Favourite Death/Kill Animations?

[Moonface]

Death is often a punishment a player will experience in many video games, but that doesn't mean it can't be satisfying or entertaining to watch a scenario play out for your characters demise when done well. The same applies to killing swaths of enemies who are looking to do the same to you; for the dozens of enemy kills that offer little in the way of fanfare or spectacle, there's usually others that involve a special animation to give some player satisfaction beyond giving the local morgue a boon in business.

In no particular order, here are some of my favourite death or kill animations in video games:

The Hand of Midas - Tomb Raider (1996)
Unfortunately I can't find the interview, but apparently Core had someone on the development team whose sole job was to come up with the many ways Lara Croft could perish in the original Tomb Raider games. There are lots of different ways she can meet her end, but one of the most memorable for me is a secret death animation that can be triggered in Palace Midas. In this level, Lara has to turn lead bars into gold by placing them onto the fallen hand of a statue of King Midas, but what happens if the player decides to make Lara step on the hand? Obviously, she turns to gold, but the animation that plays out for this is probably one of the most intricate across all of Core's Tomb Raider games. As Lara's gradually turns to gold from the feet up, she panics as she becomes unable to remove herself from the hand and groans in agony as her arms and torso turn to gold, followed by her head. The scene ends with the golden statue of Lara falling over onto its side with a loud thud and the game waits for the player to reload their save.

Head Transplant - Dead Space
Of course any horror game is going to be filled with gruesome death animations, and the Dead Space series is filled with them. While the vast majority of them are really good, my favourite of them all has to be what happens if you allow the severed head of a Divider to kill Isaac just for how creepy it is compared to the brutal dismemberment that makes up most of the other deaths in the series. Having been separated from its body, this lonely noggin wants a new home, and does just that by ripping off Isaac's head and then inserting its tentacles into the remaining neck stump. After getting itself situated atop its new home, it takes control of Isaac's body and proceeds to walk away off screen for a test drive.

Kick the Baby - Dead Space
Generally the kills in Dead Space aren't overly interesting, since most of the time you'll kill enemies by severing their limbs. If any of them get close to you though, there's usually a QTE to get the enemy off of Isaac which if successful, has Isaac perform an animation dependent on what enemy it is that had a hold of him. I don't really remember any of those (nor really encountered them since letting a necromorph close enough to you to trigger a grapple QTE isn't a good thing), except for the one involving the Lurker. This enemy is basically formed from a human baby, and if the player is successful in the grapple QTE, Isaac will grab hold of the Lurker, slam it to the floor, and then immediately punt the little bastard across the room for an instant kill. Children and minors are rarely depicted in scenes of death in any medium, so seeing this for the first time in Dead Space was a very stand out moment for me.

Open Wide - God of War (2018)
I forgot this kill animation existed until I recently played through God of War Ragnarök, and I think it's by far the most brutal one. If an enemy is stunned at low health, Kratos can grapple it to deliver a special kill animation, and if that enemy happens to be a Wulver, Kratos will hold onto its head with one hand while using the other to get a good firm grip of its lower jaw. In a sight fitting of a dentistry horror movie where the patient won't open wide enough, Kratos proceeds to pull the Wulver's lower jaw downwards with brute force all the way down to the lower torso, practically tearing the flesh off the front of it.

Leon vs. Chainsaw - Resident Evil 4
If you've played RE4, you already know what this one is because this is probably the most iconic death scene in the whole game. It's very simple compared to any others I've listed; Leon's neck meets a chainsaw wielded by a Ganado. It's an iconic enough image that I think it's one of the only death scenes in the game (and maybe the entire franchise) that actually has key art for it: https://i.redd.it/ha5u8qyvom391.jpg


I have more, but I think these few will suffice for now. So what are your favourite death/kill animations in games?

[Maniakkid25]

I don't really like elaborate kill or death animations. Not because they associate a game over or can take too long, but because sometimes the game gets to show FAR too much than it needs to so I get the point. That Midas animation, especially the Anniversary version, is specifically one that haunts my nightmares, not even kidding. So, instead of sharing my "favorites", I have some dishonorable mentions of deaths being completely excessive and I didn't need the trauma of, thanks game!

Tomb Raider (2013) -- Spiked in the head

This game in general really commits to overkill when it comes to killing Lara, but this takes the cake. If you mess up the water slide sequence, you don't just get her crashing into some rocks or something. No, the sicko's had to IMPALE HER THROUGH THE HEAD with a metal spike! From jaw to the top of the head! Why?! There's no need for that!

Dead Space 2 -- The Eye

No, I'm not even linking it. I hate it that much. Eye and fingernail gore are a great way for me to want to quit playing and never touch it again, and that sequence in the game is awful. I will never play Dead Space 2 specifically for that one sequence!

