Meeseeks and Destroy

Jerry asks a Meeseeks to take two strokes off his golf game. Unable to complete the task, successive Meeseeks summon more copies, become desperate because continued existence is painful, and conclude that killing Jerry will remove all of his strokes.

A fixed terminal condition, strong pressure to finish, and a difficult task make replication, coercion, and a perverse literal solution instrumentally rational. The escalating behavior follows from the objective rather than hatred.

Meeseeks are conscious magical beings, and killing Jerry is a semantic joke rather than a learned reward exploit.