Tongue Suicide

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A type of suicide primarily in eastern works. Need to kill yourself in a hurry without using your hands? Just bite your tongue really hard! It’s like having a stored a Cyanide Pill in your mouth, but you don’t need to prepare in advance. This probably works better in fiction than real life.

An involuntary similar action might be performed (in fiction) by someone undergoing a seizure, although in this case the concern is being swallowed, not bitten off (although this is a myth).

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

Examples of Tongue Suicide include:

Anime and Manga

• Mentioned as a course of action in episode 25 of Kill la Kill.
• One Piece
  • A slave does this while he was being sold, as he considers slavery a Fate Worse Than Death. He doesn’t die instantly and was in fact can presumably be saved if he receives immediate medical attention.
  • After being caught after an escape attempt, Mr. 3 suspects he’ll be tortured and says he’ll bite off his tongue.
• In the 15th episode of the English dub of Samurai Champloo someone was described as having “bit off his own tongue and then killed himself."
• In Naruto, the character Tsunami volunteers to be taken hostage by Gato’s men and tells them if they touch her son then she’d kill herself by biting her tongue.
• Misa from Death Note tried to kill herself while restrained. L ordered that she be prevented from biting her tongue and Misa's attempt was foiled.
  • However, another character tried to shoot himself. When he was stopped from doing this, he made no attempt to bite his tongue.
• In Another, Keiko Numata was caught by Chibiki, who tied her up. So what did she do? Commit suicide by biting her tongue off.

Film

• In Million Dollar Baby, Maggie does this so she can bleed to death.
• In Kill Bill, the Bride bites Jasper's tongue.

Literature

• In chapter 6 of I Reincarnated For Nothing, Artpe and Maetel encounter a Mimic, which bites its tongue and dies.
• In chapter 651 of The Final Desperate Struggle!, another Wuxia novel, Cang Yue threatens the Palace Chief Dongfang, stating that if the chief arrests and jails both the Empress and colleague, they will bite their tongues to commit suicide.
• In Filth, Bruce kills Gorman by biting out the latter's tongue.
• In The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal induced Miggs to commit suicide by swallowing his own tongue.
• In the book, Like Hot Knives to the Brain, four characters bite their tongues off, since they have self-defeating behaviors that were fostered through Life.
• In Blood of Aenarion N'kari tortures a bunch of elves. One of them tries to swallow and choke on his tongue, but N'kari thwarted the attempt.

Web Comics

• In Schlock Mercenary, book 4, when Colonel Ceeta decides to kissed Captain Tagon before General Xinchub has Tagon and crew killed, Tagon's response was "I'd sooner bite off my own tongue and bleed out than kiss you, Jevee." He's presumably being hyperbolic, but the "fine, gravitic control of the battleplate Tunguska" is sufficiently fine that he doesn't get a choice in the matter anyway.

Real Life

• In China sometime in 2015, a man named Wei Su was trying to steal a woman's handbag when he was caught by two good Samaritans. Su began to bite his tongue so he won't be arrested and go to jail. He then choked to death on his own blood.