Cruel and Unusual Death: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Death sucks. That's why most people are afraid of it. Some people die of old age, or gradually succumb to one of a number of illnesses. When death comes, the lucky among us will go out peacefully with dignity. Some of us might go out fighting the good fight, saving the lives of some unfortunate person whom our consciences cannot ignore and force us to help. They'll all die "good deaths" (and in some cases, heroic deaths).

* ''[[Naruto]]'' has several cases of nasty death, including being ground to a paste by Gaara's sand and being trapped inside the puppet that suddenly gets turned into an iron maiden.

** Being ''blown to pieces'' and having your [[Fate Worse Than Death|still-living head buried]] also counts.

***** Just ended his ability to reset his immortality. He'll die ''eventually'', but not quickly. Apparently, he'll start rotting before he finally dies.

****** Which just makes it even [[Harsher in Hindsight]] and fits even more.

* In ''[[End of Evangelion]]'', Asuka and her EVA die messily at the hands of the Mass-Production EVA. At 300% synchronisation with her EVA (100% the level control and feedback one has with one's own body) she is [[Eye Scream|impaled through the eye]]. Still alive, she [[Grasp the Sun|reaches out]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|to attack them with her good hand, glaring them down with her uninjured eye]]. Then an MP EVA throws its spear and splits Unit 02's arm... and Asuka's... and then the others throw [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice|throw their spears]] into Unit 02... and then swoop down on it, tearing its armour off and tearing at its flesh with their hands and teeth, basically ''[[Eaten Alive|eating it (and her) alive]]''. Shinji gets a good look at the corpse when he emerges from Nerv HQ in EVA-01. There's not much left... of Unit 02, Asuka, or Shinji's sanity by that point.

** At least she made it out of [[Instrumentality]] at the end...

* In ''[[Hellsing]]'', Rip Van Winkle is [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice|impaled]] through the chest with a fairly large-caliber smoothbore musket by Alucard and then eaten alive (Not to mention the rather brutal rape implications). Turbalcain Alhambra gets a broken knee, one arm ripped in half and finally is eaten alive and burned to ashes. Luke Valentine is eaten alive and turned into a bloody smear by Alucard's [[Eldritch Abomination]] form after his legs are blown off. Zorin Blitz, an illusionist from the [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]], has her head grated against a wall by a vamped-out and ''supremely'' pissed off Seras until only an ear remains. Incognito gets the full Vlad the Impaler treatment from Alucard, getting impaled on a pole in vicious fashion just like the real Vlad did to his victims. Let's just say the series in general ''loves'' this trope.

* ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' has War Greymon and Metal Garurumon defeat Myotismon a ''second'' [[Why Wont You Just Die|but ''not'' final time]] by tearing up the [[Freud Was Right|the crotch]], kicking the Fuji tower into it, and [[It Makes Sense in Context|finally simultaneously freezing and burning up the torn area]]

* ''[[Narutaru]]'' has a fair few of these. Let's put it this way: getting impaled through the chest with a broken plane strut is one of the ''nicer'' ways to die in this series.

** {{spoiler|Norio}}. Dear god, {{spoiler|Norio...}}

* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', the first Greed dies in a vat of molten metal. [[Go Out with a Smile|Laughing]] hysterically.

** Scar's trademark [[Face Palm of Doom]].

** And that's in the TV series/early manga. The Hades Saga has [[Professional Butt-Kisser|Frog Zelos]] killing Camus, a Golden Saint who's [[An Ice Person]], and then facing Camus's ''very'' pissed off disciple Cygnus Hyoga, who performs his ultimate technique ''Aurora Execution''. However, Zelos is still alive after receiving it... then he tries to move despite being a borderline [[Human Popsicle]] at this point, [[Cryonics Failure|breaking his frozen feet off before falling down and shattering.]] Can we say, "Yikes"?

* ''[[The Legend of the Legendary Heroes]]'' is full of these, enough to make some viewers wonder if anyone dies ''normally'' in this series.

** The [[Oriko Magica]] manga deals several of these, like Yuma's abusive parents being melted alive by a witch, sweet Kazuko-sensei being chomped on by another witch's familiars ''in front of her students'' until only a bone remains of her, or Madoka being impaled in the chest with a HUGE shard of said another witch's body.

* In [[Gankutsuou]], corrupt banker Dangler is left adrift in space on an empty ship he can't steer to starve to death surrounded by his precious gold. [[Hanging Judge]] Villefort is poisoned by the illegitimate son he tried to kill at birth, and left for his mind to slowly rot away in an asylum.

* [[Deadman Wonderland]]: In the first few pages alone '''HOLY SHIT'''!!!

