History CruelAndUnusualDeath / Literature

* In ''In Death Ground'' and ''The Shiva Option'' both by Creator/DavidWeber and Steve White, humans and their allies are engaged in a BugWar against the Arachnids. The Arachnids like to [[EatenAlive eat populations they conquer alive.]] For added horror, they tend to prefer children and will also raise sentients on ranches the way humans raise cattle and pigs. Humanity's reaction to this behavior is [[NuclearOption quite]] [[FinalSolution severe]].

* ''[[Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo 1634: The Baltic War]]'': One subplot surrounds Eddie Cantrell's captivity in Denmark, where he is forced to help the Danes develop diving technology. Unfortunately, they forgot to install a safety valve on their old-fashioned diving suit. After the pump fails and the diver (who was a condemned criminal) is crushed by the water pressure, the king plans to use it as a method of execution for treason and similar crimes. Anyone who has seen the ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' episode with the Meatman knows [[NightmareFuel why]] this is here.

* Pick a tale by Creator/TheBrothersGrimm: odds are good there'll be a gruesome death - you've got dancing to death in red-hot iron shoes, ripping yourself in twain pulling your foot out of the floor... and Herr Korbes had a pretty bad day.

* In Creator/DianaWynneJones' ''Literature/DarkLordOfDerkholm - Year of the Griffin'', an assassin almost dies by drowning in orange juice.

* ''Literature/{{Ghostgirl}}'' - She chokes on a friggin ''gummi bear'' while distracted by the guy she likes.

* In ''Literature/JohannesCabalTheDetective'' the epilogue contains a short adventure involving Cabal, an amateur British spy, and an immortal Asian warlock named Umtark Ktharl. The EvilSorcerer has a variety of killing methods at his disposal, from his mentioned but not seen Red Snow (which falls softly and then dissolves with a sigh tearing flesh away and killing armies), and we see this when Ktharl encounters some bandits shortly after he is freed--he sets one on fire (he keeps screaming after he is ash) he apparently teleports one's skeleton out of his body, another vomits out his heart, another gets just his head set on fire and his skin melts like candle wax, another is partially teleported inside a cave wall (it's implied he might be alive) and yet another has an animated tree string him up by the ankles and dash his brains out. Our first hint to what a dangerous monster Ktharl is is Cabal's reaction--the man who insults Satan to his face is very, very scared of Ktharl.

** Temple: Being eaten by monster-sized caimans and freakishly huge black panthers called rapas counts as this. The bad guys--members of a Neo-Nazi terrorist group and members of a US militant group whose leader is psychotic and hellbent on literally destroying Earth with a planet-killing weapon called the Supernova--die in more memorable ways. Anistaze, second-in-command of the Nazis, gets decapitated by helicopter rotors. Ehrhardt, the leader of the Nazis, gets blown up by the backup detonation, after Race disarms the Supernova bomb. Nash, the leader of the army group (who also massacred the Navy group and tried to steal the idol made of a magical nuclear element), has his arms bound (since his hands were cut off), gagged, dragged to the sacrificial chute, has his legs bound, and is tossed down the chute to be eaten by the rapas. He's alive and screaming when it happens, but he deserved it.

* In Gregory Frost's ''Shadowbridge'', Leodora has broken many of her village Bouyan's taboos - including public nudity and riding a sea dragon that are only for men. Her uncle Gousier is blacklisted until he brings in Leodora for a terrible "purification rite" that hadn't been used in 3 generations. Leodora is first to be dunked in the sea until everything from the stomach, bowels and bladder is voided out. Then a sharp stick is to be slowly pushed up her ass until it's all along her spine. She'll then be cooked over an open fire, then chopped up and sprinkled in the sea. Gousier promises her that she'll be alive through almost all of it.
* In ''[[Literature/TheBookOfTheNewSun Shadow of the Torturer]]'', this trope helps kick off the story. The torturer Severian, becomes the lover of the exultant Thecla during her imprisonment. When she's finally sentenced to her "excrutiation", her punishment is the "revolutionary" - a device that causes the body to rebel against itself. One of the first things to happen is the hands attempt to gouge out the eyes, unless the victim uses their ever-dwindling willpower to force them down. Eventually the hands will win out...the body meanwhile is slowly consuming itself, so that no victim lasts more than a month. Severian can't save Thecla, but he gives her a knife to end her suffering before she loses control.

