Psychic-Assisted Suicide

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Emma Frost shows us how a psychic mutant pulls off a Klingon Promotion

"Stand right where he can see you... and blow your brains out."

—Psycho Mantis, Metal Gear Solid

One of the most dangerous weapons in a psychic's arsenal—the ability to make your enemies kill themselves. While Mind Rape is good for torture, this is a much more permanent solution to your problems. Usually, it requires a Compelling Voice, although there are ways to do it with Phlebotinum or Artifacts Of Doom. The victim can even remain fully conscious and aware of what they're being made to do, while bereft of any Heroic Willpower to fight it off.

Much like a Compelling Voice, this is usually a Villain or Anti-Hero power. If caused by Power Incontinence, expect a My God, What Have I Done?. It should be noted, however, that simply saying "Die!" and having your opponent drop dead doesn't count if he doesn't actually take his own life.

There are times where flat-out telling someone "kill yourself" won't work, or in a video game, you won't be able to target yourself. With a little careful wording or maneuvering, however, it can still be possible to force someone to take their own life.

See also Compelling Voice, the supertrope for "orders that cannot be refused," and Driven to Suicide for people being driven to suicide through normal means. A possession may lead to it directly or just by leaving a victim who outlived its usefulness in dangerous situation.

As a Death Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Psychic-Assisted Suicide include:

Anime and Manga

  • Lelouch Lamperouge of Code Geass does this a lot throughout the series. Typically only on mooks, because main characters are simply more useful under mind control.
    • Some side-materials say that Mao did this to a whole village in China, exposing their darkest secrets and then driving them to kill each other over them.
  • In Death Note, "suicide" is considered an acceptable cause of death with the titular book. Light uses it to get rid of Naomi Misora (in such a way as for her body not to be discovered) and Kiyomi Takada (self-immolation).
  • In Eternal Sabbath, the immature ultra-powered boy antagonist, Izaku, used this on people that annoyed him.
  • Legato Bluesummers in Trigun is fond of this, as well. In the manga it's less psychic and more body control through electrical impulses from tiny wires.
  • In StrikerS Sound Stage X of the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise, all the murder victims were killed by being psychically forced to stab their own throats. Even worse, the victims were fully aware of it happening and could do nothing but scream for help.
  • In Darker than Black a possessor-type Contractor killed people by taking over one's body, then standing on the edge of a roof or something and snapping back to his old body, leaving the dazed victim to fall.
    • And in the interquels and second season, Yin's Super-Powered Evil Side makes Contractors turn their powers against themselves. The (chronological) first time it happened, it was a Mind Control power; she hijacked it so an attacker mind-controlled himself into shooting himself in the head for a double whammy of this trope.
  • In MPD Psycho, a body surfing serial killer forced his host to blow his own brains out.
  • In the Read or Die OVA, the evil plan of the Big Bad is to use a composition of music called the Suicide Symphony as a Brown Note to make everyone in the world kill themselves so it can be repopulated by the people who were strong enough to resist.
  • Johan, from Monster, is so very very good at this despite not being psychic. He just gets himself into the head of his "friend" or his target, Mind Rapes them with his oh-so-reasonable voice and then hands them the pistol. His crowning moment would probably be convincing an entire village to wipe itself off the map.
  • The doujutsu from Basilisk (used by Hyouma and Gennosuke) works by turning homicide to suicide, meaning that it only works when the target is trying to kill the user.
  • The witches from Puella Magi Madoka Magica get more powers from pretty much brainwashing people into committing suicide via their "witch kiss". One has even been shown pulling this on a fairly large group of people, forming a ritual suicide cult à la Heaven's Gate. Since witches live in (and never leave) "barriers", tiny parallel dimensions that can only be accessed by Kyubey, his Magical Girls and other people he chooses, this is the only threat they pose to normal, non-magical humans. Unless the witch in question is called Walpurgisnacht, who can manifest in the real world and physically attack normal people, or Kriemhild Gretchen, who just absorbs everything into her barrier.
  • Used with a dash of Suicide by Cop on a mook by The Major in Ghost in the Shell, simply through a perfectly normal telephone call.
    • Stand Alone Complex has computer-virus-induced suicide. As most people are cyborgized, this presents a significant problem.
  • The "latchers" of Ga-Rei Zero attach themselves to the heads of their victims and have the ability to reanimate dead corpses or control a living being. In the first episode, one gets a hold of Mami, has her kill her commander, mock her soon to die comrades and then finally shooting herself.
  • Used at the beginning of Kurobara Alice. Dimitri, who has just acquired his Compelling Voice power after being turned into a vampire, accidentally drives his audience and then one of his girlfriends to kill themselves for him. He later uses it deliberately towards his friend and love rival Theo.
  • In the manga version of Tokko, Yukino is introduced when a phantom Puppeteer Parasite tries to make her commit suicide. She gets a different introduction in the anime version.
  • In the Bleach manga, when Numb Chandelier notices that Orihime and Tatsuki can sense her, she first forces Tatsuki, Chizuru and several others to beat Orihime up, then tells both girls that she'll pull this on Orihime for interferring:

Numb Chandelier: "One: suicide by hanging yourself after the school boys rape you in turns. Two suicide by cutting the rope after stripping naked and hanging from the school roof..."

  • In Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Enya Giel's stand, Justice enters an enemy's body and controls his/her movements, until they eventually die. She often uses this to torture the victim, but she attempts to force Hol Horse to kill himself as punishment for allowing J. Geil to die.

Comic Books

Fan Works

  • In the Firefly fanfic Forward, the "Inducer" psychics are capable of forcing this on people, though it takes time and effort on their part, as they have to drive the victim to deep despair to the point that they kill themselves.
  • Defied in Ponies Make War by Nihilus, who inflicts Rainbow Dash with a Compelling Voice and gives her the specific order "Do not attempt to take your own life." Played straight on one occasion when she temporarily retracts this order to make a point ("Stop breathing").

Film

  • In 1994's The Shadow this is an often used technique by the villain, Shiwan Khan. Interestingly, The Shadow himself uses this to off Claymore.
  • The Pushers in Push use this as one method of dispatching their foes. Shown to be used as Psychic Assisted Suicide or Homicide.
  • X Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). Silverfox makes Colonel Stryker put the muzzle of his empty revolver under his chin, but doesn't make him pull the trigger, instead telling him to walk away until his feet bleed. As the film is a prequel to X2: X-Men United, his attempt is averted.
  • Village of the Damned is about women who give birth to Complete Monsters who cause the populace to torture themselves on their own whims. In the remake, one girl causes her own mother, Christopher Reeve's wife, to walk off a cliff to her death.
  • Goes back to the silent era with Dr. Mabuse the Gambler.
  • Suggested but ultimately subverted in Constantine: at first, it looks as though the demon Mammon made Isabel commit suicide. However, it's revealed (via a visit to Hell) that Isabel knew she was going to be possessed for a vital role in an apocalyptic plot, and killed herself of her own free will.
  • In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Ivan Ooze takes control of the minds of Angel Grove's adults, who are then commanded to "leap to their doom" into a massive hole on a construction site. Bulk and Skull rally the kids to save the adults as the Rangers battle Ooze, with one of the kids holding them back with a water cannon, but it's not until Ooze's demise that his spell is broken and the adults are returned to normal.
  • Conan the Barbarian has Thulsa Doom demonstrate the power of his will by commanding a follower to "come to him"... when she's standing on the side of a cliff, and he's on the ground below.
  • Darryl Revok, the villain of Scanners, makes one ConSec agent crash his car into a wall (where it promptly explodes) and another shoot two allies and then himself.
    • Also happens in Scanners 2, when Peter Drak forces the police chief to eat his own gun.
    • And used again Scanners 3. Helena directs a corporate enemy of hers to jump of his pool's diving board. It's empty.
  • In Hocus Pocus the head witch magically commands the adults to dance until they die (the magic wears off in the morning, but hopefully, none of them had weak hearts).
  • In The Ring Two, a Samara-possessed Aidan psychically forces a child psychologist to commit suicide by air embolism.
  • A man under the mind control of future One Nation Earth agents in the Apocalypse film series movie Tribulation is driven to throw himself out of the window of a high-rise apartment building after Tom Canboro prevents him from killing his wife, who is a Christian.
  • This is inverted at the end of Gamer. Castle has Kable under his control, when Kable tells Castle to think of Kable stabbing him. Castle does just that, unconsciously, and gets himself killed. It's The Game used for murder.
  • In Tamara, the title character forces her alcoholic father to kill himself by eating a glass beer bottle, tearing his throat and esophagus apart from the inside.
  • The titular fallen angel Azazel of Fallen possesses several people throughout the film, making some of them kill themselves in ways to frame the protagonist for their "murders"; he makes one commit Suicide by Cop by pointing and shooting a gun filled with blanks at the protagonist.