* In ''[[Gamaran]]'' [[Epic Flail|Muraku Matsumoto]] use his flail to ''[[Eye Scream|whip the eyes out]]'' of some [[Mooks]]. There's also Saizo the [[Ninja]] who paralyse and tortures to death some goons offscreen. Among various things, he turned their eyes into a pincushion.

* Karasu from [[Yu Yu Hakusho]] inflicts one of these on another competitor in the Dark Tournament, causing localized explosions to remove his opponent's arms in an excruciatingly painful manner, before blowing his head off.

 

* In ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|Uncanny X-Men]]'', Magneto once executed the entire crew of a submarine by sinking it. Drowning is a horrible way to die in and of itself. Combine it with being crushed by tons and tons of water...

** Magneto again. He held Zaladane in the air, surrounded by flying bits of junk from her ruined laboratory. Then he ''closed his fist...''

** Wait... they took a squirrel-like Green Lantern, and turned him into road kill? Aw man, that is horrible.

* In the ''[[Elf Quest]]: Shards'' storyline Two-Edge builds a particularly nasty execution device for the human tyrant Grohmul Djun. It consists of two large urns in the shape of birds with upraised beaks, between which the prisoner is strapped. The urns are slowly filled with water, the weight causing them to tip outward, putting greater and greater force on the prisoner's limbs until he is eventually torn in two.

** To punish Doctor Light, the Spectre transformed him into a candle, with his head as the wick and his body made of wax. The results were obvious after a while. At other times, he transformed a criminal into wood, and chucked him into a grinder. A paedophile was rent apart by his collection of dolls. He once judged an entire country guilty (it had a long history of blood feuds and ethnic cleansings). His answer? Burn it to the ground, men, women and children included, and leave the two top politicians alive, damning them to rule over the devastated land. He even threatened to do the same to the whole of the state of New York (a convicted criminal, who turned out to be innocent, was slated to be executed; this would mean '''the people of the State of New York''' would be guilty of homicide by the Spectre's book). In the most recent Batman cartoon, he takes minor criminal Professor Achilles Milo, releases the group of rats he had mind-controlled, and turned him into cheese. Do the math.

** Note that this was always the Spectre's specialty; some classic stories feature, in no particular order: being turned to glass and shattered, being turned into a mannequin and burned alive, melting as if made of wax, drowning in the clutches of a giant octopus; being cut in half by a giant pair of scissors, being beheaded by a falling decorative sword, being sliced and diced by a spectral meat cleaver, aging to a pile of dust and simply being reduced to a skeleton in the blink of an eye while being center of attention on a crowded airplane.

*** His Joker Venom could qualify for this trope, too, considering what it does. First you just start laughing, and you can't stop no matter how hard you try. Then all the muscles in your body begin to sieze up, especially in your face, causing you to grin. Then you start to take on the Joker's appearance, white skin, green hair and all. Then the muscle paralysis causes you to stop breathing. THEN you die. Oh, and if you're ''really'' 'lucky', he might [[Fate Worse Than Death|merely dose you with the non-lethal version, which can cause not only insanity but puts you into a coma...]]

* ''[[Marvel Zombies]]'' pretty much runs on this trope.

 

 

* In the movie ''What a Way to Go'', five different men (played by Dean Martin, Dick Van Dyke, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, and Gene Kelley) each suffer this type of death after becoming romantically entangled with the same young woman (who ends up insane after being horribly widowed five times in quick succession).

* In ''[[The Mummy Trilogy]]'':

** Some hired locals were sprayed with acid when they pry open a pass in the tomb and trigger a booby trap.

** The fat guy apparently gets eaten ''from inside'' by the scarabs.

** The priests who helped Imhotep in the prologue are ''mummified alive''.

* The main character's sister in ''[[Mirrors]]'' died by having her jaws ripped open by the mirror demon-this results in a double dose of gore as we see both her reflection breaking its own jaws and the real person seemingly having her mouth torn in half by invisible hands.

*** What is worse is that the guy's death was apparently based on something that ACTUALLY HAPPENED. And the poor little girl lived for months in agony before dying.

* ''[[Indiana Jones]]'' likes this a lot. "Oh, I'm sorry, we're fresh out of [[Just Shoot Him|getting shot]], all we have left is getting your face melted off, getting eaten by crocodiles, [[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade|aging rapidly into dust]], and getting your eyes and brains burned out due to absorbing a ton of knowledge. Take your pick!"

** Or being [[Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom|head-shredded by a ceiling fan]].

** Or being pulled [[Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom|feet-first into a rock crusher]].

** Or being jammed into a Nazi U-Boat's torpedo tube. (That one's from the games)

* In ''Beerfest'', Landfill One drowns in a gigantic vat of beer.

