Cyanide Pill: Difference between revisions

 

Use of the cyanide pill by villainous characters may be due to the historical use of such devices by many of the high Nazi leadership at the end of WWII who chose suicide over capture and punishment by the Allied forces. (See [[Real Life]] section below for more details) Hitler himself, due to paranoia that it would not be effective, took one but [[No Kill Like Overkill|opted to also shoot himself.]]

 

Compare [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]] and [[Tongue Suicide]]. See also [[Driven to Suicide]].

== Advertising ==

* This was used for humor in a commercial for Dockers pants. The commercial showed a shifty looking fellow grabbing some papers and quickly walking his way through the corridors of a building, shadowy men in sunglasses following him all the while, just behind him. One slips into the elevator with him just as the door closes, prompting him to pop something into his mouth and audibly gulp it down. The shadowy figure leans over and says, "Nice pants." Cut to dumbfounded spy's face and the commercial ends.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* The title character of ''[[009-1]]'' has one, but she uses it in a unique manner. After being captured, she manipulates a guard into kissing her, and while he does so, she tongues the pill into ''his'' mouth. Once the guard is dead, she picks the locks to her restraints and escapes.

* In the [[Yu-Gi-Oh!]] manga, Marik hypnotises Anzu and forces her to take a pill, presumably a Cyanide Pill, between her teeth. If Yugi does not duel Jonouchi, Marik will force her to swallow it. (For comparison, in the anime, a giant block of concrete was suspended above her head.)

 

== Comic Books ==

* Played with in ''[[The Tick (animation)]]'', where a secret agent tells Big Blue that his tooth is filled with deadly poison... only he's forgotten ''which'' tooth. "I try to avoid crunchy foods."

* Parodied in ''[[Sturmtruppen]]'' where the is revealed that the "Oldest Spy in the Army" attained such a title by taking mints instead of Cyanide pills.

 

== Fan Works ==

* In ''[http://randomactsofshark.blogspot.com/2008/01/barack-obama-and-thunder-zeppelin.html Barack Obama and the Thunder Zeppelin]'', the Ronpaul's ''Sturmfrunten'' take a slow-acting poison before battle.

 

* In ''[[Contact (film)|Contact]]'', Jodie Foster's character is given a cyanide pill to use on herself in case anything goes wrong with her spacecraft — according to the film, every NASA astronaut and test pilot is given one of these, for emergencies where dying quickly would be a mercy. In his book ''[[Apollo 13|Lost Moon]]'', Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell mentioned that this had been a rumor for some time, and that it was not true — it would be much easier simply to open the main hatch and depressurize the spacecraft.

* ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'', film version: in the very beginning, one of the enemy [[Mook]]s kills himself this way after being caught by Alan Quartermain.

* In ''[[Captain America: The First Avenger]]'', the HYDRA assassin who kills Dr. Erskine kills himself with cyanide hidden in a fake tooth when he's captured by Steve. According to Colonel Phillips later in the movie, every HYDRA agent the Allies manage to capture does the same thing. {{spoiler|Except Dr. Zola.}}

* In the film version of ''[[Diabolik]]'', the protagonist [[Faking the Dead|fakes his death]] by taking a pill that puts him in [[Faux Death|suspended animation]] for 12 hours; the police assume he did this trope and take him to the morgue, where his [[Girl Friday]] administers the antidote.

 

== Literature ==

* In [[Honor Harrington|''At All Costs'']] Havenite (the enemy) secret agent Victor Cachet visits Honor's ship for a parley. Honor is an empath and can tell he is carrying a suicide pill in his pocket and insists that he disarm the injector. She lets him go after the truce, because that is the honorable way to treat an enemy. She just wants him to know that she knows. It is not specified that he is using cyanide, only that it is a suicide device.

* ''[[Dune]]'': Duke Leto is betrayed by Dr. Yueh, but the doctor gives him a poison-gas tooth so he can kill Baron Harkonnen, the Duke's enemy. This makes Leto something of a kamikaze—but an unsuccessful one, as the gas only kills Harkonnen's advisor.

* ''[[I Am Legend]]''. The novel, not the movie.

* An assassin in [[Watchmen]] pulls this to keep Viedt from knowing who sent him. {{spoiler|It was Viedt himself}}.

 

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial ''The Talons of Weng-Chiang'', a member of the Black Scorpion Tong, after being captured by the police, commits suicide with a poison pill to avoid revealing anything under interrogation.

** Weng-Chiang forces another Tong member [[You Have Failed Me...|to commit suicide after he makes a mistake]], laughing maniacally as the man dies in agony.

* In the new ''[[V (TV series)|V]]'' series, all Visitors living among humans carry a pill that not only kills them but also incinerates their bodies within seconds in order to hide that they're [[Lizard Folk]].

* In the popular Soviet series ''[[Seventeen Moments of Spring]]'', a man is recruited as an informant by Stirlits (Soviet spy in Nazi Germany) and given a suicide pill hidden in a cigarette, an obvious [[Chekhov's Gun]]. He is later cornered by Nazi counter-intelligence agents and proceeds to take the pill... and jump out the window for good measure.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* ''[[FoxTrot]]'' referenced this in one strip where Jason and Marcus are (as usual) going to harass Paige. In the throwaway panels Jason gives Marcus a stick of vanilla chewing gum, saying "It's the closest thing to poison I could find."

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* In the [[Pathfinder]] adventure path ''Curse of the Crimson Throne'', Red Mantis Assassins can choose to disintegrate themselves when killed, making them [[Death Is Cheap|harder to resurrect]] or interrogate posthumously (which is the important bit, since only the willing can be resurrected).

 

 

== Video Games ==

* Type "[[Critical Existence Failure|kill]]" or "[[Ludicrous Gibs|explode]]" into the client log of [[Team Fortress 2]] and you will bid farewell, cruel world. You can even assign the command to a key for convenience. This actually has a function in-game, in the event that you [[Game Breaking Bug|get stuck]]. Really funny when a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xq6mvCf-T8#t=05m12s poor sap] doesn't know how to do this when he needs to.

* In ''[[Penumbra (video game series)|Penumbra]]: Black Plague'', it's revealed that members of an underground complex were issued cyanide pills in case they got contaminated with the stuff they were researching. Way, way better fate than letting the contamination run its course.

 

== Web Comics ==

'''Batman:''' This is why Superman works alone...

'''Critic:''' ''(pauses, tries to pop the bill)'' }}

 

== Western Animation ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Toxic Tropes]]

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:Choosing Death]]