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Decapitation Strike
- 382 statements
- 71 feature instances
- 41 referencing feature instances
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It's no secret that often, all that's needed to end a struggle is to get rid of the enemy's leadership — effectively decapitating the opposing organization. Military strategists, royal heirs, mafiosi, and putschists all can attest to that. While cornering and killing the Big Bad or their Dragon can already have a devastating effect on the entire Empire, there is a certain charm and effectiveness to ensuring that many — if not all — leaders of any importance are assembled in one place, so they can all be taken out of commission in one fell swoop. Whereas killing one character might put the enemy operation at great risk, a Decapitation Strike renders the very idea of its continuation all but impossible. Will occasionally, but not always, result in a surprise successor ascending the helm. It's also a very popular device during The Coup. May often take place at a Nasty Party or Board to Death. Note that this trope can just as likely occur by nobody's hands, and easily be triggered by either force majeure (such as, say, an earthquake) or just a tragic Contrived Coincidence. Compare to its Supertrope Decapitated Army, its sister tropes — The Purge and Straight for the Commander — and the subtrope, Ruling Family Massacre (which restricts itself to actual royal families). A Keystone Army may be affected in this way. If this happens to the villainous faction, it will frequently lead to a Evil Power Vacuum. Literal decapitating attacks without the domino effect fall under Off with His Head!, a related but different trope. Since this is very much a Death Trope, there will be unmarked spoilers ahead! Examples |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_16fc4335 | type |
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The last book of the Mage Winds trilogy features Herald-Mage Elspeth and a few hand-picked allies crossing Hardorn to kill the evil King Ancar and his two most powerful mages and save Valdemar from invasion. Justified since Hardorn has a Keystone Army that will collapse if the magic controlling its unwilling soldiers is disrupted. | |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_1f0fe64e | type |
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In Monster, this is the modus operandi of Manipulative Bastard Serial Killer Johann Liebert (an expertise he inherited from his semi-mentor, Psycho Psychologist Franz Bonaparta), leading to them racking up a likely combined body count of hundreds of people. While many of the decapitation strikes were specifically intended to seize power in or destroy an organisation (such as during Red Rose Mansion massacre (destroying the Czechoslovakian state's eugenics programme), the Kinderheim 511 massacre (killing most of the witnesses to the GDR's child experiments), the Eisler Clinic murders (ridding it of its corrupt leadership), the underground bank massacre and the Neo-Nazi conspiracy massacres (destroying said organisations entirely), others were perpetrated for much more mundane reasons - namely to Destroy the Evidence or even to Unperson the lone survivor for fun rather than profit. | |
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In the final episode of Angel, Angel and his followers kill the entire leadership of the Circle of the Black Thorn in one night. | |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_247422c7 | type |
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Honor Harrington: In The Short Victorious War, Rob S. Pierre's conspiracy hijacks a naval shuttle and carpet-bombs the Haven presidential palace while his entire family and the heads of all the major Legislaturist houses are there. He frames a "rogue element of the People's Navy" for it, which gives him an excuse to purge the Navy of old regime loyalists. In a later novel, the Havenites send their Masadan lackeys to ambush the shuttles carrying the Manticoran and Grayson leadership, including the two monarchs: Queen Elizabeth III Winton and Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX. One of the shuttles is saved, but the other one is destroyed, including the current Manticoran Prime Minister. Space being as big as it is, it is simple for a nation at war to conduct a massive strike directly against their enemy's home system, bypassing all other strategic objectives in favor of a single-stroke victory. The reason this rarely happens is because it is also a quick way to a single-stroke defeat. The one time it happens, at the climax of At All Costs, it is because Haven knows they are once again losing the Lensman Arms Race and have only one chance to end the war in their favor before Manticore brings their latest weapons into full production. The attempt fails, with both sides suffering horrific losses but neither gaining a decisive advantage. |
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In the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, this is the core of the "Dragon's Breath", a conspiracy hatched by the rogue Qunari viddasala: using their access to the eluvians, they had smuggled barrels of gaatlok (fantasy gunpowder) into the seats of power of most Southern kingdoms (including the Winter Palace, where the current Divine and the leaders of the Inquisition are convening), then blowing them all up in preparation for the full-on Qunari invasion of the south. | |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_3a4dac06 | type |