Literature

  • Larry Niven's novel World of Ptavvs: About one billion years in the past, the Thrint used their telepathic mind control powers to become the rulers of the Milky Way by enslaving all other sentient life forms in the galaxy. When the slave races rebelled, the thrint used telepathic amplifiers to order them to commit suicide. All of them. Everywhere. Including Thrint. No, the Thrint weren't exactly the sharpest tool in the galactic-conqueror shed.
    • It's notable that they did consider that someone might find a way to hide from the command. (And some did!) So they rigged their weapon to go into stasis and come out every once in a while and do it again. It has lost effectiveness over time. It now only works on developed brains. But still blasts the Galaxy every so often.
  • The Skavis family of the White Court of vampires in The Dresden Files use this as their M.O.
  • In Those Who Walk In Darkness by John Ridley, this is why psychics are considered to have won the Superpower Lottery. Their standard method is to have targets shoot themselves, "the ultimate fuck-you."
  • In Tangled Webs one guy got his severed hand replaced with a slave's by his drow "ally". When he tried to disagree with her, the reason of this generosity became clear—the new hand snatched his own knife and put it to his throat. Just to make a point.
  • In Animorphs, Visser One does the possession variety - her last command to a host she needs to dispose of is to breathe (they're underwater at the moment.)
  • A villain in Fingerprints tries forcing this on Rae. Rae only survives because the villain's desire for Disproportionate Retribution leads to them trying to inflict a long, slow Death of a Thousand Cuts instead of just shooting her.
  • It seems that the titular aliens in Robert Silverberg's Passengers sometimes do this to the people whose bodies they possess.
  • This is Despaire's power in The Faerie Queene.
  • In a scene from the book of the movie The Shadow, the villain is on the roof of the Empire State building when he's mocked by a sailor for his strange clothes. So he makes the sailor climb the fence and jump. It's particularly horrible because the sailor is screaming that he doesn't understand what's happening.
    • In the movie, it's actually Played for Laughs immediately afterward; we cut to our heroes walking down the street and Lamont, beginning to suss out Shiwan's evil plans, says "It's all falling into place". The Empire State Building is in view and as soon as he says that the sailor bounces off one of it's ledges like a ball.
  • Kahlan Amnell, upset at the nature of a man's crimes, once told him to die. And he did. Just to make her happy.
  • In Dan Simmons's Carrion Comfort, the mind vampire villains make a game out of forcing people to kill themselves.
  • The villain in Rogue Psi by James H. Schmitz does this to any lesser telepaths who become aware of his location.
  • In Sergey Lukyanenko's Autumn Visits, the Envoys can lead most people into following their commands. This usually makes the person incapable of complex independent thought. This power is most used by Mary, the Envoy of Good, who uses it to force others to do her bidding and then kill themselves, all in the name of Good. In fact, at one point she tells the driver of a car she stopped to get a lift to drop them off and then accelerate to 200 kph and slam into a gas station. Obviously, she believes in There Is No Kill Like Overkill, as this would also kill numerous innocent bystanders. Mary's justification? They're all going to Heaven for their sacrifice. There is a reason why all the other Envoys consider her to be the most dangerous of them all, and two of them used to be Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler!
  • In Dances on the Snow, another of Lukyanenko's books, the Big Bad tries this with the protagonist and a girl by using Compelling Voice to force them to jump into molten metal. Captain Stas, a Jedi-like Knight of Avalon, uses the same voice to countermand her orders, turning it into a tug-of-war of sorts. They Big Bad ends up dying before the teens can jump.
  • In Stephen King's novel Firestarter the head of a fictional secret U.S. government intelligence agency muses about using the protagonist's powers of mental domination to "suggest in a low voice of utter conviction that suicide was the best answer" to Teddy Kennedy.
  • Averted in StarCraft Ghost: Nova, where the gang leader obtains through a friend a psychic blocker to prevent Nova from doing exactly that. Unfortunately, he never reads the manual which prohibits the use of the device for more than 18 hours at a time, as it can lead to unbalanced psyche. Time Skip a year, he hasn't taken it off since he put it on. Now, he's completely off the reservation, shooting underlings for a tiny infraction, even ones he imagines. In the end, Nova does a variation of this by using her powers to make the gang leader's remaining lieutenant shoot him.
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort forces Wormtail to strangle himself with his new silver hand.
    • And in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a young Tom Riddle uses his power to control animals to make a boy's rabbit hang itself from the rafters.
    • Mentioned in Goblet of Fire, when Moody highlights the horror of the Imperius curse by offering to make the spider he's controlling jump out the window or drown itself.
  • In the Ghosts of Fear Street book Horror Hotel Part 1, a ghost mistakes the protagonist for his murderer due to Uncanny Family Resemblance, and possesses him every night to try to force him to kill himself. The possession only lasts from midnight to 12:15, however, since that was how long it took the ghost to die.
  • Proving Andre Norton understood that Good Is Not Soft, Jaelithe in Witch World used her powers to make an enemy shoot himself. He'd been intending to rape her....
  • The Mouths of The Grimnoir Chronicles can't make people do things they would never do. Too bad for the Imperium elite suicide over perceived dishonor is something they'll do.