** Viserys Targaryen weds his sister to Khal Drogo in the hopes of using Drogo's army to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. Eventually he pisses Drogo off enough that Drogo crowns him. With ''molten gold''.

** For that matter, the deaths of Elia and her children. Her daughter, three-year-old Rhaenys Targaryen, was stabbed ''fifty times'' by Amory Lorch simply because she was constantly screaming at him. Her one-year-old brother, Aegon, was thrown into a wall by Gregor Clegane, splattering him with his blood. He then proceeded to rape Elia ''with Aegon's blood on his hands'' before crushing her head. Even Tywin, who ordered their deaths in the first place, [[EvenEvilHasStandards was shocked]] by the utter brutality of them all.

** Robb Stark breaks his vow from the first novel to marry a Frey girl, and instead marries Jeyne Westerling. Angry at the slight and having made plans with the Lannisters, Walder Frey invites another marriage pact between Catelyn's brother Edmure Tully and his daughter Roslin Frey. At this wedding, the Freys break the time-honored and sacred guest right (a guest cannot be harmed after they have received food and drink at a host's table) and slaughter most of the northmen, including Robb and Catelyn (they originally want to keep her alive as hostage, and only kill her out of mercy after [[SanitySlippage she begins clawing her face in madness]]). Robb's head is removed, as is the head of his direwolf Grey Wind, and Grey Wind's head is sewn onto Robb's body as a mockery. This wedding is known from then on in the series as The Red Wedding.

** Possibly the most horrifying death in the series is that of Vargo Hoat. He gets captured by Gregor Clegane, who proceeds to cut off each of his body parts, cauterize the wound and FEED them to him until he runs out of body.
** The method that Tywin Lannister used to wipe out House Reyne turns out to have been pretty nasty as well. [[AllThereInTheManual As revealed in]] ''Literature/TheWorldOfIceAndFire'', all of House Reyne and their followers fled into a series of mines, thinking the Lannisters would be reluctant to storm it, since the narrow mines were easily defensible and filled with traps; what's more, while the Reynes knew all the various twists and turns of the mines, the Lannisters didn't, therefore attempting to take them by force would require time and massive casualties. Thus to the Reynes it seemed like a good move to buy time, either for the allies of the Reynes to arrive or for Tywin to decide that negotiation was the better way to go. Instead Tywin sealed the exits to the mines and [[KillItWithWater diverted a local river into those mines]], flooding it completely and [[DrowningPit drowning all of the hundreds of men, women and children trapped inside]].

** When choosing a career in the Seven Kingdoms, ''don't'' pick court bard or WanderingMinstrel. If you do, expect a veritable smorgasbord of humiliation, torture, death and the mutilation of your corpse should you wander into politics a little too deeply. Most of it could be described as self-inflicted, since actively ignoring "don't lie about, get satirical about or annoy people who can put you in prison on a whim for getting too witty about them, since they can do physical 'wit' right back at you with or without the help of paid 'friends'" could be seen that way.
** Out of all the deaths during the Dance of the Dragons, the children of Aegon II and Helaena Targaryen suffered the most horrific ones. While Jaehaerys was simply beheaded, Maelor had a mob, all wanting "a piece of the prince", tearing him apart. Jaehaerys' twin, Jaehaera, fell from a tower and was impaled on spikes. She took half an hour to die. These children were all less than 10 years old.

** Aerea Targaryen, who was essentially boiled alive after her visit to Valyria, with slimy, hot creatures struggling to break out of her skin as she perished. Maester Benifer, who was present on her deathbed, wondered what kind of god would let someone to die so horribly.

*** She herself dies from injuries sustained when Paul throws the 50-lb. Royal typewriter at her back, knocking her to the floor....after which he repeatedly stuffs handfuls of charred paper soaked in champagne down her throat....and ''then'' she falls and hits her head after somehow getting to her feet and tripping over said typewriter. But she doesn't die right away--it takes hours, hours in which she's still struggling to live. We don't feel too sorry for her, despite the horror.

