Mercy Killing is a recurring topic in The Walking Dead. It occurs when a person, usually bitten or too grievously injured to survive, is killed by another survivor in an act of mercy to spare the dying survivor's suffering. It occasionally occurs at the person's own request.
Occurrences
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- Lee Everett can choose whether to have Carley give a bitten Irene a gun so she can kill herself. (A New Day)
- Lee can determinately shoot Beatrice to spare her from being devoured by walkers. (Long Road Ahead)
- Lee or Kenny can shoot Duck in the head before he succumbs to his bite wound. Although Duck seems to die first if Kenny is the one doing it, he still appears to be barely alive if Lee is the one to shoot him. (Long Road Ahead)
- If Ben Paul was spared earlier, he will fall into an alley while escaping Fivel's mansion and get impaled on a fence prompting Kenny to jump to his aid and eventually shoot him in the head to prevent him from being devoured by the approaching walkers. (No Time Left)
- Clementine can mercy kill Sam after he's impaled. (All That Remains)
- Michonne Hawthorne can shoot Norma before she is devoured. (What We Deserve)
- Javier García or Clementine can give Paul Lingard a morphine overdose upon his request before stabbing him in the head to prevent reanimation. This is because Lingard can't bring himself to commit suicide and as such he requests a mercy killing in exchange for AJ's location. Alternatively, the two can choose to spare Lingard's life. (Thicker Than Water)
- If Javier doesn't amputate Rufus' arm, David García will shoot him to end his suffering. (From The Gallows)
- If Gabriel García is bitten, Javier can mercifully kill him rather than allowing his nephew to commit suicide. (From The Gallows)
- Clementine can euthanize a horrifically burned Lloyd. (Take Us Back)
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- After Dale Horvath has his abdomen ripped open by a walker, Daryl Dixon shoots him in the head to end his suffering. (Judge, Jury, Executioner)
- Carol partially justifies her murder of Karen and David by telling Rick that they were going to drown in their own blood from the prison flu and that she made it quick for them instead. (Indifference)
- Aaron kills Buttons after it was mauled by walkers in a meadow near Alexandria. (Forget)
- After a survivor is partially devoured by walkers, Gabriel Stokes ends his suffering by bashing his head in with a rock. (Conquer)
- After Carter gets bitten in the cheek, Rick Grimes stabs him in the head to end his suffering and to avoid drawing any more attention. (First Time Again)
- Michonne Hawthorne kills Barnes after the latter is bitten by walkers by stabbing him in the head with her katana. (Thank You)
- After Erin's abdomen is sliced open by Aphid, Carol mercifully kills her to end Erin's suffering. (JSS)
- As a form of mercy, Dwight kills Gordon who is then chained to the Sanctuary fence as a walker. (The Cell)
- When Carl Grimes tests him, Siddiq reveals that he has only ever killed one living person and that it was done in an act of mercy. (The King, the Widow, and Rick)
- Following the Saviors' attack on the Hilltop with tainted weapons, a still alive but dying Bruce requests that the other survivors mercy kill him as Bruce lacks the strength to end his own life. (Do Not Send Us Astray)
- Negan kills a mortally wounded Coalition soldier after the attack on Hilltop much to the annoyance of Alpha as she wanted the survivors to be killed in such a way that they would reanimate. (Walk With Us)
- Ezekiel puts down his horse after it collapses due to a walker bite that it had received earlier that day. (Look at the Flowers)
- Mortally wounded, the young mother begs Daryl and Leah to put her out of her misery once her family is gone. When Leah can't bring herself to do it, Daryl mercifully kills the woman with his crossbow. (Promises Broken)
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- While working at the National Guard camp at Raynard Community College, Liza Ortiz witnesses a corpsman prepare to use a captive bolt pistol to euthanize a bitten National Guardsman. (Cobalt)
- As the National Guard camp is overrun by a massive herd, Doctor Bethany Exner euthanizes her patients that couldn't be moved in time with a captive bolt pistol in order to spare them from a worse death. (The Good Man)
- Liza, after being bitten, has a heartbroken Travis Manawa kill her in order to avoid suffering an agonizing death. (The Good Man)
- After Chris Manawa discovers him severely injured inside of the wreck of TruWest Airlines Flight 462, Alan begs Chris to mercy kill him. Chris reluctantly complies by bashing Alan's head in with a piece of wreckage. (Ouroboros)
- After murdering Reed, Chris claims that it was an act of mercy as Reed was already dying, but Madison's Group remains unconvinced by his story. (Captive)
- Alex reveals to Travis that she mercifully strangled Jake Powell at his own request due to the severity of his injuries otherwise causing Jake a prolonged death in which he would suffer. (Captive)
- Upon discovering the dying Phil McCarthy whose brain is being eaten by a crow, Madison Clark mercifully ends his suffering with Troy Otto's knife. (Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame)
- Jeremiah Otto shoots a horse that is being devoured by walkers to end its suffering. (Red Dirt)
- Alicia Clark mercy kills Cooper after he's bitten several times and unable to kill himself due to running out of bullets. (Brother's Keeper)
- Alicia mercy kills the bitten survivors in the Broke Jaw Ranch pantry after putting them to sleep with morphine, both to spare their coming suffering and to conserve the survivors' limited air. (This Land Is Your Land)
- After her horse's heart starts giving out due to how hard she ran him, Sherry mercifully shoots the horse in the head. (J.D.)