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Magic, Metahumans, Martians and Mushroom Clouds: An Alternate Cold War: After Prometheus unleashes him, Typhon wipes out most of the leadership of the Kingdom of Greece, effectively dissolving the whole faction and allowing the Communists to win the civil war. The regime of Saloth Sar (the man who would rename himself Pol Pot in OTL) is brought to an end when he and his whole government are killed in a nuclear strike. The country is then occupied by Vietnam, who set up a new provisional government. The first thing Nergal does after taking a human host is obliterate the Iraqi government, creating the power vacuum that leads to the chaotic mess of a civil war that follows, with dozens of factions springing up to fill the void. |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_3d1d4598 | type |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_3d1d4598 | comment |
Kingsman: Played literally in The Secret Service, where much of the world's leaders (including seemingly the entire White House, the entire British Royal Family, and the Swedish prime minister) have conspired with the Big Bad to let a Hate Plague decimate the world's population. Eggsy and Merlin manage to reverse-engineer the cranial chips that are supposed to protect them from the plague's effects, causing every involved world leader's head to overheat and explode simultaneously in one glorious montage. Early on in The Golden Circle, Poppy hacks the Kingsmen's database in order to locate their headquarters, as well as the homes of all their agents. She then launches ballistic missiles at all the targeted sites, killing all the agents except for Eggsy (who wasn't home) and Merlin (whose home address wasn't on the database). |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_3dad204a | type |
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In the backstory of Shattered Union, the entire US government is wiped out by an atomic bomb during a highly unpopular president-elect's inauguration speech, triggering the Second American Civil War. | |
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In London Has Fallen, Islamists try to simultaneously assassinate all the leaders of the G7 as they attend the funeral of the British prime minister. Of course, the American president is the only one to survive. | |
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Dungeon Keeper Ami: The entirety of Crowned Death's intelligent troops gets taken out by Mukrezar with a collapsible ceiling. | |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_468bebb0 | type |
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In one reimagining of the Discworld, the Guild of Assassins recommends doing this as an instrument of policy, to earn suitably inflated inhumation fees and incidentally to defuse potential conflicts between neighbouring states. Every so often, when there is no less drastic alternative and plausible deniability is certain, Lord Vetinari likes to put a little business the Guild's way. note So they can feel useful and valued. The nearest thing the Guild has to an Ethics advisor, its Guild Chaplain, remarks that if the alternative is prolonged war and suffering and the deaths of thousands, inhuming the right person at the right time for the right reasons represents a just and ethical use of the Assassin. Read more in the works of A.A. Pessimal. | |
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In Return of the Jedi, he lures the Rebel Alliance into attempting one against him as bait for a trap, which in turn would have let the Empire destroy most of the Alliance's military. Unfortunately for him, his foresight proves fallible, and the Rebels' strike is ultimately successful, taking out the Emperor and a number of high-ranking admirals and generals (Darth Vader — the closest thing to a potential successor for Palpatine — also died, although only after his Heel–Face Turn and not due to the Rebel attack) and dealing the Empire a crushing defeat they never recover from. | |
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In Jericho (2006), the President is addressing a joint session of Congress when the nuclear attack that kicks off the story happens. A succession crisis ensues and results in a Divided States of America. | |
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War of Kings: Apparently a favoured tactic of the Shi'ar Empire, their Imperial Guard is sent to perform one at the wedding of Ronan and Crystal (because the Inhumans accidentally destroyed a few Shi'ar cruisers on their way to take over the Kree). All it does is really piss off the Inhumans and the Kree. | |
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In The Machineries of Empire, La Résistance establishes itself as a true rival to the Hexarchate Galactic Superpower with a two-pronged decapitation strike that kills five of the six Hexarchs. One Suicide Attack destroys the Space Station where four Hexarchs are gathered to receive an Immortality Inducer; another bombing destroys the station that houses the Kel military command, including the Hexarch. | |
