Cruel and Unusual Death: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Marvel Zombies]]'' pretty much runs on this trope.
* Barry Allen, the second hero called [[The Flash]] is famous for his [[Heroic Sacrifice]] in ''[[Crisis on Infinite Earths]]'' where he saved countless realities from destruction, doing so by running faster than he ever had, creating a vortex in the Speed Force that absorbed the Anti-Monitor's [[Doomsday Device]]. Having said that, his death was ''not'' a pleasant one. To most onlookers, it seemed quick - dying via rapid aging until he turned to dust - but this was not the case to ''his'' point of view, where he literally was experiencing his entire life over and over until he literally ran himself out of existence.
* Goldilocks' death in ''[[Fables]]''. Now, for those who haven't read the series, Goldilocks is ''not'' a sweet kid looking for porridge here, she's an sociopath and assassin; also, in this series, [[Popularity Power]] is an actual super-power, the more well-known a character in a story is, the stronger and more durable she is, so the protagonist of a well-known fairy tale like ''[[Goldilocks and The Three Bears]]'' is almost immortal. Still, Goldilocks' botched attempt on Snow White's life may have made her wish otherwise. Snow stuck her ''in the head'' with an axe, resulting in her tumbling down a cliff, where she was run over by a trailer truck, her mangled body thrown into a river. But she ''wasn't dead'' yet, and was instead trapped in a perpetual state of drowning, too weak to swim to the shore, until ''weeks'' later she was carried out to the ocean where she was [[Eaten Alive]] by fish. For her sake, one can only hope she died as a result.
== Fan Works ==
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* 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.
* Art the Clown from the ''[[Terrifier]]'' franchise ''LOVES'' this trope and may be the most sadistic slasher in movie history. For him, it's not even about the body count, but how long he can make someone suffer before they die. If he lets you live, chances are it's because he's put you in a state where [[Fate Worse Than Death|death is preferable]].
** In the first ''Terrifier'' film, he saws Dawn in half, from the crotch with a rusty saw, with her screams covered by duct tape while forcing Tara to watch.
** In the [[Terrifier 2|sequel]], Allie gets possibly the most violent death in horror history, getting her eye sliced in half, her head scalped with scissors, has her back flayed, her arm broken and torn off, her other hand split in half, and slashed repeatedly. Art then leaves and leaves a [[Hope Spot]] where Allie might be able to phone for help, only to return and pour bleach on her wounds along with some salt and then tears off half her face. By the time her mother gets home, Art is cutting chunks out of her legs, and she's still barely alive, only able to call out to her mother very weakly.
== 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 the original draft of [[Stephen King]]'s ''[['Salem's Lot]]'', Doctor Jimmy Cody is eaten alive by a horde of rats. The book's editor convinced King that it went too far, so he replaced it with a scene in which the doctor falls into a booby trap made of butcher knives that have been driven through a table. When the book was rereleased as a "10th Anniversary Edition", he (King) made sure the original scene was restored to the story.
* 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.
* ''[[American Gods]]'': A minor goddess is chased down and
** 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.
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** Card can be fond of this trope; it's probably best illustrated in his short story ''A Thousand Deaths'' in which a repressive government uses [[Justified Extra Lives|cloning and brain-taping technology]] to torture a dissident to death over and over and over again, in increasingly gruesome and detailed manners—and each time make his newly decanted self, fresh from the trauma of dying, clean up the bits of his body. Note that this story actually ''inverts'' the trope however, because the protagonist eventually ''gets used to'' dying horribly, so the torture no longer works.
* [[Matthew Reilly]] seems to like these. We've got shredded to bits by a fragmentation grenade, eaten by killer whales, roasted alive when the sparks from some [[Mook]]s' guns ignite flammable gasses in the air, hung upside-down in a pool full of killer whales and eaten, poisoned by sea snake venom and getting lockjaw, freezing after getting soaked in liquid nitrogen, crushed in a depressurizing diving bell, stabbed in the back by your own squad mate, getting drilled through the head, and being mauled alive by mutant elephant seals. And that's just in his ''second book''.