* During the course of titular character's [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] in ''[[The Abominable Dr. Phibes]]'', Phibes kills one of his victims by crushing his skull to paste with a vice hidden in a paper-mache mask.

** ''Phibes'', its sequel ''Dr. Phibes Rises Again'', and the very similar ''[[Theatre of Blood]]'' are alllll about this trope.

* What happens to Captain Amazing in ''[[Mystery Men]]'' is nothing less than fearsome. It's even [[Lampshade Hanging|pointed out in the film]] that the weapon that kills him is fueled by [[Nightmare Fuel]].

** It was pretty unrealistic, but unexpected in a PG-13 rated movie.

*** ''[[Enemy Mine (film)|Enemy Mine]]'' has a similar, PG-rated death, and ''The [[Final Destination]]'' replaces the rock crusher with a disintegrating escalator for an extremely not-PG-rated death.

*** Honorable mention goes to Milton Krest, who is framed by Bond as a traitor to his boss (Franz Sanchez). He gets thrown into a decompression chamber and experiences [[Your Head Asplode]].

** In ''[[Tomorrow Never Dies]]'', a mook falls into a newspaper press, and the main villain is skewered by a drill missile.

** In ''[[Die Another Day]]'', villain Gustav Graves is electrocuted before getting sucked by an airplane jet.

* [[The Naked Gun|Frank Drebin of Police Squad]] dreams of dying this way.

{{quote|'''Frank Drebin:''' A parachute not opening... that's a way to die. Getting caught in the gears of a combine... having your nuts bit off by a Laplander, that's the way I wanna go!}}

* There is one particularly nasty death in ''[[Ghost in the Machine]]'' which involves a middle-aged man microwaving some popcorn. The serial killer is somehow in the electrical circuit and starts a fire. When the man returns his face starts to literally bubble like the popcorn in the microwave. Then to make his death seem more pathetic he slips and hits his head on the kitchen bench. If you're after a night of good old fashioned [[Gorn]], I would recommend this classic.

* In ''[[Star Wars]] Episode VI: [[Return of the Jedi]]'', Jabba the Hutt condemns Luke and Han to be thrown into the mouth of the sarlacc, where they'd be slowly digested over a thousand years. You might comfort yourself with the fact that you'd die quickly, but that's not the case - the sarlacc's digestive system will ''keep you alive'' for all those years to attain maximum nutrition.

* The ''[[Halloween (film)|Halloween]]'' series is full of these, such as being impaled on a light fixture, shredded by a tractor harrow, and having one's head exploded by a fuse box.

* A low-budget film called ''The Devil's Bedroom'' is a nasty story about two brothers. Norm covets brother Jim's oil-rich land. When Jim won't sell, Norm and his wife Della conspire to have Jim committed to an insane asylum, but he escapes. The accidental deaths of Norm and Della are blamed on Jim because Jim is a Loner and everybody knows that [[Loners Are Freaks]]. (Because Jim has always declared he will never marry, there's [[Mistaken for Gay]] in it, too). The townspeople come after Jim with [[Torches and Pitchforks]] and the whole gruesome spectacle ends with Jim being set on fire and burning to death. Every bit of it on camera.

** Ae has her own handbag sewn onto her head and neck in such a way that, when fellow nurse Nook tries to help by undoing the stitches, it [[Off with His Head|causes her head to fall off]].

** Orn has all of her limbs brutally removed with a surgical saw... ''while she's still alive''. What makes it worse is that her twin sister, Am, is the one who has been supernaturally forced to do it, and Orn herself has been possessed into ''helping'' with the mutilation.

* In the film version of [[Doom]] Duke, one of the most likeable and sympathetic characters in the film, gets the most brutal and horrible death out of the entire cast. In the middle of a firefight, an Imp grabs his feet and pulls him ''through'' the metal grate he was unlucky enough to be standing on, shredding him.

* ''[[A Nightmare on Elm Street]]'' and its sequels revel in this, taking full advantage of its dream world killzone to make some of the most ludicrous and creative deaths in cinema history, and then upping the ante by having the victim's actual body reacting to the death in a (usually) more realistic manner. Some particularly fun examples include: arms getting torn off, replaced by beetle legs, then being trapped inside a roach hotel which is crushed by Freddy; having flesh torn out of your arms and legs and used as puppet strings, then being led up to a high point and dropped to your death; getting reduced to a comic book paper human by one slash, wherupon your ink drips out of you entirely and you are immediately slashed into a whirlwind of paper strips; having a hearing aid dig itself into your ear, and then amplify sounds to such a level that they cause head-exploding pain; and of course, being pulled into your bed and winding up reduced to more blood than the average body can hold, which is splattered all over the ceiling. Yow.