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Eminence", Maul has all the leaders of the Black Sun decapitated in one fell swoop by Savage when they refuse to join them. | |
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In The Godfather, Michael has the heads of all of the other New York crime families assassinated on the same day. This ends the Mob War and makes Michael one of the most powerful mob bosses in America. | |
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Schlock Mercenary: Part of the backstory, Celeschul's Terraforming War started with the insurgents wiping out 95% of the planet's key political, industrial, and military figures. General (formerly colonel) Karl Tagon and his son captain Kaff Tagon were among the few survivors, the rest of their family, were not. | |
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Inglourious Basterds has "Operation Kino", a joint SOE/OSS plan where almost the entire Nazi high command — including Goebbels, Goering, Bormann, and even Adolf Hitler himself — is to be blown up while attending the premiere of a major propaganda movie in Paris. Surprisingly, it goes off almost without a hitch. | |
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In The Handmaid's Tale, this was perpetuated by the Sons of Jacob against the United States government in a False Flag Attack. The president, most of the cabinet and line of succession, as well as the entirety of Congress and the Supreme Court were all killed, with the Sons of Jacob using the subsequent power vacuum to seize control and transform the US into the theocratic and highly religiously strict Republic of Gilead. | |
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In The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank, Frank goes to a lot of trouble to rescue a Don being held hostage from a South American rebel camp. The Ungrateful Bastard betrays Frank and returns to New York, where he calls a meeting of the Mafia to deal with the Punisher once and for all. Frank calls him at that moment to ask him why he'd been rescued, if not as the best way to put a lot of high-ranking Mafia goons in the same room. Then shows up with an M-60. | |
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Codex Alera: A somewhat more small-scale (and thus realistic) example popped up in book 3, Cursor's Fury. The First Aleran Legion is struck by a powerful, magical attack, targeted at the Commander's Tent, just when every officer in the camp has been summoned there to discuss a recent development. If it had worked as designed, it would've wiped out everyone who could've taken command of the Legion, except for a strategically-placed traitor... but instead, command of the Legion winds up falling to the Third Subtribune Logistica (which basically means undersecretary to the undersecretary of logistics) who had been delayed. Fortunately, said Subtribune happens to be a Cursor - a secret agent of the First Lord, sent to infiltrate the legion to search for signs of treason and general espionage, and given a lowly officer's billet specifically to keep him flexible and out of the spotlight. Later, several characters state that the ORIGINAL leadership of the Legion, however competent they might have been, could not have accomplished even half of what he then proceeded to do with the 'decapitated' Legion... | |
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In Designated Survivor, the US president and most of his staff are killed by a terrorist bombing, promoting the eponymous protagonist (see Real Life for more) to the presidency. | |
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In The Marvels (2023), it was revealed that following the events of Captain Marvel (2019),, Carol Danvers made good on her promise on taking out the Supreme Intelligence, the artificial intelligence that the Kree Empire depended on for political and military leadership. With it destroyed, the Kree Empire fell into civil war that even brought their homeworld of Hala on the brink of environmental collapse. | |
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The Tokyo Magical Diet note their version of the Ministry of Magic was struck with a large number of its leaders in charge when the Abyssal Fleet launched its major offensive during Blood Week, forcing their leadership to become largely decentralized by necessity. | |
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Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars: One of Nod's first acts is to destroy the GDI space station Philadelphia, with almost the entire GDI leadership onboard, with the exception of Secretary of the Treasury, Redmond Boyle. | |
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In Der Wixxer, it turns out it was Victoria Dickham's plan all along to blow up the entire British royal family during a wedding to catapult herself onto the throne. It is foiled by the protagonists via Wire Dilemma. | |
