their deaths and adapts, making those that remain less likely to die and more likely to assimilate those that felled their comrades.
- The Borg Queen takes this to idiotic heights in "Unimatrix Zero". When Voyager's antics have resulted in a small fraction of the Collective being freed from her control, she tries to coerce Janeway into helping her rectify it by self-destructing Cubes filled with thousands of drones just to kill one or two in each ship. Janeway logically pointed out that she'd have to blow up the entire Collective to get them all with that strategy, so she changed tactics.
- The ship the Borg children were found on was infected by an unknown pathogen. When the children relayed this information, the Collective promptly severed their link and left them for dead, deeming the pathogen too great a risk to consider rescuing a few incomplete drones and a half-functioning vessel.
- This is Primarch Ruhn of the Breen Imperium's approach in Star Trek: Discovery, heedless of how many Breen lives he sacrifices as long as it gets him closer to what he wants. It doesn't quite get him killed by his own men, but they don't exactly complain when Moll does it.
- In Star Trek: The Original Series, Kirk and Spock subtly accuse Lokai of having slipped into this mentality in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" — Lokai saying they won't put where their money where their mouth is — how they won't "fight or die" for the justice he asks.
Music
- Referenced in the Union version of The American Civil War song "Battle Cry of Freedom":
We'll fill the vacant ranks with a million Free Men more!
- Metallica's "Disposable Heroes":
Back to the front / You will do what I say, when I say "Back to the front." You will die when I say, when I say "Back to the front." / You coward, you servant, you blind man, back to the front.
Podcasts
- Plumbing the Death Star: In "How Would You Use The Suicide Squad", Zammit hopes to put the suicide back in Suicide Squad (2016) by sending the squad into areas humans haven't explored because of how dangerous they are. The logic is that eventually one of the squad members will survive and be able to further the sciences with their discoveries; even if the entire Suicide Squad is killed on their adventures into the unknown, odds are Batman will have used that time to capture even more supervillains to put on the squad.
Theme Parks
- Star Trek: The Experience: Invoked by the Borg Queen in "Borg Invasion 4D," when Janeway expresses disbelief that she'd self-destruct the Borg cube to kill the ride visitors.
"You're a fool, Janeway. There will always be more drones."
Web Animation
- Humourously spoofed in Cheat Commandos when Gunhaver shows absolutely no concern for the safety of the "Green Helmets":
Silent Rip: Uh, shouldn't we go help him?
Gunhaver: Naw, he's just one of those Green Helmets. We've got, like, fifty of them. - DEATH BATTLE!: Bowser Vs. Eggman gives a deconstruction. The entirety of his forces being mass-produced robots, Eggman sees all his creations (except Sage and Metal Sonic) as fodder to be sacrificed how and whenever he sees fit. Bowser, on the other hand, cares for the wellbeing of his own troops and looks out for them. At the climax, Eggman has destroyed his entire army when he had the Death Egg fired upon the battlefield, meaning he’s stands alone against Bowser who still has troops behind him because he protected them from the blast.
- In Red vs. Blue, this is the attitude of Felix. A mercenary at heart and an Ax-Crazy bastard in his soul, Felix has no problems letting soldiers under his command die to suit his purposes. "Fewer people, bigger cuts". Ultimately, this costs the Space Pirates the battle for Chorus on two fronts; One, the Space Pirates lose so many men that their remaining forces are stretched thin, allowing the heroes to prevail. And two, his attitude eventually disgusts his Consumate Professional partner Locus so much that he has a Heel Realization and turns on him.
- Tales From My D&D Campaign:
- The evil Kua-Toa rely heavily on vast legions of expendable aquatic Slave Mooks to keep their Enemy Civil War going.
- Also inverted in the case of the Verandi invasion. The chief reason why the startling amount of resistance the humans put up was so aggravating to the Kua leadership was that the Kua are the only race that can breathe both air and water, meaning that they couldn't use their armies of expendable slaves, and were instead getting large numbers of actual Kua killed trying to hold on to their foothold.