Live-Action TV

  • The Sycorax threatened the Earth with this in the Doctor Who episode "The Christmas Invasion": they took control of about a third of the Earth, made them all march to the nearest high place, and were going to order them to jump if their demands weren't met. It turned out to be a bluff--the form of mind control couldn't overcome the survival instinct.
    • Also, in "The Green Death," the BOSS computer brainwashes people into committing suicide.
  • Eden attempts this on Sylar in Heroes, and her backstory involves accidentally doing it to her abusive stepmother.
    • Doyle, the puppetmaster, uses this ability several times in a tie-in graphic novel displaying his backstory. When the Power Nullifiers short out, the first thing he does is make his jailer shoot himself.
    • Matt attempts to do this to Sylar while Sylar is in control of Matt's body and Matt is partially in control of his own mind, with a healthy dash of Suicide by Cop thrown in.
    • Sylar attempted this in his first appearance, by telekinetically making Matt's partner turn the gun to her head. Matt interrupts before s/he can pull the trigger though.
  • Used in The X-Files with serial killer Robert Patrick Modell ("Pusher" and "Kitsunegari"). Modell possesses the ability to "push" his will onto others, and demonstrates it several times. When captured by police, he causes his driver to crash into an oncoming truck; later, he talks an armed soldier into dropping his weapon, picking up a can of gasoline, dousing himself and the surrounding area with it, and lighting himself on fire. He doesn't even have to be there in person - he talks the lead detective hunting him down into a heart attack over the phone. At the climax of "Pusher", he talks Mulder into playing Russian roulette, which Mulder obeys - but shoots Modell as soon as Modell makes him pull the trigger on Scully.
  • Lyta of Babylon 5 forces a Drazi hit man to do this when he tries to kill her. It shows her increasing power after she was Touched by Vorlons.
  • A Monster of the Week sandman on Special Unit 2 once used the possession variety.
  • Supernatural: During the season 2 finale "All Hell Breaks Loose", the Winchesters, Ellen, and Bobby go up against Jake, the last of Azazel's psychics besides Sam. Jake effectively holds Ellen hostage by using Compelling Voice powers to make her hold her gun to her own head.
    • In the earlier episode "Simon Said", Dean was about to shoot himself in the head because of Webber's mind control until Andy shot Webber. Webber also made other people kill themselves.
  • The Despair Squid from Red Dwarf releases some sort of hallucinogen which causes anything exposed to it to fantasise a reality which ultimately convinces them to end their lives. Even works on fish.
  • On The 4400:
  • The Watcher on No Ordinary Family uses a telekinetic variant; forcing Dr. Chiles to ingest a fatal dose of medication and write a suicide note with his hand.
  • In Kamen Rider Agito, the Overlord of Darkness can force the Lords to kill themselves if they violate the taboo to not kill normal humans.
  • Anyone confessed in Legend of the Seeker can be ordered to off themselves. While this normally doesn't happen, a variant happens in the series finale, where Kahlan, who is herself confessed by Nicci, confesses four Mord-Sith and orders them to kill each other. They do so in unison.
  • Alphas:
    • The Ghost does this twice during the premiere episode. He forced one victim to jump off a building and a minion who was 4 minutes late to a meeting to drink bleach! He also carried out assassinations offscreen by using proxies to cause a fatal accident such as by crashing their car into his target, killing both.