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A Scotsman in Egypt; the Timurid invasion is thwarted first by infiltrating their army years earlier with a Fake Defector who arranges for their army to head west while sending information back, then by a single assassin killing their top generals as they're looking over the planned battlefield. Despite the loss of their (competent) leaders and the fact that they're outnumbered by the Scots, the Timurids still fight and are defeated. | |
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Avatar: The Last Airbender: After infiltrating the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se, Azula works with Long Feng and the corrupt Dai Li to take over the city by capturing all the high-ranking officials and generals who might be able to oppose them. The Earth King eventually escapes with the help of the Gaang but is still forced to leave his city. | |
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In The Gates of the Galaxy, an Earth Federation task force is sent via a Precursor Portal Network to the Dromi home system in order to take out their ruling clans. Since the Dromi are heavily hierarchical, this would result in a lengthy period of chaos while they were sorting out who should be in charge. However, the Dromi leaders are tipped off and manage to use their equivalent of Human Shields to keep the humans from burning their homeworld from orbit. The strike is called off, and the Human-Dromi War lasts for another century. | |
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In the backstory to Steven Universe, Rose Quartz led an attack to (personally) assassinate Pink Diamond in order to end the Gem Rebellion over Earth. While this did successfully end the war and freed Earth from Homeworld's control, it came with horrible consequences that Rose failed to account for. Though since Rose Quartz was in reality Pink Diamond, it was more the symbolic sort instead of literal as she killed her previous identity. | |
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In Mass Effect, this is part of the Reapers' periodic purge of spacefaring life: leave a space station at the heart of the mass relay network to serve as a convenient center for galactic civilization, then make their big return at that space station and take out all the leaders in one strike. After it's all done, they leave the empty station behind for the next cycle to find. From Mass Effect: Andromeda, the kett started their war with the angara by taking out their leaders, by pretending to be peaceful, then striking when the angara's guards were down. |
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The Punisher MAX begins with Frank sneaking up on the birthday party of the centenarian Don Cesare, shooting him and as many of the invited high-rankers as he can. The resulting power vacuum fuels much of the series. | |
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Further, according to A New Hope, the last bastion of power in the old Republic was the Galactic Senate. Quoting Grand Moff Tarkin: "The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently." Pink slips or bloodbath? | |
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In A Memory of Light, the last book of The Wheel of Time: Hessalam near-fatally sabotages the armies of the Light in the Final Battle by infiltrating the generals' dreams and turning them into Manchurian Agents who misuse their troops in subtle but debilitating ways. Were it not for Mat Cauthon taking command, the ploy likely would have won the war for the Dark One. A literal example occurs with Demandred, who has been leading the Sharans very effectively against the forces of Light. With his strategic experience, the element of surprise, and himself being a magical Person of Mass Destruction, they have a considerable upper hand. Then Lan manages to get close and slay Demandred, cutting off his head and holding it up for the Sharan forces to see, shattering their morale and allowing the remaining leaders on the Light side to outmaneuver them. |
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The spinoff fic The Bridge: Humanity's Stand reveals the aftermath: The Terran Defenders recover faster than the Mutations, as Gamera is promptly chosen as Regent of the Monsters in Godzilla's stead and proceeds to choose Zilla II as his second-in-command- though at this point in the spinoff, the Terran Defenders are unaware that the incident was caused by their uneasy allies, the GDF, losing faith and turning on them. Meanwhile, the Mutations (who were only held together by Xen's manipulations and Dessy's brute force) suffer a full-on Evil Power Vacuum, splintering as individual members either make a break for it or try to stage a takeover. | |
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A semi-accidental example in The Bridge (MLP): During a multi-way kaiju brawl, the Global Defense Force gets panicky and votes to fire the Dimension Tide at the battlefield. They take out the leaders of the Mutation faction, Xenilla and Destroyah... as well as the leaders and seconds-in-command of the Terran Defender faction (Godzilla, Mothra Lea, Anguirus, and Rodan). Oops. The spinoff fic The Bridge: Humanity's Stand reveals the aftermath: The Terran Defenders recover faster than the Mutations, as Gamera is promptly chosen as Regent of the Monsters in Godzilla's stead and proceeds to choose Zilla II as his second-in-command- though at this point in the spinoff, the Terran Defenders are unaware that the incident was caused by their uneasy allies, the GDF, losing faith and turning on them. Meanwhile, the Mutations (who were only held together by Xen's manipulations and Dessy's brute force) suffer a full-on Evil Power Vacuum, splintering as individual members either make a break for it or try to stage a takeover. |