Webcomics
- Brawl in the Family has a comic that shows the contrast between the Fire Emblem tactician and the Advance Wars one. The former focuses on his troops' continued survival (being in a video game where any one of the unique units can die), while the latter encourages aggressive tactics without caring about his troops' casualties because he "can always buy more troops." The full comic can be seen here.
- Dragon Ball Multiverse: Bojack's gang was composed of twenty-seven members when it was formed, according to Bujin; according to the novelization, this is the reason why there were only five members left when they met the Z-Warriors.
- Erfworld: Prince Ansom uses this against Parson in the first book and nearly succeeds, although Parson is very good at exploiting the weaknesses of this strategy. In the end, however, Parson can only defeat the Ansom's forces completely by having his Dirtamancer and Croackamancer (meaning his earth elementalist and necromancer) work together to reanimate the dead volcano they're in. This ends up destroying both armies. It leads to a long What Have I Done period for Parson.
- The Order of the Stick: As the Evil Overlord Card-Carrying Villain Xykon is a very Bad Boss, he and his Dragons and allies do it repeatedly. A few examples:
- Xykon responds to a group of his ogres demanding to be paid by killing them and turning them into zombies.
- Xykon's Dragon Redcloak, who is a goblin, takes over a very large group of hobgoblins after he succeeds in Challenging the Chief. (Well, sorta). Since goblins have a long-running feud with hobgoblins, Redcloak feels little hesitation about giving the hobgoblins dangerous orders likely to result in many of them dying. First he orders a group of hobgoblin mooks up a dangerous trail so they would cause an avalanche that would kill them and ensure the safety of the others following after them. Later rather than trying to kill a potentially dangerous guard monster, he sends in troops armed only with garnish clubs and cracker shields against it, so it will fall asleep after eating them. And during the Siege of Azure City, he orders a human-wave style attack against the fortified walls, obviously not caring about the fate of the hobgoblins at all... until one of them dies saving Redcloak's life, at which point he realizes what he's been doing, reacts with horror at what he is becoming and promptly stops the wasteful spending of lives.
- In the Azure City siege, the death knight has hobgoblins throw themselves at the wall and die by the hundreds so that their bodies will create a ramp he can ride up.
- In a bonus strip from No Cure For the Paladin Blues, Xykon kills a mook who has succeeded in slaying a dragon, because the XP the mook gained from this elevates him beyond a simple mook now—and also makes it possible for Xykon, as a high-level caster who rarely faces a threat that will still give him any XP, to get just a bit of XP that he wouldn't get for killing an unleveled mook.
- Outsider: The Umiak can replace their losses, both of ships and of troops, with extreme ease. As such, their battle tactics tend to revolve heavily around mass sacrifice of expendable troops, either to tie up the powerful Loroi vessels while more valuable assets maneuver into place or to attempt to tear through Loroi lines with brute force, and never mind the cost. They also think nothing of extremely risky maneuvers such as attempting a "deep jump" into the Leido star system, which potentially cost them large numbers of ships by having them overshoot and land into the system's central star, if it lets them gain a tactical advantage over the Loroi.
- Terra (2009): The UEC General Cole Winters orders the Jolly Roger Squadron to launch an airstrike against a major Resistance base with no backup and no hope of rescue if they survive being shot down. Since they're that good, they pull it off with only minor losses (two fighters destroyed, with one crew of two Red Shirts killed and the other crew ejecting safely and being rescued by the Resistance to become part of the main cast).
- Terra Incognita (2023):
- Sergeant Rorick points out that Captain Palmer doesn't expect his own life to be among those endangered in the suicidal defense of the base Palmer is ordering, but Palmer brushes him off. Of course Rorick was also trying to point out that Palmer's life would end up on the line too, but Palmer is too arrogant and angry that Rorick would try to contradict him to listen.
- General Winters is famous for his cold tactics which endanger and kill many of his own troops, yet since these tactics are often successful he's become one of the highest ranked and most politically powerful members of the UEC military.
- Tower of God: In "Hell Train — Three Orders", Maschenny Jahad leads an attack against Ha Jinsung. While she herself could fight him on even terms, she brings a small army of flying ships with her and has them fire on him first — and then casually watches him obliterate half of them in one attack. Turns out she wants to talk to him under the cover of fighting.