* In Creator/RobertSheckley's "The Victim From Space", a civilization is depicted where violent death (preferably a painful one) is considered a blessing and a way to heaven. When a human comes to the planet and is believed to be a sentry of gods, a lot of thought is given to how he deserves to die... after the peasant who reported his ship arriving gets his skull caved in as a reward. After the priests reject poison quills and fire, they finally agree to bury him in an anthill, until a girl who loves him convinces them to upgrade it to "The Ultimate" - a torture rack which is only brought out once a thousand years or so. Meanwhile, the majority of the population aren't too optimistic that the priests will consider them worthy of death, so they arrange "accidents" for themselves. One takes an hour to die after [[https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1957-04/page/n81 making a thorny tree fall upon him]], and all the priests can do is preach how one should be careful.

** Plus there was the incident with one cat getting killed by dogs.

** Snowkit- a deaf kitten snatched out of the camp and eaten by a hawk.

* ''Agakuk'' tell the story of an Inuit living in the cold north in 1940. At some point, Agaguk killed a smuggler. Some chapters later, a lone RCMP officer came to investigate the murder. Agaguk's father, Ramook, wasn't very cooperative. The RCMP officer eventually realize he has outstayed his welcome and hastily departed. Before he could make it far, Ramook shot the Mountie in the back. Then the whole village descended on him. They stripped him off naked, in the snow, and chopped him off ''piece by piece'', while he was still alive and screaming in agony. [[ImAHumanitarian His penis was cut off and the women fought among themselves to devour it. Ramook took the liver and ate it]]. In the end, there was nothing left of him but bones. The chapter was appropriately entitled "The Butchers".

* ''Agakuk'' tell the story of an Inuit living in the cold north in 1940. At some point, Agaguk killed a smuggler. Some chapters later, a lone RCMP officer came to investigate the murder. Agaguk's father, Ramook, wasn't very cooperative. The RCMP officer eventually realize he has outstayed his welcome and hastily departed. Before he could make it far, Ramook shot the policeman him in the back. Then the whole village descended on him. They stripped him off naked, in the snow, and chopped him off ''piece by piece'', while he was still alive and screaming in agony. [[ImAHumanitarian His penis was cut off and the women fought among themselves to devourer it. Ramook took the liver and ate it]]. In the end, there was nothing left of him but bones. The chapter was appropriately entitled "The Butchers".

* ''Literature/GrandmasterOfDemonicCultivationMoDaoZuShi'':
** The protagonist deals out some ''brutal'' ends to the people responsible for burning down his home and massacring nearly everyone living there by using his newly acquired skills to force victims to cannibalize themselves or each other or commit suicide by trying to swallow things like ''entire chair legs'', then raising their corpses to turn loose on their comrades.
** The final villain is no slouch either. After his abusive father heaps on one dismissive insult too many, he uses the man's own womanizing habit against him by drugging him and then ordering a dozen prostitutes to keep going until his weakening heart gives out.

** In the original ''Proud Immortal Demon Way'', all due to [[VillainProtagonist Luo Binghe]]:
*** Shen Qingqiu, who abused Luo Binghe as a child, gets all four of his limbs cut off and his tongue torn out, eventually dying of his injuries.

*** Yue Qingyuan, after being delivered [[ChildhoodFriends Shen]] [[WeUsedToBeFriends Qingqiu's]] legs and a letter written in his blood, walks straight into Luo Binghe's trap in hopes of saving him and gets pierced with tens of thousands of poisoned arrows until not even his bones remained.

* ''Literature/MoDaoZuShi'':

* The protagonist of ''Literature/MoDaoZuShi'' deals out some ''brutal'' ends to the people responsible for burning down his home and massacring nearly everyone living there by using his newly acquired skills to force victims to cannibalize themselves or each other or commit suicide by trying to swallow things like ''entire chair legs'', then raising their corpses to turn loose on their comrades.