 

== Literature ==

* In ''The Cone'', by [[H. G. Wells]], a man gets deliberately roasted to death by being thrown onto the top of a blast furnace. Don't read it if you're the slightest bit squeamish. You're welcome.

* In one of the ''[[Dune]]'' prequels, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen has his etiquette teacher drowned in raw sewage. The man had been trying to teach the Baron how to behave in polite society.

** May be [[Laser-Guided Karma]], as all of the gods who died in that book had killed someone earlier in the novel. Goddess kills human; Kid kills goddess, Loki kills Kid, Shadow's wife kills Loki, and then dies herself of the self-inflicted wound and loss of the talisman that had brought her back from death.

* In Gary Jennings's historical epic ''[[Aztec]]'', a man has the skin of a little girl placed on his vital areas and is left to let the skin dry and thus suffocate him.

* In ''Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory'' by [[Orson Scott Card]], the [[Asshole Victim]] protagonist becomes forever plagued by monstrous, grotesquely-deformed infants whose sucker-like suction cup appendages rip off his skin when they make contact with it, as well as cause pus-filled sores to appear. And only HE can hear...and see...and experience these things, causing everyone else to believe him to be insane.

* {{spoiler|Christina's death}}(from before the story started) from ''[[Haunted (1995 film)|Haunted 1988]]. She set the house on fire, killing everybody who was trapped inside, accidentally got herself set on fire, she jumped into the pond to stop the flames and drowned.

* The worms from David Gerrold's ''[[The War Against the Chtorr]]'' series eat their victims alive, and their mouths are built to inflict about as much pain as possible while they're doing it. But here's the bad part: the worms aren't the ''worst'' thing that can kill you in this story...

* In ''[[Polystom]]'', a servant convicted of murdering an aristocrat is executed using the "skin frame": after fattening him up to loosen the entire skin, the skin around his ankles is cut and pinned to the lower part of the frame and he must hold the upper part of the frame until his arms give way with fatigue.

* In ''Death Masks'', a novel in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' series, [[Cool Old Guy|Shiro]] is brutalized and tortured to the point that Harry Dresden almost doesn't recognize him anymore.

** It doesn't actually happen, but in the short story "Love Hurts", a Red Court vampire describes to Harry the death her Court has planned for him. It involves a cage lined with sharp objects, the bottom of which is a closed bowl to collect his waste, spears in a rack underneath so anyone who feels like it can prod him with them, and eventual disembowelment and flaying to be turned into a chair in the Red Temple.

** There are many of these in the first book alone. For instance, Capa Barsavi knows that someone's killing the leaders of the gangs under his watch, and so keeps bringing the survivors of said gangs in for "questioning." When he's done with them, he either throws them to the sharks or lets his [[Torture Technician]] go to town. One such death involves taking a leather bag, filling it with broken glass, slipping it over the poor bastard's head, and ''kneading''.

** An even worse death is described in the sequel, ''Red Seas Under Red Skies''. An assassination attempt on crime boss Requin left Requin's lover, Selendri, [[Two-Faced|horribly disfigured on her left side]]. When Requin caught the assassin, he dipped his left side in cement, let it harden, then left him like that, forcing water down his throat to keep him going as long as possible, while the trapped side rotted and became gangrenous...

* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', Viserys Targaryen weds his sister to a Khal Drogo in the hopes of using Drogo's army to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. Eventually he pisses Drogo off enough that Drogo crowns him. With molten gold.

** In the "embarrassing" mode of things, we have Lord Tywin Lannister who is shot in the bowels, and ends his life with a stunning aversion of [[Nobody Poops]].

** Possibly the worst deaths in the series (though admittedly there is a lot of competition) are the deaths of Rickard and Brandon Stark in the backstory, for both physical and psychological torture. Rickard was roasted alive while his son Brandon watched. Brandon had a noose around his neck and his sword was placed just out of reach, causing him to strangle himself while trying to save his father.

* ''[[The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle]]'', by Haruki Murakami, illustrates, in horrific detail, just how terrifying it would be to watch someone getting skinned alive.

** Antpelt is beaten so badly in a ''training session'' in the Dark Forest ([[It Makes Sense in Context|which he was visiting in a dream)]] that he died in real life.

* The death of Annalina Aldurren in the final book of the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series is particularly cruel. The actual death is fairly quick (you don't live very long when someone blasts a foot-wide hole in your chest), but the killers then disintegrate her body, not just to cover their tracks, but explicitly stating that they're doing it so nobody will ever know what happened to her.

** In the first book, we have the death of Demmin Nass, [[The Dragon]], pedophile, child murderer, and all around bastard. After taunting Kahlan about how Richard was dead and he was going to let his men rape her to death while her friends are forced to watch, she goes into a [[Tranquil Fury]] [[Unstoppable Rage]] and confesses him, then chops off his testicles and feeds them to him before embedding an axe in his head.