Websites
- SCP Foundation: The titular organization will willfully sacrifice hundreds of its D-Class personnel when observing SCPs. many of which die in cruel and painful manners, and even if they do survive over a month they get executed anyway. Don't feel too sorry for the D-Class personnel, though — the Foundation recruits them from death row convicts, i.e. murderers and rapists, to ensure a supply of expendable, unsympathetic Red Shirts for its experiments. The idea that they're all killed at the end of the month has since fallen out of favor and the trope itself is listed as an SCP to justify the inconsistency.
- Serina:
- Porplets survive against predators by sacrificing other members of their group to them, in particular the seastrikers. Such is their self-preservation instinct that they only rarely defend other members of the group from predators, as having a certain percentage of the young, sick, and old die is considered safer than risking the whole group. They can afford this strategy because they're also capable of reproducing very quickly.
- Over 50% of the adult dancing dunce population, mainly males, dies during their mating season, due to a combination of predation and dying soon after mating. This mass die-off serves the purpose of clearing resources for the females and young, and distracting predators with easy meals, as male dancing dunces lose all sense when they're in a mating frenzy. It's noted that the stormveld's high productivity as an ecosystem is what makes such massive die-offs (often reaching into the millions) viable as a survival strategy.
Web Videos
- This is Freeza's MO in Dragon Ball Z Abridged. While he does show concern for his higher-level men (even planning to send gifts to the Ginyu Force's family), his lower-level men... not so much. In his first on-screen attack, he shows indifference when the Namekians are slaughtering his troops, but panics when they start targeting his equipment. Once he reaches Earth, he even kills his last henchman for no real reason. This infuriates his father not because of the loss of life or the senselessness of it, but because now they have no one to fly them home (flying is for the help). At least some of his men seem to have picked up this mentality as well, as demonstrated when Vegeta plays The Force Unleashed, and uses stormtroopers as projectiles. At one point, he holds off on killing a Wookie simply because he finds it amusing when they attack stormtroopers.
- In Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, the Major laughs off hearing that his forces are getting eaten up, because they're Nazis.
- Mahu: The Biluan Mind uses this tactic quite often, both when it comes to its armies and its fleets. Driven by their need to consume, they care little about losses, to the point where worker and half-formed drones are used as cannon fodder.
- Spoiler Warning found it amusing that this is a common way to deal with Combine tripmines in Half-Life 2, and started quoting the examples from Shrek 1, Cheat Commandos, and Futurama.
- In Sword Art Online Abridged, a raid leader reads the beta tester's strategy guide for a floor boss out loud. Since the boss will throw wave after wave of monsters at them, the players are advised to... "respond in kind." (To be fair to the beta testers, Aincrad wasn't a Deadly Game when the guide was written, so murdering players was, at worst, a dick move)
- Vision of Escaflowne Abridged: Duke Freid when his men are outnumbered on the battlefield.
Duke Fried: Sergeant
Cannon FodderCanaan-Föder, how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
Canaan-Föder: I... I don't know, sir.
Duke Fried: That's easy, you don't! You just keep sending wave after wave of men to their deaths! Now, call in the reserves — we're having a good old-fashioned troop surge!- Inverted in that as soon as he says it, his own men shoot him in the back with an arrow volley.
Canaan-Föder: How does it feel to be the last man to die for a mistake, asshole?
- Inverted in that as soon as he says it, his own men shoot him in the back with an arrow volley.
Western Animation
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender, after speaking out against a general's plan to callously sacrifice a unit of freshly-recruited troops, not only does Prince Zuko get half his face burned off, but he gets banished and sent on a Snipe Hunt, too.
- In Batman: The Animated Series, Tony Zucco — the extortionist who set up the "accident" that killed Dick Grayson's parents — shoots at Batman with a Tommy gun, even though multiple Mooks are likely to be hit as well and beg him not to.
- During the Beast Wars, Megatron only had a handful of troops and could not afford to let them die on a whim. However, by the time of the sequel series Beast Machines, Megatron had hordes of Vehicons. So many that the Maximals tore dozens into scrap metal every battle without making a dent in his overall forces.
