Deadly Graduation

A classic for evil training programs, especially for assassins. Relatively good and innocent characters are trained in combat skills in a harsh and often deadly program. Often they are made to train in pairs for years building reliance on their partner. Now it is time for their final test. They must battle their best friend to the death!

A variation on this is the character's partner goes missing shortly before this mysterious exam only to be found tied up in the exam room with the test being to shoot them in cold blood. This can often end with the more talented best friend throwing the exam and sacrificing themselves in order to save their friend's life/any innocence he has left.

Occasionally, it is a Secret Test of Character, in one of two ways. Either you're not supposed to Shoot Your Mate, or you ARE but the gun is loaded with blanks.

Sub-Trope of Involuntary Battle to the Death.

Examples of Deadly Graduation include:

• It used to be part of the Village in the Mist's initiation in Naruto, until Zabuza decided to be a smartass and kill all the other graduates. Before he was even old enough to actually qualify. They probably couldn't spare any future ninja past that point, especially since they had such a test to compensate for their small population.
• Valentino's backstory in the Marilith webcomic. Made even more horrifying since it was not an assassin guild, but a gulag.
• The Star Wars comic Crimson Empire has this as the final exam for Royal Guards.
  • And in the first Knights of the Old Republic, this is the final test for up-and-coming Sith.
• In the Granny Goodness backstory her final exam was to kill the loyal dog she had trained. She avoided this by killing the examiner. Darkseid later forced her to complete the test by siccing the dog on her.
• In the movie Azumi, the ten young assassin students were told to pair up with the person they liked the most before their final exam. Then they were told to fight each other to the death. (This conveniently killed off half of the cast before the movie even began properly.)
• Used as the second Death Knight quest in World of Warcraft - After carving the runes on your weapon, you're told to go kill one of the "unworthy trainees," in a fight to the death.
  • It's also later somewhat reversed in Naxxramas, during the fight with Instructor Rasuvius—you mind-control his trainees and force them to kill him.
• The Unsullied eunuch slave soldiers in A Song of Ice and Fire are given a puppy to raise that after a year they have to kill. To actually become Unsullied they are sent to kill a slave child. It's mentioned that they have a harder time with the puppy test than the child one, and those that fail are killed, and fed to the surviving puppies.
• On Gor this is the final test to join the Caste of Assassins.
• Mentioned as a possible first assignment for a newly trained assassin in the article "The Assassin's Guild" in Dragon magazine #64 (1982).
• Pyramids includes a graduation test for Pteppic, in which he's supposed to assassinate someone who is sleeping in a room "guarded" by one of his teachers. Pteppic is terrified by the idea of actually killing someone, however, and ends up firing his crossbow at nothing rather than kill (but still hits the target due to a "lucky" shot). It turns out to just be a dummy under a sheet.
  • Another student however discovers under the sheet a third one who had failed the exam. Since it's after the fact, this isn't a Shoot Your Mate order.
  • They're also perfectly allowed to inhume the examiners... but the savvy ones don't tend to risk it.
• The loaded-with-blanks version is used in a quite cruel joke. Three cadets are training to be in the FBI, two men and one woman. In the final test they are each lead into a room with their spouse bound and gagged. They're given a gun and told to kill them. One man walks out right away saying he can't do it. The other man stays in the room longer, but eventually walks out saying he couldn't do it either. They are both told that it was a test of loyalty and they failed. The woman stays in the room much longer. When she eventually leaves she says "Some idiot loaded the gun with blanks so I had to strangle him."
  • There are of course countless variations of that joke, from CIA recruitment to SAS training.
    • And from strangling to Pistol-Whipping to beating him to death with his chair...
• Burst Angel has the Genocide Angels killing each other until only one remains... or at least they were supposed to: their final test is interrupted, they end up scattered around the world, and now Jo is pestered by the two remaining survivors who are there to kill her.
• In the first book of the Emperor series this happens to Gaius and Marcus after Renius spent years training them. Only in this case their graduation is to fight Renius himself, veteran warrior and gladiator, to the death.
• The Wong Jing film Naked Weapon does this particularly graphically, and variations have cropped up in other Category III films.
• The opening montage of the Korean movie Shiri shows North Korean assassins going through a hellish training program and initiation. In one test, the cadets are made to bayonet a field full of civilians who are tied to stakes. One man shows remorse afterwards and is killed. In another, cadets are paired up and each given a disassembled pistol. The first one to correctly assemble it must shoot their partner.
• Apollo Justice Ace Attorney: Phoenix's case in Turnabout Succession involved this. Both Zak and Valant Gramarye were ordered by Magcnifici Garamrye to bring a gun to his hospital room and "shoot straight in the forehead." Zak passed by shooting the clown doll straight in the forehead. Valant lost by not firing at all.
• Charles Stross's story "Palimpsest" has a unique variation: the final test for a time agent is to go back in time and murder yourself.
• In the Forgotten Realms novels War of the Spider Queen the rebirth of lloth is discribed in a prologue: you have thousands of spiders, they suddenly start killing and eating each other to gain power, but if one grows to strong others will team up to get it down, until only the 8 most cunning ones are remaing. They then serve as the eight spider aspect avatars of lloth.