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Tried unsuccessfully in Valkyrie, as detailed in the Real Life section. Colonel von Stauffenberg, in collusion with several other German officers and politicians, stashes a bomb in the Wolfsschanze, the Nazi German military headquarters, during a 1944 meeting headed by Hitler. Though some generals and officers are killed, Hitler himself survives, and promptly orders his Schutzstaffel to arrest the conspirators. | |
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In New Deal Coalition Retained, this is how the Serbian front in the Great Southern War is brought to a close. Anti-government forces leak to the Freyist Pact the location of the bunker from which Milošević and his inner circle are conducting the war effort, allowing them to destroy it in a targeted bombing run. With most of the Serbian leadership dead, their government and military splinter, with a barely-stable legitimate successor government suing for peace while forces elsewhere go rogue and turn guerrilla. | |
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In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Freys killed the vast majority of the northern lords during lord Edmure Tully's wedding, thus ending the War of the Five Kings in a single night. | |
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The Will of the Empire: In order to ensure that Vader's last orders — for Luke to be named heir to the Imperial throne — are enacted, Admiral Piett takes measures to eliminate as much of the old guard as possible. He starts by calling a meeting on Coruscant with many of the most powerful figures left (including Pestage, Isard, and Lumiya) and, once they're all gathered, having his forces assault the meeting, managing to kill all of them. | |
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Embers (Vathara): An established tactic for the Fire Nation against the Earth Kingdom is killing off their commanders, due to the inflexibility of Earth Kingdom command structure. Iroh demonstrates on General Gang. | |
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In Malazan Book of the Fallen this was a favorite tactic of the Malazan Emperor. When conquering small kingdoms he would send in his Talons, a cadre of magic wielding assassins into the enemy capital. In a single night they would kill the ruling family, any prominent generals and any magic users who could be a threat to the Malazan army. The Malazans would then use the ensuing chaos to quickly take the city without a major battle or lengthy siege. | |
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Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Like a good samurai, Nanao Hibiya routinely searches for an opening to try to take an enemy leader's head, often literally. During her Last Stand in Yamatsukuni, she led her remaining troops in a suicide charge at the enemy general's camp and very nearly got through to him, killing his son-in-law in passing in the process. When the Sword Roses intervene in the "Battle of Hell's Armies" (the test to enter the third layer of the labyrinth), the others foil the enemy cavalry charge, giving her an opportunity to go for the enemy leader. She takes the skeletal general's head off. When her and Oliver's broomsport team, the Wild Geese, face off against Diana Ashbury's Blue Swallows, three of her teammates keep Ashbury busy and the others counterattack the Swallows. In the confusion, Nanao slips away and then makes a diving attack on the opposing captain, only foiled at the last second when a student in the stands shines a light in her eyes and throws her aim off. |
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In Game of Thrones, this happens multiple times: The most (in)famous instance would be the Red Wedding, where the minor House Frey butchers the entire leadership of the Northern Rebellion, including the freshly anointed King In The North, Robb Stark, during a wedding feast. Khaleesi Daenerys does the same thing after being taken prisoner by a rival Dothraki horde; she arranges for all the Khals to meet her in the temple of the sacred city to hear her out, then has the temple set ablaze, killing everyone inside but her own (fire-proof) self. Cersei Lannister pulls one off on the entire Sparrow leadership, most of the Tyrell family, and much of her son's royal court, when she has a secret stash of wildfire detonated under the Great Sept while they all attended what was meant to be her own blasphemy trial. As a comeuppance for the Red Wedding, the entire male leadership of House Frey is served poisoned wine by Arya Stark, disguised as Lord Walder Frey, whom she had murdered earlier together with his two sons. Euron Greyjoy ambushes the fleet of his niece, Yara, and captures the de facto leader of Dorne, Ellaria Sand and her daughter Tyene while killing two of the Sand Snakes. After Ellaria and Tyene were delivered to King's Landing, Cersei poisons the latter and forces the former to watch her to die while locking them up for the rest of their lives. |