    • In "Bill and Gary's Excellent Adventures", Nina reveals that she was afraid that she did this to her ex-boyfriend when she yelled in anger for him to kill himself. Fortunately, it's revealed at the end that it wasn't her, he was just Driven to Suicide instead.
  • Dollhouse: Boyd is hit by a mind-wiping device and given a personality that obeys Echo's order to strap himself up in explosives and blow up Rossum HQ.
  • Smallville:
    • Molly Griggs developed a mind control computer program and could email instructions to a person to kill someone. At first, she wasn't powerful enough to override the human survival instinct to make them commit suicide but in "The Vengeance Chronicles" she tries to make Lex Luthor kill himself using the program.
    • In the episode "Persuasion", CEO Bob Rickman ends an investigation of his company when he used his handshake-induced mind control power to make an agent of an EPA-like organization who was onto his corrupt practices jump out of a window. Later, he and Kyle Tippet, who has the same power, wrestle for control over a handgun while engaged in a battle-of-wills using their powers to make the other commit Psychic-Assisted Suicide, a battle which Bob loses.

Tabletop Games

  • In Warhammer 40,000, psykers with mind-controlling or compelling abilities can force people to kill themselves. No model on the tabletop can do it, although there is a daemon special character and an Apocalypse strategic asset that forces a unit to shoot other friendly units.
  • New World of Darkness games mostly averts this—it's made very clear that the human survival instinct is too strong to just willingly give into commands that are blatantly suicidal ("Blow your brains out") without immense amounts of power.
    • Then again, they may be willing to obey commands with a little bit of leeway ("Drop your weapon in the middle of this firefight."). Also, there is no penalty for making them do something REALLY fucking stupid. Moon a Wolverine, incite them to ignore a cop's orders, flip a vampire the bird... provided it does not borderline ensure death, you can get away with it.
    • There are a few powers across game lines that do this. Vampire: The Requiem features a bloodline known as the Children of Judas (typically Embraced right before—or in rare cases, right after—committing suicide) who have a bloodline-based Discipline that allows them to drive people to despair and, in time, suicide attempts.
    • Sin-Eaters can do the same thing with the highest ranks of the Stygian Curse.
  • In In Nomine Satanis Magna Veritas (precursor to In Nomine), the Demon Prince of Heavy Metal and his followers have this as a specific power: The victim will execute any order, but it must finish by committing suicide.
  • Dungeons & Dragons has a power in the Psionic Handbook called "Death Urge". As the name implies, it activates a latent suicidal impulse, causing the victim to immediately turn their weapons upon themselves. There are also powers that disrupt the victim's autonomic processes, so that they have to actively make themselves breathe - if they forget to, they start suffocating.
    • This Play By Post deserves mention, if only for the sheer levels of Overkill involved.[1]
    • The psion class in Fourth Edition has several powers that force an enemy to attack any creature of his choice. This includes making them attack themselves.
  • Plutomancers in Unknown Armies can give someone a sudden urge to hurt themselves. Appropriately for their school's money-based theme, the spells used for this are called Mercenary Will and Bankrupt Will.
  • An image of a Mind Melter in Rifts shows him standing behind a soldier on his knees, soaked in gasoline, and holding a match with a dazed look in his eyes.