* The short story ''Dark Red Mind'' has a scene where, after finding out that [[The Mole|the Colonel was in on the villain's plan]] the whole time, the three lead superhumans kill him in a truly nightmarish way. The Colonel gets in his car, turns the key in the ignition, and looks into the rear-view mirror to find Justin and Bethany sitting in the backseat. Just before he can get out, Justin uses his telekinesis to forcibly buckle the Colonel's seatbelt as tight as he can, making sure he can't get out. But that's not enough. Bethany uses her phasing powers on his hands ''without even touching him'', making sure he won't even have a physical chance to escape. Then, the third superhuman, Kaitlyn, with the ability to cut through things with her mind, slams her hands on the hood of the car. The Colonel begs for mercy, and Justin, with his only line in the story, simply replies, "Sorry, man. None left for you." Then Kaitlyn uses her power to ''cut through his neck as slowly as possible'' until she finally cuts all the way through.

** All of this is happening while [[Soundtrack Dissonance|Nocturne #2 in E-Flat Major is playing on the car radio.]]

* In the ''[[The Draka|Domination series]]'' by S.M. Stirling the stock punishment for any dissent is to be staked. The victim slowly dies, but if they tire and relax they'll just fall onto the stake more. It takes some skill to make the stake just the right length so as not to kill the victim too soon.

* In ''[[Jack Ryan|Without Remorse]]'', John Clark tortures and kills a drug dealer by jamming him into a decompression chamber and giving him the bends.

** And it goes on for an entire chapter. With all the detail and exhaustive research that Tom Clancy is famous for.

* [[Richard Morgan|Richard Morgan's]] fantasy novel ''[[The Steel Remains]]'' has one society sentence various people to death by gradual, mechanically-assisted impalement. This happens to a childhood friend of the main character. Later, due to a journey through possible alternate worlds/lives, the central character himself lives through such an experience. The description is... memorable, and not in a good way.

* The Short Story ''Jericho'' has the titular hero exiled by his own people, captured by humans, beaten, whipped, and eventually castrated and skinned alive.

* Failing to bind an Andat in ''[[The Long Price Quartet]]'' can have some pretty horrific consequences. For example, having your veins fill up with crushed glass. Or growing twisted mouths all over your body that vomit up you blood. Or slowly filling up with seaweed and black ice until your stomach ruptures.

* In [[Douglas Coupland]]'s ''Hey Nostradamus!'', which is based on the Columbine massacre, one character ends up being trapped under a table by a group of angry teens. The students jump up and down on the table, and Coupland has the narrator describing how as the students are jumping on the table, the gap between the table and the floor is getting smaller and smaller, until the table is practically touching the floor. OK, the person under the table was part of a group who had shot several students dead for no real reason, but it's still pretty nasty.

** Taken [[Up to Eleven]] in the fourth book, where the two main problems in the FAYZ are a hacking cough that causes kids to choke up pieces of lung, and a cockroach-esque parasite that eats you alive before hatching from your body. [[Nausea Fuel]] indeed.

* "The Cocoons" by [[Thomas Ligotti]] has psychiatric patients being eaten from the inside out by giant [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] arthropods after the "pills" they were given have hatched. While this never actually occurs "on-stage", the narrator watches some [[Snuff Film|very educational home videos]] of his doctor's work...

* The last chapter of Zola's ''Nana'' focuses on other characters as they visit the title character's deathbed. The cheerful prostitute, who single-handedly ruined the fortunes of some of the richest men in France through sheer profligacy, dies horribly disfigured by smallpox.

* Given ''[[The Monk]]'' is a Gothic novel, they have to make it extreme, but it's a bad death even for a woman as heartless as the prioress. She gets ripped to shreds by an angry mob.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[The Tudors]]'', the producers seems to take pleasure in showing the all myriad ways that Renaissance England have for torturing and killing people.

* Spike TV's ''[[1000 Ways to Die]]'' is all about this trope. It doesn't shy away from including graphic images of being wrapped in freshly-killed animal skins and left to be pecked to death by vultures, to being asphyxiated by cocoa powder, to jumping from a cliff into a lake and hitting the water at an angle that causes water to rush into the rectum, rupturing the large intestine.

** Scorpius' [[Extreme Melee Revenge]] against his Scarran "[[Complete Monster|nanny]]," by [[Eye Scream|thrusting both halves of a snapped coolant rod through her eyes]]... and when that [[Made of Iron|fails to kill her]], he resorts to punching her into submission before using [[Hoist by His Own Petard|her own torture-thermostat]] to lower the temperature until she [[Rasputinian Death|succumbs to hypothermia and her own injuries.]]

