Perfect Poison: Difference between revisions

'''Daemon:''' Now and again.

'''Shackleforth:''' By the way, what's in it?

 

When murder by poison is depicted in fiction, it never takes more than a drop of clear liquid or a pinch of white powder in order to make the victim grip their throat, cough a bit, and fall over. Quick, clean, and quiet. The reality is not so simple. Poisoning someone to death in a way to avoid suspicion and police detection is a very complex process.

This is generally assumed to be the kind of poison used in a case of [[Finger-Licking Poison]]. Frequently has an [[Improbable Antidote]]. May or may not [[Technicolor Toxin|be purple or green]]. Naturally, part of its perfectness is usually that it works on [[Universal Poison|everything.]]

 

* Averted in ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure]]'', where both victims [[Big Bad|Dio]] poisons happen in steady doses over a long time.

* Subverted in ''[[Detective Conan]]''. APTX-4869 is supposed to be one, but certainly for our heroes it's merely a [[Fountain of Youth]].

* Averted in ''[[Shina Dark]]''. Poisoning Christina was done over many years.

 

* In ''[[MGLN Crisis]]'', the poison {{spoiler|Raquel Benna/Zettin drinks}} kills her within a few minutes, before help arrives.

 

* Iocaine powder from ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'' is odourless, tasteless, and causes nearly instant death. Apparently there are no ill effects up to death. Yet it's still possible to gain an immunity to it...

** As Pirate Robert points out, that depends on the dosage. It's actually a noted method that one can develop immunity to certain poisons by consuming harmlessly small doses over time, and gradually increasing the amount for greater tolerance. However, ingesting amounts greater than one's current tolerance will still kill. We also never see how big of a dose he puts in the drinks. (Beware of trying this with other poisons, such as lead—these will simply accumulate in the body until a fatal concentration is reached.)

* [[The Maids]]: A cup of tea mixed with an overdose of sleeping pills will cause the victim to peacefully go to sleep in some ten seconds. (In [[Real Life]], it would probably make the person nauseated enough to vomit the pills back up).

* In ''[[Traffic]]'', the police informant played by Miguel Ferrer dies a few minutes after eating one bite of a poisoned breakfast. The only warning was his comment that the food "tastes like shit."

 

** Even then it wasn't to kill him either. It was to keep him from doing his normal duties.

* Averted in ''[[Madame Bovary]]'' by Gustave Flaubert. The eponymous character attempts to kill herself by swallowing a large dose of arsenic. Instead of instantaneous death, Emma Bovary endured several days of intense and gruesome illness before she finally died.

** Note that this is completely in-character for Emma, who has lived her entire life [[Wrong Genre Savvy|believing herself the heroine of cheesy romance story]], while unfortunately only being the (arguable) heroine of a painfully realistic and extremely cynical one.

* Done right for once in ''[[Codex Alera]]''. {{spoiler|The Emperor}} was fed small amounts of poison for years by {{spoiler|his wife}}, allowing it to gradually build up in his system. The effects of the poison are so slow that the victim thinks that the discomfort and pain are merely signs that he's getting old.

 

* Subverted in ''[[The Tenth Kingdom]]'', where it was established that the Wicked Queen killed Snow White's mother by slowly poisoning her as her handmaid, then married Snow White's father and did the same to him. The same was done to Prince Wendall's parents by the new [[Wicked Stepmother|stepmother]].

* ''[[I, Claudius]]'', has a number of poisoners, all of whom dose their victims over a number of days to make it seem like they died of a wasting illness. One of the poisoners, Martina, advises a client against using the tasteless belladonna as a poison since it leaves a tell-tale rash, but the client doesn't listen and uses it anyway. (This later comes back to haunt said client, when she and her husband are brought in for murder charges.)

* Both the above-quoted ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' episode and the story it's based on have "glove cleaner", "totally undetectable to all forms of autopsy". The man who sells it also sells love potions... for five dollars. He's expecting all of his customers to come back for the "glove cleaner"...

* In ''[[Justified (TV series)|Justified]]'', Mags Bennett kills one of her henchman with poisoned moonshine. The unidentified poison killed him in under two minutes, and he apparently didn't detect any smell or taste.