- After his baby daughter Emma won't stop crying due to the pain that she's in from radiation sickness, Fred smothers her out of mercy. He later tries to do the same thing to Mo, but he is killed by Grace before he can succeed. (Six Hours)
- After putting the zombified Dakota down, John Dorie Sr. tells June that "I put Dakota out of her torment" while he was on the surface. (Cindy Hawkins)
- After Rufus is bitten by the zombified head of Emile, Josiah sadly puts Rufus down rather than let him continue to suffer. (Breathe With Me)
- June reveals that after her radiotherapy treatments caused Hannah a great deal of suffering, she wanted to mercy kill the girl. However, Shrike stopped June as she wanted Hannah to turn and forced June to continue with her experiments. (Blue Jay)
- Finch requests that a bitten Shrike be mercy killed so that she won't have to go through the same suffering as him. Before June can do it, Ben arrives and June agrees to let Shrike's brother do it instead after he promises to. (All I See Is Red)
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- Huck's killing of Walter may have been a mercy killing as she had promised to help the bitten man. By killing him, Huck made sure that he didn't suffer any further while keeping her promise to help him after disarming the desperate man. (Truth or Dare)
- Jadis insists that the genocide of Omaha and the Campus Colony was an act of mercy as it spared them from the famines and the chaos that the CRM had projected them to suffer. (Death and the Dead)
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- After realizing that this is no world for a child, Dee prepares to kill Lydia as an act of mercy and then to commit suicide. However, Dee is stopped when they are found and taken in by Hera and the Whisperers. (Dee)
- Amanda held a belief that "sometimes murder is mercy." (Davon)
- Arnaud believed that his murders of Martin, Greer, David and Jules and his attempted murder of Garen was an act of mercy to spare them from the horrors of the world. (Davon)
- Nora cited her sister's belief that murder can be mercy sometimes before leading the Madawaska townspeople in killing Arnaud for his crimes. (Davon)
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- Fatally bitten by a walker, Jadis asks Rick to shoot her which he complies with. (Become)
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Quotes
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Please. Please. Please kill me. It hurts. Oh, my god, it hurts so bad. Kill me. Kill me! Don't leave me. Come back. Please. I beg of you. No, no, no! Have mercy!
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Help me, please. God, help me.
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Its heart's giving out. We're gonna have to --
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I put Dakota out of her torment when I was up there.
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He doesn't deserve this. He shouldn't have to suffer for my mistakes."
"He's a good dog."
"He saved my life, twice now. Now I have to take his.
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I saw someone survive a bite longer than anyone I had ever seen, and she had been exposed to radiation so I thought if it worked for her, it could work for Hannah. (...) I gave her radiotherapy with equipment that we scavenged from a hospital. It stopped the infection, with the amount of radiation that it took, it just made things worse for her, and I wanted to end her suffering.
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Two years ago, the CRM's modeling revealed that the Alliance would soon become a drain on the Civic Republic's resources. Omaha, the Campus Colony, Portland... had become too reliant. They'd never be fully self-sustaining. So, it was only a matter of time before thousands faced a famine of devastating proportions. At best, those thousands would have died slowly. At worst, disease and conflict would have spread through the Civic Republic itself, and then? The light of the world... extinguished forever. Death wins. We made the choice to spare them that by ending it quickly for them so that there could be a chance for humanity to survive. What we did to your home was mercy.
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Sometimes murder is mercy.
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To grow up here... makes you twisted. I'm saving them from the awful things that they'll do. The things that'll turn them. Sometimes, murder is mercy.
― Arnaud justifies his child murders as being an act of mercy to spare them from the horrors of the world. [src]
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Go ahead. Do what you said you would do. Please.
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Please. You kill me? You kill me, please.
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So then I realized, I could help others in another way. No more violence, no more loss, no more pain. A release, on your terms.
― Gale proposing to put Karina down through lethal injection, on her terms. [src]
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