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Used correctly by the author of Contact at Kobol, in which a decapitation strike is treated as a shock and awe tactic to force a surrender. By the end of the war, the Tau'ri are actively avoiding performing this, as the Colonial government is such a wreck that removing the top government officials would simply cause the total collapse of Colonial society, a situation that would be far messier to deal with than surrender. | |
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Early on in The Golden Circle, Poppy hacks the Kingsmen's database in order to locate their headquarters, as well as the homes of all their agents. She then launches ballistic missiles at all the targeted sites, killing all the agents except for Eggsy (who wasn't home) and Merlin (whose home address wasn't on the database). | |
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In Hitman (2016), this is the story behind the majority of your missions: In "The Showstopper", 47 must take out Dalia Margolis and Victor Novikov, the leaders of an international spy ring. Since they are the sole masterminds of the ring, it ceases to exist after their deaths. In "The World of Tomorrow", you are tasked with killing bioengineer Silvio Caruso, who just developed a new super-virus, his assistant Francesca de Santis, who might be the only person capable of completing the virus without Caruso, and then destroy the virus itself. With no means of recreating the virus, the project is cancelled afterwards. In "A Gilded Cage", 47 must kill corrupt banker Claus Hugo Strandberg, who scammed billions of dollars to provoke riots, and his partner general Reza Zaydan, who wants to use the riots to establish a military dictatorship. With the people having no one to riot against anymore and the military without a figurehead capable of becoming dictator, the plans are terminated. In "Freedom Fighters", 47 is tasked with killing the leaders of a paramilitary terrorist group. With all of them dead the group is apparently disbanded. |
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The Punisher often pulls these off, as disorganized crime is easier to deal with. The Punisher MAX begins with Frank sneaking up on the birthday party of the centenarian Don Cesare, shooting him and as many of the invited high-rankers as he can. The resulting power vacuum fuels much of the series. In The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank, Frank goes to a lot of trouble to rescue a Don being held hostage from a South American rebel camp. The Ungrateful Bastard betrays Frank and returns to New York, where he calls a meeting of the Mafia to deal with the Punisher once and for all. Frank calls him at that moment to ask him why he'd been rescued, if not as the best way to put a lot of high-ranking Mafia goons in the same room. Then shows up with an M-60. Yet another has Frank booby-trap a building where various organized crime members are having a meeting. He pushes down the detonator, making it clear that if he dies, everyone dies, and promptly starts shooting the helpless criminals. Barracuda once sent out invitations to multiple mob bosses in a single location in order to mow them down... and as bait for Frank. |
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Non-lethal example: In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic two-parter "To Where And Back Again", the Changelings launch a coordinated strike and capture pretty much every powerful pony in Equestria within a week, allowing them to use their shapeshifting powers to take their place. | |
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Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: The Soviet campaign opens with a strike force landing near Washington DC and destroying the Pentagon to send the US military into disarray. While they come pretty close in the Allied campaign as well, they're pushed back by the player. | |
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In the Hercule Poirot novel The Big Four, Hercule disguises himself as his non-existent brother Achille, in order to trick the titular group into thinking that Hercule is still at large, so that they can be taken out all at once in the planned operation. | |
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In the Grand Finale of Blade: The Series, Blade uses a virus developed by the Big Bad to kill the entire pureblood leadership of the House of Chthon. Then again, this was the Big Bad's plan all along, since he hates purebloods and wants to lead the House of Chthon himself. | |
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This is the plan of HYDRA in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as they plan to assume control of SHIELD's newest weaponry and aim them simultaneously at thousands of high-ranking targets (including several in the White House and the Pentagon) to take over the world in an enormous coup d'etat(s). Thanks to the Avengers' intervention, they end up blowing each other up. And that's only after they entrap and kill most of SHIELD's own (uninvolved) leading figures. | |