* Averted in ''Boardwalk Empire''. The Commodore's maid was poisoning him with rat poison over a long period of time and in high quantities. While he is left violently ill and has to regrow his stomach lining, he still recovers to full health a few months later.

 

* An old-time radio "Five Minute Mystery" titled [http://www.otr.net/r/fmin/73.ram The Radium Murder Case] tells of a murder exposed because, according to the investigator, the poison used would instantly knock out the victim upon contact with the tongue. In this case, the poisoning was openly stated but the perpetrator attempted to claim the poisoning as a suicide.

 

* Realistic use of poison in most tabletop systems is extremely rare. This is mostly due to how roleplaying systems work—poisoning someone over weeks or months is usually hard to make work mechanically, and usually won't be on the list of how [[Player Characters]] [[When All You Have Is a Hammer|off their opponents]].

** ''Pathfinder'', being the [[Spiritual Successor]] to the above version of D&D, has updated the poison rules in response to this trope. Poisons can now have a various onset time anywhere between six seconds and a day, and some poisons can last indefinitely. One particular poison can kill someone (by Constitution drain) over an arbitrarily long period of time.

* Averted in ''[[Exalted]]''; the poison rules are designed around inflicting only one die of damage per time interval (which are generally in the hours), and can only inflict a limited amount of damage per dose. Multiple doses just extend how long the poison can last, while still only inflicting one die per interval. The most dangerous poison in the game (made from the concentrated hatred of [[Eldritch Abomination|demon gods]] and tremendously rare and expensive) would still take about seven seconds to kill most people (and would be rather obvious about it).

 

* In the third case of ''[[Ace Attorney|Trials and Tribulations]]'', as well as the fourth case of ''Apollo Justice'', the victim dies from cyanide poisoning and from a (possibly) fictional poison, respectively, but in both cases the killer was more interested in having the person dead than hiding the method from the police (as far as ''what'' killed him, at least). As a result, the victim did not have a swift silent death, but instead gave full display of the poisons' physical reactions for all to witness, and the police have no trouble in figuring out what killed the victim.

* In ''[[Achaea]]'', a large number of poisons are available and widely used in combat. Most only cause [[Hit Points|hit point damage]] or a [[Standard Status Effects|status effect]], but Voyria is invariably lethal...At least it should be, if it didn't take a full thirty seconds to do its work, during which the player [[Anvilicious|receives SIX warning messages describing unmistakeable symptoms]] (mild fever, nose bleeding, bloody vomit, heavy breathing) and has only to take a sip of [[Magic Antidote]] to instantly save himself. As everyone carries antidote with them, the only practical way to kill someone with Voyria is to prevent the victim from drinking or injecting medicine.

** Which only kinda makes sense. In lethal injections they use multiple IVs so the poisons don't mix beforehand and undergo a process called precipitation. A fancy way of saying they get all waxy and won't go in. And it can still take two hours for the victim to die. It would work better to just use one of the first two (the more fast acting drugs) and strangle the person after they pass out.

** Probably the reason that 47 carries around a reel of piano wire. However, ''Blood Money's'' use of poison makes more sense than the previous game, ''Contracts'': in several levels, you're forced to look for poisons in the surrounding area and dose people's food or drink with it, and weedkiller or rat poison aren't exactly painless or quiet.

* In an ending cut from [[Jade Empire]], Sky dies from drinking poisoned wine.

 

* ''[[Minions At Work]]'': [http://www.minionsatwork.com/2009/02/minions-151-hard-to-swallow.html An early retirement plan with a fresh, minty after-taste!]

* In the [[Jack Chick]] tract Party Girl, a man who drinks a poisoned drink dies in less than four minutes.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* On their wiki, the [[Protectors of the Plot Continuum|PPC]] refers to this as "Ye Olde Poisonous Poison."

 

* Genghis Khan's father is believed to have been killed by drinking poisoned milk during a meal with rival Tatars.

* The [[wikipedia:Richard Kuklinski|Ice Man]] said that he would kill people by putting large amounts of cyanide in drinks, spilling it on them, and walking away.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Mystery Tropes]]

[[Category:Toxic Tropes]]

[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]