* ''Literature/TheReynardCycle'': Let's just say that the Chimera of this series have the tendency to eat people while they are still alive. ''[[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil And some of them may rape their victim first.]]''
* ''Literature/TheRiftwarCycle'': The nation of Kesh has a unique and terrible punishment reserved for traitorous nobles, which is described in ''Prince of the Blood.'' The convicted is taken from the royal court and imprisoned, kept up all night by a guard reading their sentence to them in full every quarter hour, so they get no rest. At dawn the next day, they are taken from their cell, stripped naked, chased to the temple of the God of Hunters by guards armed with whips and hot brands, excommunicated from the Keshian afterlife, and are chased and whipped around the city of Kesh once more, eventually being herded to the main city gate. Here they are placed in a suspended cage and left to be taunted and poked with sticks by anyone who wishes to torment them. During this time, they are fed only rotten wine and salted moldy bread. After several days of this, when they are judged to be close to dying of exposure, they are taken from the cage, chased by whip and brand-wielding guards once again into the swamps outside the city, castrated, bound and thrown to the crocodiles. Also acts as a FateWorseThanDeath, as the whole slow execution is meant to destroy the condemned's soul, as their body and spirit are broken, and all written record of their existence is rewritten to remove their name and their name is forbidden to any member of the royal family forevermore.
* Many victims of Roderick Whittle, aka UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper, from Creator/RichardLaymon's ''Literature/{{Savage}}''.

* ''Literature/RenZhaFanPaiZiJiuXiTong'':

* In her first (and hopefully last) science fiction story, "Commencement," Joyce Carol Oates writes of the 200th commencement ceremony of an unnamed university. The highlight of the televised ceremony comes when the three dignitaries -- identified only as the Poet, the Educator, and the Scientist -- receiving honorary degrees are dragged up a temporary pyramid on stage and restrained while two university functionaries cut out their hearts and flay them. Why the honorees were unaware of this tradition is never explained.

* Befalls many of the [[BigBad Big Bads]] in the ''Literature/AlexRider'' series:
** Dr. Grief is killed when Alex launches a snowmobile at the helicopter he is escaping in from a ski ramp.
** Damian Cray dies when he is sucked into one of the engines of Air Force One, reducing him to a "cloud of red gas" that disappears into the atmosphere.
** Julia Rothman is crushed when Alex destroys the hot air balloon carrying the satellites required for her scheme, and the entire platform falls to earth and lands directly on her.
** Nikolei Drevin attempts to escape in a seaplane; Alex ties two boats to the plane's floats, hoping it will make it too heavy to take off, but instead the boats and ropes get tangled in some foliage and tear the seaplane in half.
** Major Winston Yu suffers from brittle bone disease. He dies when Alex deliberately sets off the bomb Yu is using in his EvilPlan too early, meaning it cannot cause a tsunami as originally planned; Yu is hit by the bomb's shockwave, and it ''fractures every single bone in his body at once''. His remains are described as a bag of skin filled with broken bones.
** Desmond [=McCain=] goes out when Alex attaches an [[ShoePhone explosive pen]] to a barrel of fuel and rolls it over to him, immolating him.
** Abdul-Aziz Al-Razim falls off a bridge in his fortress whilst fighting Alex, and lands in a giant pile of salt his men have collected from the nearby desert. The salt pile acts like quicksand, crushing him and pulling him underneath, and cooks him from the inside once it goes through his pores. He is last seen with white foam pouring out of his eyes and mouth as his head is pulled under.
** Giovanni and Eduardo Grimaldi chase Alex down in a steam-powered locomotive. Alex fills a thermos with fuel and throws it into the train's stack, causing it to explode and derail the train, throwing them into the side of a mountain.

* ''Literature/ErHaHeTaTeBaiMaoShiZun'':

* ''Literature/ErHaHeTaTeBaiMaoShiZun'': Song Qiutong is ordered to be boiled alive in a vat of oil after accidentally angering her tyrannical emperor husband, the increasingly unhinged Taxian-jun.