- In the Birdman (1967) episode "Meets Birdgirl", while Birdman is fighting Birdgirl, her boss Doctor Mentaur orders his minion to fire hydrogen "shells" (bombs) at them, even after being warned that the bombs will hit Birdgirl too.
- Futurama: Played for Laughs with Zapp Brannigan, who in his own words sent "wave after wave" of his own men against the Killbots, knowing that they had set limit humans to kill before shutting down. This was apparently seen as a perfectly viable strategy ("Kif, show them the medal I won!"). In a Deleted Scene from "Love's Labors Lost in Space", a single Killbot is shown to have a kill limit of 999,999.
- He seems to love this tactic; he's also done it with ships.
Brannigan: On my command, all ships will line up and file directly into the enemy death cannons, clogging them with wreckage!
- His men are well aware of this.
Brannigan: Whatever your mission is, I'm willing to put wave after wave of men at your disposal. Right, men?
[complete silence from the entire mess hall]
Voice in the back: You suck! - And he's not above doing so with kids, either:
Brannigan: Now, assuming the fifteenth pile of children buys us a few seconds...
- He seems to love this tactic; he's also done it with ships.
- In Generator Rex, White Knight is a particularly Jerky example because not only does he sacrifice the Redshirts and tell them to their face that he was doing so, he says that they themselves should be aware of that by now, and should therefore not be offended.
- The Penguins of Madagascar: In "Dr. Blowhole's Revenge", the titular villain threatens the penguins with his nearly endless supply of minions: "So what if they cut down ten, twenty lobsters? We've got MORE LOBSTERS!" His lobster minions pause in their cheering at that statement and look a little worried. King Julien however has a similar approach to tactics and doesn't look concerned at all.
- ReBoot: The bigger Megabyte's army gets, the more okay he becomes with sacrificing them for "the cause", which gets demonstrated when he has Hexadecimal open a hole in the newly erected firewall so he can send an entire fleet of ABCs through to atack the Principal Office. The ABCs are immediately shot to peices by the Principal Office defenses, and when the survivors attempt to return to base, Megabyte has Hex close the hole in an attempt to prevent himself from being shot, sealing the fate of those still outside.
- At the start of the second season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Catra has settled into the strategy of using this trope with Entrapta's robot mooks as the reserves in question. Catra reasons that after having nearly conquered Bright Moon at the end of the first season, the waves of robots will keep the princesses busy and on the defensive, allowing the Horde to take or consolidate other territories. Although initially this is somewhat successful, the season shows the strategy is ultimately ineffective; Adora gradually starts mastering the powers of She-Ra, and as the princesses start working together it becomes easier for them to fight off the robots. Meanwhile, while Catra may not be losing actual soldiers, the show averts Easy Logistics by showing that it does take a lot of resources to make those robots in such large numbers, and the Fright Zone soon becomes dangerously low on those resources. Some units are so undersupplied as a result that they actually refuse to go into battle.
- Star Wars:
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: This is the basis of General Krell's leadership method, due in part to his disdain toward clone troopers. While he does have a history of achieving victory, this comes at the cost of his casualty rates — as Fives notes, more clone troopers have died under Krell's command than from any other Jedi. He also attempts this with the 501st in Anakin's absence, although it's later discovered by the clones that Krell was a traitor all along, and was purposefully devising incompetent strategies designed to get as many clones killed as possible.
- Star Wars Rebels: Grand Admiral Thrawn has a reputation for being willing to sacrifice any number of troops to achieve his goals; in fact, the battle that got him promoted had more civilian deaths than rebels. However, while he is willing to spend lives, he hates wasting lives. He goes to some extremes to preserve not only as many of his allies as possible but also his enemies. After all, captured enemies can be interrogated. Furthermore, the civilian deaths he is supposedly responsible for were actually the fault of an Imperial civilian who screwed up his plan. Thrawn was actually incensed about the whole thing.
- In the Superman: The Animated Series episode where Aquaman appears, when Lex Luthor is told that his move would result in the deaths of several employees, he replies that their families will receive compensation.