.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1100&h=618&dpr=1.5)
There's something fascinating about contract killers. People who murder for money are the heroes and villains of all kinds of popular stories across multiple mediums. Despite how often they appear, a hitman's story rarely ends well. One of the most common retirement plans in the assassination industry is putting out a contract on the hitman.
Action movies are typically about lone heroes or groups of three to four. The antagonists are typically much greater in numbers, providing an army for the protagonist to mow down. This means that if an action franchise starts with the main characters involved in some shady organization, they're likely to go to war with their former employers by the end.
The Contract on the Hitman trope occurs when an assassin finds themselves the target of the organization that used to employ them. Given that they employ at least two professional murderers, the organization was likely on the wrong side of morality from the beginning. There are tons of reasons that the higher-ups might want their former favorite employee eliminated. Maybe they've disobeyed orders, leaving their handlers to hunt them for vengeance. Maybe they're considering retirement, and it would be easier for everyone if they just disappeared. Maybe they grabbed something during their last job and only killing them will get it back. Maybe the boss just plain doesn't like them. Regardless of the reason, the hitman at the center of it all will inevitably have to murder those who come for him and demonstrate his capabilities to his boss in person.
The first recorded example of this trope comes in Norse Mythology, meaning that it's been present in stories for well over a millennium. Once upon a time, a man named Hreidmar and his sons Regin and Fáfnir held Odin hostage in vengeance for the death of their brother. They demand a ransom and send Loki out to retrieve it. Luckily, Loki happens to know about a trove of cursed gold that will drive whoever retrieves it mad with greed. Loki hands it over and leaves with Odin, achieving the rare act of mischief that doesn't blow up in his face. Fáfnir immediately kills his dad for his cut and turns into a dragon to defend his hoard. Regin hires Sigurd to slay his brother, which he does with aplomb. In the process, Sigurd gains knowledge of the future, which alerts him to Regin's plan to kill him too. Sigurd slays his former employer, then absconds with the cursed gold, content to die young and wealthy. It's easy to see how this tale moved from swords and sorcery to handguns and fancy suits.
The high watermark of this trope is John Wick and the thousand action movies that evolved from its DNA. Everyone knows the story, the eponymous unstoppable assassin is dragged out of retirement after a gang of goons break into his house, steal his car, and kill his dog. One of the aforementioned goons happens to be the son of a Russian crime boss, a frequent employer of assassins, who puts $2 million on John's head. This is the setup for the balletic murder extravaganza and the basic format for the sequels, spin-offs, and competitors. By the end of John Wick 2, the price has gone up to $14 million and every human being on Earth seems to be after the Baba Yaga. Extremely similar films like Kate, Polar, and Blackout take the same approach. It's a quick and easy way to establish why the protagonist will have to fight a thousand trained killers and how they'll manage to win the day.
For basically the same reason, the Contract on the Hitman trope is very common in video games. As one would expect, the Hitman franchise uses this trope as a twist multiple times throughout its many reboots. The trope is played straight and inverted in the franchise's second game Silent Assassin. Agent 47 discovers that he's being pursued by Agent 17, a lesser clone from the same program, after having already eliminated every other part of the program. 47 has now been on both sides of intra-workplace assassination attempts. Arguably, the entire format of No More Heroes centers around hiring assassins to take out other assassins. There's a leaderboard and everything.
The Contract on the Hitman trope is one of the oldest and most common tropes in the world of fiction. From Norse myth to modern neo-noir action, those who kill for hire must always watch their back. The world of murder for hire is cruel but consistently fascinating. Countless assassins must be slain so that the one or two powerful ones can rise through the ranks. The next logical step for the trope would be the fictional higher-ups taking out a contract on every new hire as a form of an intense interview. Either way, there's a pretty solid metaphor for modern office work in there somewhere.