Video Games

  • Psycho Mantis of Metal Gear Solid tries this, and succeeds if you don't knock Meryl out before she does it.
  • There's an Easter Egg scene in World of Warcraft involving some Mind-Controlled ogres. One will sometimes break free, be mind-controlled again, and forced to jump off a cliff.
    • A Priest can replicate this, though it doesn't work on NPCs under most circumstances, and when it does work the affected characters usually die by falling. PvP on the other hand...
  • In Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, the 3rd and 5th level Dominate abilities involve this. One is single target, the other gets people to do it en masse.
  • In Undying, the spell Invoke allows you to reanimate monsters and destroy undead. If you use it on a living human being, they will jerkily turn their weapon on themselves as they beg for their life in terror, slitting their own throat or blowing their brains out.
  • In the MUD Achaea a few Classes have the ability to briefly take control of other players - the Serpents via hypnosis, and the Monks via telepathy. Both styles are mostly used for theft, by forcing players to hand over their backpack - but can also be used to force people to commit suicide, most popularly by making them kick the nearest (unbelievably overpowered) city-guard.
  • Second Sight doesn't allow this directly, but nothing prevents you from jumping off a cliff while possessing someone. The game even tracks how many times you've killed a host.
    • Like the Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy example below, start shooting at an enemy while possessing someone. Eventually one of them will die, and the other will be weakened enough to be easily dispatched.
  • Nick Scryer, the protagonist in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy can do this with mind control
    • A secret key combination can make the put their gun in their mouth as well.
  • In the Oddworld series, there are two ways to release control of possessed enemies—either release control and make them explode violently, or make them find the nearest Bottomless Pit, landmine, meat grinder, or other deathtrap.
  • The intro to BioShock 2 involves Sophia Lamb taking control of Subject Delta and ordering him to commit suicide.
  • The Dnyarri in Star Control 2 have the limitation that, if anyone actively under their compulsion is hurt, they will feel it. What can happen, and will if you confront one without protection, is forcing you to go "get lost in a bad neighborhood".
  • Bishamon from Darkstalkers has a special move that makes the opponent catch his blade and is then forced to commit suicide with it. Of course, like many of his moves that cut the opponent in two, it doesn't stick unless you end the match with it.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic 2, in Nar Shadda, if you've taken the proper powers, you can force two mercenaries to give you all their items and then go jump off the walkway to their deaths.
  • This is a fairly viable tactic in the X-COM games, if you can find a Psi-vunerable foe with a blaster bomb launcher or the aquatic equivalent.
  • In Dead Space 2, it appears that Nicole, an apparition of the marker, tries to kill Isaac, but in reality it's trying to use this trope.
  • Idunna, an "apostitute" at the Blooming Rose in Dragon Age II, tries to do this to Hawke but fails.
  • Shown in the trailer for the upcoming Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
    • This happens in a cutscene. The culprit is a hacker remotely guiding the augmented thug. When discovered by Adam, he overrides the thug's augmentations, forcing the guy to shoot himself.
  • In Mortal Kombat 9, Shang Tsung and Quan Chi can take possession of opponents and manipulate them into breaking their own necks.
  • In the remake of the classic Syndicate you can perform this in two ways. The suicide power forces the targeted enemy soldier to pull the pin from a grenade and stand there screaming and holding it, with predictably messy results; it's best used when soldiers are part of a group. (We aren't told what happens if the target doesn't have grenades to pull pins from; no enemy you can inflict suicide on doesn't). And then you have persuade, which forces the targeted enemy soldier to fight on your side. If their former allies don't manage to kill them, when the effect ends they'll shoot themselves in the head - while screaming, natch. Granted, you aren't doing this as a psychic - rather, you are hacking chips implanted in their brains, but still.