* ''[[Dead Like Me]]''. The main character dies of being hit in the head with the toilet seat from a deorbiting space station... [[First-Episode Resurrection|in the first episode]].

* ''[[GURPS]]: Ultratech'' has a weapon that releases nanites into your blood. After a few minutes your blood ''explodes''.

* A Blood Magic spell in a ''[[Rifts]]'' supplemental is called ''Carnivorous Blood''. Your imagination can handle the rest...

** Of special note is the Orks' Shokk Attack Gun, which teleports a tiny goblin though hell, driving it psychotically insane, and causing it to reappear ''inside'' you, at which point it rips you apart from within.

* ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' has several extremely horrifying deaths for the very unfortunate humans that run foul of its supernatural denizens. Certain vampires can restrain a human while eating his flesh, then wear it as a cloak to protect from sunlight. Abyssal entities can do all sorts of unpleasant things to people. The grand prize, however, has to go to the Shartha, or the hosts, who can possess humans by getting into their bodies and slowly eating their hearts or brains.

Shogun: Impaled through the crotch by a spiked roof fixture.

Yokozuna: Used for fireworks.

* In ''[[Space Quest]] III'', getting shot by the pirates will trap you in a solid block of green jello. For not heeding your janitorial duties, [[Have a Nice Death|death]] by suffocation is [[Incredibly Lame Pun|just desserts]].

** The endodroid in ''[[Space Quest]] VI'' will eagerly tear all of Roger's internal organs out of his body.

* In ''[[Gears of War]] 2'', rookie [[Sacrificial Lion|Benjamin Carmine]] (along with the rest of his squad) are swallowed, helicopter and all, by a gigantic riftworm. The rest of the squad survives. Carmine falls victim to what can only be described as "digestion parasites" and is half-melted/eaten alive.

** Actually, most of the multiplayer executions count as well: Being chainsawed into pieces (sometimes by more than one person at at time), being curb-stomped, being roasted with a flame-thrower... and worst of all? Having some damned 13 year old rape your body before he does it.

* The adventure mode of ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' allows for a combination of Cruel and Unusual Death and [[Ludicrous Gibs]]. [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=27591.msg941291#msg941291 Obok Meatgod], who is on his way to being a [[Memetic Badass]], is renowned for causing these.

* In ''[[Dead Rising]]'', after you defeat [[Monster Clown|Adam the clown]], he drops his still-running chainsaws and falls on them. He dies [[Laughing Mad|laughing like a maniac]] while blood is spraying everywhere.

** In ''[[Dead Rising 2]]'', Sullivan [[Just Between You and Me|attempts to justify the zombie outbreak Chuck was framed for.]] Given that Chuck lost his wife to the previous outbreak, he's not impressed. The following [[That One Boss|boss fight]] - where [[Guns Are Useless]] and ''[[No-Gear Level|Chuck can't use melee weapons]]'' - just make it easier to hate him. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os78TihE1Ws But Keiji Inafune makes up for all of this by several orders of magnitude].

'''Player''': '''''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}cI89TD66CT8 CAN I GET A, HELL, YEAH!]''''' }}

** Unfortunately, programming limitations mean all we see is a massive spray of blood and the jerk's legs handcuffed to the roof. Meh. Still awesome.

** The sequel isn't much better. We've got a guy getting the shit beaten out of him, crucified with exacto knives, ''his mouth stabled shut'', and finally being cut open with a box cutter, another guy getting his head beaten in with a sledgehammer, another character beaten stabbed, and electrified ''using her own blood'', a woman literally getting melted down into a human pizza, and finally the main character's best friend is strangled with wires. (which is, oddly enough, the ''tamest'' death)

* In one of ''[[Madou Souhei Kleinhasa]]'''s bad endings, Roze ends up literally being raped to death. [[Or So I Heard]].

* ''[[Naughty Bear]]'' has this as part of the gameplay, being the [[Spiritual Successor]] to [[Manhunt]]. One example is slamming a teddy's face into a spinning turntable.

* The old vector graphics game, ''[[Out of This World]]'' (aka ''Another World'') , is practically made out of this trope. Not only does everything on the planet want to kill him, it wants to kill him in the most gruesome way possible. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdq7sDvIuLo&feature=related Roll the clip!]

** A lot of the [[Nonstandard Game Over|Wrong Ends]], while nowhere near as gruesome, still count. As does Seiko's death. And then there's what happened to the aforementioned ghost children, whose deaths (long before the events of the game) ''easily'' qualify as fearsome.

* [[Large Ham|Inspector Cabanela]] can die this way in Ghost Trick if the player Ghost Swaps the bullet that was supposed to hit him with a nearby helmet mid-flight. The Pidgeon Man says it best: "[[Understatement|That didn't go well.]]"