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Played literally in The Secret Service, where much of the world's leaders (including seemingly the entire White House, the entire British Royal Family, and the Swedish prime minister) have conspired with the Big Bad to let a Hate Plague decimate the world's population. Eggsy and Merlin manage to reverse-engineer the cranial chips that are supposed to protect them from the plague's effects, causing every involved world leader's head to overheat and explode simultaneously in one glorious montage. | |
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Vermintide II: Each Act ends with the Player Party executing a targeted strike on a leader of the Chaos invasion. One is the Warlord of the Skaven clan leading the attack; his death spreads paranoia and infighting among the clan, compromising its forces. | |
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In the season finale of The Book of Boba Fett, Boba sends Fennic Shand to assassinate the leaders of the Pyke Syndicate, which she does with ruthless efficiency. | |
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Happens in the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the First Evil's followers blow up the Watchers' Council headquarters in London, killing almost all the leadership. | |
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The Footprint of Mussolini: At the climax of the Second Arabian War, Italy enacts Operation Samson, a mass nuclear strike on every major administrative and military target in the United Arab Republic. This causes the majority of the UAR to collapse into anarchy due to the loss of any sort of centralized leadership, with only Egypt's higher-ups escaping the attack on Cairo in time, and even then they've lost enough forces that they can't enforce enough authority to prevent the UAR from being overrun. | |
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This happens in Mobile Suit Gundam where Char betrays and kills Garma Zabi as a start of his vengeance against the Zabis. Later on the show, Dozle Zabi falls in battle during the Battle of Solomon but his oldest brother, Gihren, kills his own father, Degwin, and the supreme commander of the Earth Federation, General Revil, in one blast with a solar ray when attempting to negotiate with peace. His sister, Kycilia, kills him for what he did but she too is killed by Char who blasts her with a rocket launcher. By the end of the show, the Zabi family has fallen at the end of the One Year War leaving Dozle's daughter, Mineva, as sole living member of the clan. | |
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In The Unabridged Memoirs of Darth Plagueis the Wise, the Rim Liberation Front launches an attack on a conference of most of the galaxy's Mega Corps, wiping out most of their leadership. | |
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From Mass Effect: Andromeda, the kett started their war with the angara by taking out their leaders, by pretending to be peaceful, then striking when the angara's guards were down. | |
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The Transformers (Marvel): Invoked by Operation: Volcano, which was meant to be the beginning of a general Autobot uprising to try and wrest control of Cybertron away from the Decepticons. The key element was to be the assassination of the Decepticons' Ten Deadliest Killers (the three Coneheads Dirge, Thrust and Ramjet, the three Insecticons Kickback, Shrapnel and Bombshell, the three Triple-Changers Octane, Blitzwing and Astrotrain... and a comparative nobody named Macabre). In order to lure these dangerous enemies into one location, the Autobots leaked word that the Autobot resistance leader Emirate Xaaron would be meeting with the heads of the various resistance cells, thus presenting an irresistible target. Luckily for the Decepticons, before they fell into the trap Megatron contacted them and ordered them to Earth to join his forces, with only Macabre ignoring his orders and continuing on alone. He managed to kill the Autobot warrior Impactor, but was immediately shot to pieces by everyone else. | |
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Decapitation Strike | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_ef9ba9b4 | comment |
Revenge of the Sith: The Jedi Order are the only serious threat to a Sith regime. Order 66 decimated the Jedi Knights, including the majority of the Jedi Council, leaving a spotty few to counter the Empire's millions-strong standing army. The Separatist Council gets a visit from the Emperor's right-hand man, who wordlessly locks them in the war room, and then massacres them. |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_ef9ba9b4 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_ef9ba9b4 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Revenge of the Sith | hasFeature |
Decapitation Strike / int_ef9ba9b4 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f0c816fb | type |
Decapitation Strike | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f0c816fb | comment |