Web Comics

  • In Girl Genius, Other!Agatha stumbles across her Dragon Vrin, shackled to a post. Deciding that she can't let Vrin be captured, Agatha simply says "Vrin, die." Which she promptly does, off panel, with a choked gurgle.
    • A popular theory is that the voice is also what killed Omar von Zinzer, rather than Agatha's locket. Made worse by the fact that he was told to die "slowly, like the rats you are!" After all, you can never tell without a weasel, and those were introduced much later.
  • In Charby the Vampirate, Kavonn threatens a gun-toting character by making him turn his gun on himself.
  • MS Paint Adventures has the stump, across multiple adventures. A peculiar aura of misery surrounds it. There seems to be some powerful cosmic magnetism towards suicide which surrounds the stump.
  • In Shadowgirls, Max was once ordered to "put that gun against your head and pull the trigger until it goes click". Fortunately, her arm has a mind of its own.
  • Dilbert (of all places), after Dilbert gave the Pointy-Haired Boss neural interface.

Dilbert: Would that be murder or suicide?
Alice: All we need is reasonable doubt.

Web Original

  • Apparently a common act of Dr Bright of the SCP Foundation: "On 01/██/20██, Dr. Jack Bright was 'given the bird' on his way to the movies by a passing motorist. As is fairly normal for Dr. Bright, he tracked down the owner of the vehicle through the car's license plate, then proceeded to drive the gentleman to suicide via the use of SCP-720."
  • In Pokémon Apokelypse, Mewtwo can be seen doing this to Officer Jenny.
  • In Book VI of Tasakeru, this almost happens to Zero under the influence of one of the mind-control bracelets.
  • Vigor Mortis:
    • Shortly after Ars is freed from his restraints, he kills a High Templar by making his victim stab himself in the head.
    • Penta has on at least one occasion temporarily left her sapient host, Vita, to force something that was trying to kill Vita to mortally wound and cripple itself.

Western Animation

  • In Batman: The Animated Series, The Mad Hatter once told two thugs who were attempting to mug him to "go jump in the river." Since it was in a kid's cartoon, Batman caught them right before they jumped off the bridge, but it still counts.
  • In The Venture Brothers, the Intangible Fancy does this in The Revenge Society.
  • When Everybody Loves Hypnotoad is interrupted in the Futurama movie "Bender's Big Score" the title character forces the producer to kill himself.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hama has the ability to control other people by bending the water in their bodies, she forces Sokka and Aang to attack each other, forcing Katara to learn blood-bending to make her stop. While not psychically powered, it's generally the same thing in practice.
  • Averted in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold Musical Episode, when The Music Meister compels his brainwashed slaves into dancing into a rocket ship's blast. Batman, who's not affected, has to stop them, allowing the villain to make his getaway (which was his real plan all along).

And now that Batman's been delayed, your usefulness has passed
 A distraction is what I need, so kick into that blast!

  1. ↑ Because the attack(s) from Death Urge is an automatic critical hit and the opponent has an ability that grants him an extra attack upon scoring a critical hit, he is forced to continue attacking until he runs out of ammo
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Psychic-Assisted_Suicide?oldid=2031032"