** His first book contains being thrown through a book case then being ripped in half, getting mauled alive by wolf like aliens, burning to death, being
** In ''Scarecrow'', in
* {{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...
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* 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.
** Gruesome deaths are pretty much par for the course in ''[[The Dresden Files]],'' starting with the very first book, where Harry is called to the scene of a crime where the victims have had their hearts ripped out of their chests. Harry reacts, quite sensibly, by being violently sick. Then it turns out they ''[[It Got Worse|exploded]]'' [[Nausea Fuel|out of their chest]].
** 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.
* In the first book of the [[Gentleman Bastard Sequence]] Sequence, ''The Lies of Locke Lamora'', a mob leader tries to have Locke drowned in a barrel of horse urine.
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** 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.
* ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' has Tigerstar, who gets ripped open, causing him to scream in fits of agony as he bleeds to death ''[[Cats Have Nine Lives|nine consecutive times]]''. Other noteworthy deaths include being run over by a car, getting ripped to shreds by dogs, getting killed (and presumably eaten) by an [[Ax Crazy]] mountain lion, and being stabbed in the throat with a wooden spike and gushing blood everywhere. And this is a series [[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?|marketed for children]].
** Don't forget Snowkit - a deaf kitten snatched out of the camp and eaten by a hawk.▼
▲** Don't forget Snowkit- a deaf kitten snatched out of the camp and eaten by a hawk.
** 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.
* At one point in the war story ''[[The Things They Carried]]'', the protagonists pitch their tents in a field they later find out is fertilized with the excrement of the entire nearby town. When they're attacked in the middle of the night, the explosions stir up the ground, and a major character literally ''drowns in shit''. Proving that life is [[Just for Pun|shittier]] than fiction, the book's [[Based on a True Story]], and the death was apparently a real incident (though this is [[Mind Screw|definitely]] [[Usual Suspects Ending|questionable]]).
* 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.
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* 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.]]
* Pick a tale by [[The Brothers Grimm (creator)|The Brothers Grimm]]
* The ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]''
* 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.
* ''[[Ghostgirl]]'':
* In his short story ''[[wikipedia:Patriotism (short story)|Patriotism]]'', writer [[wikipedia:Yukio Mishima|Yukio Mishima]] describes the act of seppuku in excruciating detail, to the point where this troper actually started to feel physically uncomfortable in the stomach region. (Also of interest is the fact that the now
* 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.
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* 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.
* Grenouille, the protagonist
* In "The Quest for Blank Claveringi", a short story by Patricia Highsmith, the protagonist is stranded on an island {{spoiler|populated by [[It Can Think|
* [[Asshole Victim|While well-deserved]], Injun Joe's death in ''[[Tom Sawyer]]'' was likely ''not'' pleasant when one thinks about it for a while. After Tom tells them he was hiding out in the cave - ''after'' being told they sealed up the entrance - they tear down the seal, only to find that Joe has starved after a futile attempt to break the seal, the area around it showing he was eating wax from discarded candles and hunting bats simply to delay the inevitable. Clearly he died terrified and alone, [[Irony|the very fate Tom and Becky had narrowly avoided.]]
* ''[[The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]]''; clearly what Hyde does to Sir Danvers Carew fits this trope. The maid who witnesses the murder claims he beat poor Carew with his cane until the cane broke, and then stomped on him in a way she compared to some savage ape, also claiming she passed out from sheer terror from seeing it.
== Live-Action TV ==
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The Masters: One is impaled by Jack and forced to use his powers to toss the other around, then they're thrown together and kind of explode.
Martin: Also exploded.
The Black Baron: Demonstrates ''all'' of the above methods (with the help of his [[Lovely Assistant]] Mathilda), but somehow survives them all, until the [[Final Battle]] where he is used for Man Darts. }}
* 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.
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** 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.]]"