In Breaking Bad, Big Bad Gus Fring ostensibly surrenders his entire business to a rival Mexican cartel. He is invited to the Don's hacienda in Mexico, and after the "negotiation" ends, Gus poisons himself, the Don and all his lieutenants with a laced bottle of rare tequila. He then escapes quickly enough to get himself medically treated before the poison kills him too. | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f0c816fb | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f0c816fb | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Breaking Bad | hasFeature |
Decapitation Strike / int_f0c816fb | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f3368832 | type |
Decapitation Strike | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f3368832 | comment |
Buffyverse: Happens in the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the First Evil's followers blow up the Watchers' Council headquarters in London, killing almost all the leadership. In the final episode of Angel, Angel and his followers kill the entire leadership of the Circle of the Black Thorn in one night. |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_f3368832 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f3368832 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Buffyverse | hasFeature |
Decapitation Strike / int_f3368832 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f9473ade | type |
Decapitation Strike | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f9473ade | comment |
In Emergency 4, terrorists detonate a bomb under a photo-op tribune during a Fictional United Nations congress. It's the player's job to rescue the survivors (of which there are comparatively few) and arrest the terrorists. | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f9473ade | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f9473ade | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Emergency! (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Decapitation Strike / int_f9473ade | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f983a7b2 | type |
Decapitation Strike | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f983a7b2 | comment |
Harry and the Shipgirls: The Tokyo Magical Diet note their version of the Ministry of Magic was struck with a large number of its leaders in charge when the Abyssal Fleet launched its major offensive during Blood Week, forcing their leadership to become largely decentralized by necessity. The Kingdom of Foxes, a reserve for Kitsune, Kumiho, and Huli Jing was likewise struck during Blood Week, with the Sole Survivor being Princess Chun-Hei, who was elsewhere due to being The Unfavorite. |
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| Decapitation Strike / int_f983a7b2 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f983a7b2 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Harry and the Shipgirls / Fan Fic | hasFeature |
Decapitation Strike / int_f983a7b2 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f99f6e4d | type |
Decapitation Strike | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f99f6e4d | comment |
In The Sum of All Fears, a group of Neo-Nazis smuggles a nuke into Baltimore on the day the President is supposed to watch a football game there. The President is evacuated in time, but the stadium (and much of the city) is destroyed, and one of the President's closest advisors is also killed. Due to the rising tensions, the attack is blamed on Russia, almost leading to World War III. However, the true goal of the Neo-Nazis wasn't to kill the President, it was to start a war between the US and Russia, so they can then pick up the pieces. | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f99f6e4d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_f99f6e4d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| The Sum of All Fears | hasFeature |
Decapitation Strike / int_f99f6e4d | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_fa661c5b | type |
Decapitation Strike | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_fa661c5b | comment |
Independence Day: Resurgence: While the president is at NORAD, the aliens invade and kill everyone. With the line of succession all but destroyed, General Adams is sworn in as the new president. | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_fa661c5b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_fa661c5b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Independence Day: Resurgence | hasFeature |
Decapitation Strike / int_fa661c5b | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_fa77d43c | type |
Decapitation Strike | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_fa77d43c | comment |
Terminator Salvation: Skynet's plan involves luring the human resistance into a Defensive Feint Trap by making its core bases in the former San Francisco area more vulnerable to attack. The humans believe that they're about to carry out a decapitation strike on Skynet when it's actually using the opportunity to pinpoint the nuclear submarine that carries the resistance leaders and take them out with a missile strike. | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_fa77d43c | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Decapitation Strike / int_fa77d43c | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Terminator Salvation | hasFeature |
Decapitation Strike / int_fa77d43c |
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