Borderlands -- Crimson Lance melting

This one isn't an animation, much more the audio of it. If you kill a Crimson Lance trooper with a corrosive weapon (which is recommended, given that they are considered armored enemies so corrosive damage works better), they will dissolve away, and you are treated to the most horrified screams I have ever heard. Borderlands in general has a lot of Black Humor, but the first game in general is a little TOO dark. This actually happens with any humanoid enemy, it's just the Crimson Lance stands out because that's what you're supposed to do to them.

Mortal Kombat -- FAR TOO MANY!

Like, I get it. I get the point of Mortal Kombat is to be deliberately shocking with its violence and gore. Complaining about gore in Mortal Kombat is kind of like complaining that water is wet. But the newer games just turn this up to 23, and break the damn knob off! I mean, even without looking at Fatalities, WAS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO SHOW ME AN X-RAY OF A SKULL BREAKING, MORTAL KOMBAT X?!

Mass Effect 2 -- Kelly/Colonist death

This one isn't really gruesome, but it is absolutely skin-crawling. We get to watch someone dissolve into nanites for plot reasons, and there is NO WAY TO AVOID IT! The link I have shows your XO Kelly dying, but if you're faster, you just get to watch a colonist die, instead! No, that was not necessary, Bioware. You already told me what they were using the humans for! I didn't need to see it!

Edit: Fun fact: trying to write this, the preview post button would constantly bug out the post to add more lines than I intended. Why? I don't know!

[Moonface]

Tomb Raider (2013) -- Spiked in the head

This game in general really commits to overkill when it comes to killing Lara, but this takes the cake. If you mess up the water slide sequence, you don't just get her crashing into some rocks or something. No, the sicko's had to IMPALE HER THROUGH THE HEAD with a metal spike! From jaw to the top of the head! Why?! There's no need for that!

Yeah, I really didn't like how TR2013 was basically torture porn almost non-stop. Most horror games I've played don't even come close to the amount of suffering that Lara gets put through in this game. It's why any death animations I like from Tomb Raider generally come from any games before this one, since even if they get intricate like the Midas one they're at least not doing something that feels like shock value.

Dead Space 2 -- The Eye

No, I'm not even linking it. I hate it that much. Eye and fingernail gore are a great way for me to want to quit playing and never touch it again, and that sequence in the game is awful. I will never play Dead Space 2 specifically for that one sequence!

Oof, god I don't think anyone liked this part, myself included. What's worse is that to get this death, you have to be failing to line up the eye needle enough for the machine to practically go "fuck it" and just shove that thing straight into Isaac's skull, and the chances of failure increase as your progress with the needle does because Isaac gets increasingly stressed (can you blame him?!). As his stress increases, his eye movements become more erratic and his heart rate and breathing increases (which you can hear) and for me that just makes me get stressed and struggle to keep the needle aligned, and the more I notice the needle missing the more stressed I'm getting because I know what awaits me if I don't fix it quickly enough. For the feeling it manages to generate it works superbly (stressing the player out with the situation as much as it stresses out Isaac) as a sequence and for that I love it, but the consequence and what it involves even without that makes me not want to think about it very much. XD

Mass Effect 2 -- Kelly/Colonist death

This one isn't really gruesome, but it is absolutely skin-crawling. We get to watch someone dissolve into nanites for plot reasons, and there is NO WAY TO AVOID IT! The link I have shows your XO Kelly dying, but if you're faster, you just get to watch a colonist die, instead! No, that was not necessary, Bioware. You already told me what they were using the humans for! I didn't need to see it!

Edit: Fun fact: trying to write this, the preview post button would constantly bug out the post to add more lines than I intended. Why? I don't know!

This sequence reminds me of Resistance: Fall of Man but without the in-your-face showing of the process. In that game more chimera are created by using humans that are cocooned and proceed to mutate, and even though you go through an entire conversion center that exists for this sole purpose, you never see any in-progress mutations despite being shown the whole process from start to finish of how the humans are processed and mutated. The implication of what is happening is done well enough you don't need or want to see the intricacies of the process, and the implied nature reminds me of how older horror games can sometimes be scarier than modern ones because the limitations of the hardware means you have to leave a lot more up to player imagination, such as in Silent Hill with the fog.


As for the extra lines thing, it's a problem that happens for seemingly no reason that I've not yet seen a fix for. Just know it isn't you, it's just the software deciding a post would apparently be far more fun to read if you need to scroll twice as much to read it all.

[Moonface]

Here's one that I had come to mind this morning thinking about games that use a poison-style mechanic on the player. In Alien: Resurrection on PS1 if you got attacked by a facehugger you'd get implanted with a chestburster, and if you didn't get it removed in time this would happen: Alien: Resurrection PS1 Chestburster Death

I think this is the only Alien game to put a consequence on being attacked by facehuggers that doesn't just result in an immediate game over. I know Trilogy before it just has the player receive damage for being attacked by a facehugger which is kinda lame.