 

== Web Comics ==

* The Asperpedia Four in ''[[Sonichu]]''. After a deeply biased trial, Alec, Evan, Mao and Sean are sentenced to death. Alec is strapped to an electric chair, as each of the main characters tell him to go to hell. Sean is killed by firing squad. But that's small potatoes compared to the last two. Mao is torn apart by Chris's psychic powers, and worst of all, Evan is chained up and brutally tortured to death, by an ''eight year old girl, nonetheless.'' And this is after Chris criticised Asperchu for its excessive violence. [[Moral Event Horizon|Just... damn, Chris.]]

* ''LOL - Comics!'' has the "[http://www.prguitarman.com/comics/271_cerealKILLA.gif Cereal KILLA]".

{{quote|'''HRROORK'''}}

* ''[[Homestuck]]'' has had quite a few unpleasant deaths during Act 5 Act 2, but Neophyte Redglare's takes the cake. She either a.) didn't know about or b.) severely underestimated Mindfang's mind control abilities. As a result, Mindfang manipulates the angry mob at her trial into lynching Redglare and hanging her with one of her own nooses. Given that the story is written from Mindfang's point of view, it is highly unlikely Redglare survived the encounter.

* ''[[Looking for Group]]'''s very own [[Heroic Sociopath]], Richard, revels in this trope. This appears to be mainly due to the fact that Richard, being an ageless, undead warlock, as well as a sadist without equal, needed something to keep him going throught the centuries, but also due to his inability to distinguish "[[Crossing the Line Twice|going too far]]", and "[[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|going much, MUCH further than merely 'too far']]".

* Basically the whole point of ''[[Madness Combat]]''. [[Darker and Edgier|Happens more in later episodes]]

* King Womp's death in the [[Klay World]] movie, where he gets an ax in the back, falls on top of a communication structure, is electrocuted, and explodes.

* It seems to be a point of pride among ''[[Protectors of the Plot Continuum]]'' to do the most unpleasant and [[Karmic Death|appropriate]] things to their victims, though the oldies have recently been insisting that the point of the business is more "have fun writing" than "try to outdo everyone" (and they're right). The Sues still suffer an impressive range of nasty deaths, from being eaten by [[Harry Potter|Flesh-Eating Slugs]] to being given to the [[Discworld]] [[The Fair Folk|elves]].

* Being a site based around the concept of [[Anyone Can Die]], ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' occasionally falls into this trope when the [[Ax Crazy]] characters get "creative". At times the scenes can turn into [[Narm]] either because it [[You Fail Biology Forever|isn't possible in real life]] or just because it wasn't written well. Other times, though, it ''works''. An example from v4 would be the majority of [[Mad Artist|Sarah Atwell]]'s kills, one of which involves rigging up a death trap where if the poor victim even moves, he gets shot in the head, [[Better to Die Than Be Killed|which he decides not to take part]].

* ''[[The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon]]'' has the inevitable death of Jack Cucchiaio be this. He'll die at the hand of the [[Immortal Assassin|Ginosangi]]... eventually, after years of being beaten with a spoon with the only pauses being when he's trying to convince someone of the Ginosangi's existence. Even when he tries to kill himself to get it over with, the Ginosangi won't let him.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Though there were quite a few different deaths in the [[One-Episode Wonder]] ''[[Korgoth of Barbaria]]'', nothing matches the death of a [[Giant Mook]] named [[Punny Name|Scrotus]], who gets interrupted in the middle of a wonderful [[To the Pain]]/[[Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon]] speech. After the title character is unimpressed by the overly long speech, he proceeds to dish out a brutal murdering by ripping half of the mook's skin off from the ponytail straight down, tossing a full glass of alcohol into the godawful wound, [[Kill It with Fire|then setting the alcohol set on fire]].

* Blurr's death in [[Transformers Animated]]. He was crushed into a cube for crying out loud! And that was after he found out that his "boss" so-to-speak, was a double agent.

 

== Real Life ==

* [[The Other Wiki]]'s [[wikipedia:List of unusual deaths|List of unusual deaths.]] Warning: The level of horror is [[The Readings Are Off the Scale|off the charts]].

* Some stories claim the Aztecs poured molten gold down Spanish throats after Montezuma was killed. Doesn't help that Cortez told the Aztecs they wanted the gold because they had a disease that only gold could cure.

* The Roman emperor Valerian I was captured at the Battle of Edessa by the Persian King Shapur I. At first, Shapur merely used Valerian as a human footstool. However, when Shapur grew tired of this game, he had Valerian flayed alive, then stuffed his skin with dung and straw and had it put on display in one of the larger temples in his capital.