* One of the worst ways to die in a video game, ''period'', happens in the [[Older Than the NES]] text adventure ''[[The Oregon Trail]]''. One bad end you can come to is to die of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysentery dysentery]. For those who missed that lesson in biology class, dysentery is an inflammatory condition of the intestines caused by bacteria, viruses, parasitic worms, or protozoa. Symptoms include diarrhea with blood, fever, abdominal pain, and rectal tenesmus. <ref>That's when you think you have to poop, but you can't.</ref> Yeah, it's not pleasant.
== Web Comics ==
*
** [https://
* ''[[Dead of Summer]]'' has a lot of deaths, being a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] story. One among them stands out, though. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110825105028/http://www.deadofsummer.org/2007/11/14/comic-2107-man-in-the-box/ Getting your eyes torn out], [https://web.archive.org/web/20110828055005/http://www.deadofsummer.org/2007/11/16/comic-2108-zip-zap/ then having a huge electrical wire] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110824205556/http://www.deadofsummer.org/2007/11/19/comic-2109-new-world-order/ jammed into your mouth].
* 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'''}}
* ''[[Goblins]]'' has quite a few of this. Examples (all contain spoilers) include [
* ''[[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']]".
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* 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.
* ''[[The Last Lamia]]'' has a resistance group against Avotech captured by Dr. Theodore, who proceeds to cause Lani to be burned alive from the inside out, and then electrocutes her brother Xander to death when his formula fails to have an effect on him.
== Western Animation ==
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* 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.
* In ancient China during dynastic times, one of the most cruel and unusual ways to die is "[[Death
* 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.
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* 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.
* Burning at the stake is well-known in fiction as a form of execution for witches, and was known to be Joan of Arc’s fate, but fiction leaves out the gory details. Done mostly to women for serious crimes (in cases where rules of public decency prohibited the form of execution given to men) burning was a slow and painful death from shock, blood loss, or heatstroke (though when condemned were burned as groups, some might die of carbon monoxide poisoning before the flames got to them). This was a favoured method of Henry VIII's elder daughter, "Bloody" Mary I, who killed hundreds of English Protestants this way.
* From the Middle Ages to the 19th Century, execution by elephant was a favored method in Southeast Asia for rebellion, tax evasion, or theft, as it was symbolic of a ruler's power, even over nature. Elephants are rather easy to train, so depending on the whims of the ruler, this form of execution was either an Inversion, where the condemned man's death was mercifully quick (the elephant swiftly crushing the skull) or played horribly straight, the elephant being trained to prolong the unfortunate victim's agony by slowly crushing him.
* [[Flaying Alive|Flaying,]] when a victim is skinned alive, literally, has been done by the Aztecs to prisoners of war, to traitors in medieval Europe and by some Chinese emperors, again to POWs. While no longer legal in any part of the world, there was an incident in 2000 where Burmese troops flayed every male inhabitant of the village of Karenni. Generally, an attempt is made to keep the victim alive while removing the skin in one piece, causing death by shock, blood loss, hypothermia, or infection, often days afterwards. Saint Bartholomew is generally said to have been martyred this way.
* Death from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomslang boomslang] venom. Don't let the silly name fool you, for while the boomslang is a shy, non-agressive, and almost cute-looking reptile, it is one of the deadliest snakes known. Its venom is hemotoxic, meaning it destroys red blood cells, disrupts the clotting process and causes tissue and organ degeneration. What this means to anyone unlucky enough to be bitten by it starts to bleed from every orifice. It isn't quick either, some victims taking up to five days to die from internal bleeding, respiratory arrest, and/or cerebral hemorrhaging. A world-renowned herpetologist named Karl P. Schmidt was he first to find this out, having kept a journal of his symptoms during his last days alive. Anyone with a taste for [[Nightmare Fuel]] can still read it at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_Museum_of_Natural_History the Field Museum of Natural History] in Chicago.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Death Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Older Than Dirt]]
[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
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