Small world

Someone in South Korea wants a copy of my DVD of "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" to show to her English Lit class. So cool!

"Self-Disposing Villain"

I was recently grousing about this trope, and didn't have a good pithy way to describe it. TVTropes, of course, does have one: "Self-Disposing Villain".

The villain hanging on the cliffside will accept the offered hand and Last-Second Chance only to try and backstab the hero, making his self-defense kill morally just. Or better for the hero's conscience, the villain will scream "No! This Cannot Be!! I just need more power!!!" Cue the Superpower Meltdown that destroys the Artifact of Doom empowering him. In essence, their excessive ego and poor planning somehow gets them Hoist By Their Own Petard, put in a Fate Worse Than Death, or destroyed by their own creation/plan. Less lethally, they may dispose of themselves in a non-threatening form, like in ending up in a Convenient Coma, as an amnesiac, Depowered, or trapped in a Tailor-Made Prison.

The purpose of this trope is to allow the hero to continue to be a no-kill hero without having to worry about the morally complex minutia of disposing of a human adversary.

This always bugs me. If you want the villain to die, then *own* that.