Cruel and Unusual Death: Difference between revisions
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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 ==
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* 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|''intelligent'']] man-eating snails the size of Buicks}}. Suffice it to say this does not end well.
* [[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 Shamans: Chained to Jack's bike and [[What a Drag|dragged along the ground]].
Frank: Killed by his own hand cranked electric chair.
Elise: ''Spanked'' to death.<ref>Assuming she did indeed die; this is the one case in the game where death is not confirmed.</ref>
Kojack: Exploded by his own bike.
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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* 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.
* The Powerpuff Girls all suffer horrible deaths in the "Powerpuff Assassin" series. Blossom crashes into the ground while flying, is shot by the assassin repeatedly, and finally has her head explode. Bubbles gets abducted, then has her hair shaved off, then is electrocuted after she cries all over herself, and is finally shot down after having her eyes burst out from her socket. As for Buttercup, she gets beaten up, has a stake driven through her heart, and has her head brutally smashed with a hammer.
*''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.▼
* 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.
▲* ''[[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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