* King Edward II of England was assassinated by way of first being crushed between two heavy mattresses and then having a red-hot branding iron shoved as far up the King's rectal passage as it could be pushed. The person who arranged this murder? Edward's wife, Isabella. It's generally seen as a particularly cruel [[Take That]] since Edward was notorious for his passion for a male courtier. The courtier in question, [[wikipedia:Hugh Despenser the Younger|Hugh Despenser the Younger]], was eventually drawn and quartered.

* Ancient Greece had three timelessly great dramatists, all of whom died in memorable ways. Euripides was torn to pieces by a pack of dogs; Sophocles [[Weaksauce Weakness|choked on a grape]], and Aeschylus was killed by a tortoise. (Specifically, by a tortoise that was dropped on his head by an eagle who, apparently, mistook his bald spot for a rock.)

* This was pretty much the whole purpose of crucifixion. Not only did the Romans have to invent a whole new word to describe the pain of having nails driven through one's medial nerves ("excruciating" comes from ''ex crucia'', literally, "out of the cross"), but the victims were put up on display for everyone naked while they suffocated to death, probably crying in agony and pleading for their lives. On top of everything else, the victims were viciously scourged with studded whips just beforehand. The Romans themselves considered crucifixion so terrible that it was ''illegal'' for citizens to be crucified.

* The Persians invented [[wikipedia:Scaphism|"scaphism"]] or "The Boats." Small cuts would be made over the victim's body. Then, the he would be fastened to two boats. Before they sent him off, they would feed him honey and milk, to cause diarrhea, and cover the victim in honey to attract insects. After this, they would push him out into the middle of a stagnant, insect-ridden lake. The victim would eventually end up lying in his own shit, covered in infected wounds, while insects bred in the shit and wounds. Starvation was considered a blessing in such a situation.

* The Assyrians used them as a tool of war and diplomacy. The reliefs of the palace of Assurnasirpal II about the fate of rebels (decapitations, flaying, mutilations and all that kind of cute stuff) were probably made to scare enemy ambassadors.

* The Cheka in the early days of Soviet Russia:

{{quote|Victims were reportedly skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, and rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists reportedly poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Chinese Cheka detachments stationed in Kiev reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat into the other end which was then closed off with wire netting. The tube was then held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape. Anton Denikin's investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.}}

* Elizabeth Bathory was punished for her crimes by being sealed in her room, with only a small window in the wall that used to be her doorway from which a guard would give her her meals. She actually lived like this for a few years before finally dying.

** Cruel and unusual? Really?! Pretty mundane compared to some of the things she allegedly did to her victims: Cooking them alive, biting their throats out, locking them in spike-filled cages which were then swung about on pulley systems...To name a few of the TAME ones.

* There was once a torture device known as a Judas Cradle, which comprised of a small pyramid on legs. Basically, you would be tied over it with your legs spread and lowered downward as the Cradle went... places.

* Necklacing. Someone fills a rubber tire with a flammable liquid like petroleum, forces it around your chest and arms, then lights it on fire. It may take up to twenty minutes before the person dies. Popular in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s and in Haiti from 1986-1990, during the transition to democracy.

** The Finnish version of this, called ''teilaus'' was to first break all the bones and then revolve the wheel around so that the broken bone heads would cause internal hemorrhage, the victim slowly bleeding to death. In today's colloquial Finnish, ''teilaus'' means a particularly nasty rejection, critique or review.

* A person struck by a subway train, either from an accidental fall or more likely from a suicide attempt, not infrequently ends up dragged between the train and the station platform. When the train comes to a stop, the hapless victim's midsection is compressed almost flat, in most cases there being only about an inch of clearance between the train and the platform edge. Most or all of the internal organs are destroyed and all bones of the pelvis are smashed into dust. The spine is usually severed in multiple places, and quite often the victim's upper body and legs are facing in different directions. The worst part - the victim is alive and often lucid. The pressure between the train and the platform acts as a giant tourniquet, forcing blood into the upper body and keeping the victim's brain and heart functioning. The *really* worst part is that there is no hope whatsoever of survival. As soon as rescuers release the pressure, by using jacks or airbags to push the train away from the platform, the most of the victim's blood (and often the remains of his or her internal organs) will go gushing onto the tracks, with death following in seconds.

* Spiders inflict this on their prey. Spiders don't just "suck the liquids out. They ''inject the prey with acid, which dissolves the bug's insides.'' They then suck out the resulting goop.

* Lobsters get boiled alive...but this is a ''merciful'' death compared to how you ''broil'' lobsters; tie their claws down, slit them open with a knife and then put them into the oven while they're still alive.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Death Tropes]]

[[Category:Horror Tropes]]