* In ''Literature/LegendsOfTheRedSun'', the leader of the Screams gang was born from the union of a human male and a banshee (banshee is this world are a human-like race that has the psionic ability to sense imminent death and they wail as a reaction to this). As such he's referred to as a banHe and while he can detect imminent death like a real banshee, he ends up vomiting explosively instead of wailing. This later causes his death during the Okun invasion, so many people die that he exploded from vomiting so much.
* Discussed in Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/LineOfDelirium''. The protagonist is a professional bodyguard hired by one of the most powerful men in TheEmpire to safely deliver his son to a remote planet. Should he succeed, the man, who is the owner of the [=aTan=] Corporation that specializes in resurrection technology, will grant him unlimited resurrections (i.e. eternal life). Should he fail, he will ''also'' grant him unlimied resurrections... only to be tortured and killed in the most painful and unusual ways possible. In fact, the man says he will hire the best torturers and writers to think of new tortures to that end. When the protagonist talk to the man's son, the boy reveals that this is not an idle threat and that a number of former bodyguards are already getting the "eternal torture" end of the deal.

* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', deaths happen. Like, seriously, a whole lot of death. Most of them have an element of ironic petards getting hoisted for the final time to them, as well. Some outright hit DeadBabyComedy. Here are a few samples:-

** Also Joffrey, who dies by slowly choking to death and clawing out his throat at his own wedding as a result of being poisoned.

** Then we have the Bolton's preferred execution method (FlayingAlive), what the Mereenese Grand Masters did to the slave children (nailing them alive to posts with their entrails hanging out), what Dany did to said Grand Masters (the same), a bunch of dragonfire-related incidents (most notably Quentyn), the sacrifices presented to R'hllor...
** And then there is the death of Gregor Clegane. He is wounded with a spear smeared with a poison that is specifically designed to kill someone slowly and painfully. [[WorldsStrongestMan Gregor's monstrous strength]] and [[MadeOfIron resilience]] arguably even prolong it further. The maesters try for days to save him. After they fail, Cersei suggest to [[MercyKill just kill him]], but Qyburn thinks [[ForScience it's worth to take a better look on the nature of the poison]].

** For that matter, the deaths of Elia and her children. Her daughter, three-year-old Rhaenys Targaryen, was stabbed ''fifty times'' by Amory Lorch simply because she was constantly screaming at him. Her one-year-old brother, Aegon, was thrown into a wall by Gregor Clegane, splattering him with his blood. He then proceeded to rape Elia ''with Aegon's blood on his hands'' before crushing her head. Even Tywin Lannister, who ordered their deaths in the first place, [[EvenEvilHasStandards was shocked]] by the utter brutality of them all.

** Robb Stark breaks his vow from the first novel to marry a Frey girl, and instead marries Jeyne Westerling. Angry at the slight and having made plans with the Lannisters, Walder Frey invites another marriage pact between Catelyn's brother Edmure Tully and his daughter Roslin Frey. At this wedding, the Freys break the time-honored and sacred guest right (a guest cannot be harmed after they have received food and drink at a host's table) and slaughter most of the northmen, including Robb and Catelyn (they originally wanted to keep her alive as hostage, and only killed her out of mercy after [[SanitySlippage she began clawing her face in madness]]). Robb's head is removed, as is the head of his direwolf Grey Wind, and Grey Wind's head is sewn onto Robb's body as a mockery. This wedding is known from then on in the series as The Red Wedding.
** The first High Septon (the obese one) was dragged from his litter and torn apart by an angry mob. Tyrion thinks that they resented the septon for being too fat to walk while they went hungry.

** Out of all the deaths during the Dance of the Dragons, the children of Aegon II and Helaena Targaryen suffered the most horrific ones. While Jaehaerys was simply beheaded, Maelor had a mob, all wanting "a piece of the prince", tearing him apart. Maelor's twin, Jaehaera, fell from a tower and was impaled on spikes. She took half an hour to die. These children were all less than 10 years old.

** For that matter, the deaths of Elia and her children. Her daughter, three-year-old Rhaenys Targaryen, was stabbed ''fifty times'' by Gregor simply because she was constantly screaming at him. Her one-year-old brother, Aegon, was thrown into a wall, splattering Gregor with his blood. He then proceeded to rape Elia ''with Aegon's blood on his hands'' before crushing her head. Even Tywin Lannister, who ordered their deaths in the first place, [[EvenEvilHasStandards was shocked]] by the utter brutality of its all.

* ''Literature/{{Hannibal}}'' has probably the worst one in the history of the written word. Hannibal Lecter, serial killer and cannibal, captures Clarice and Krendler, drugs and hypnotises Clarice, and slices off the top of Krendler's head to serve up his brain for him and Clarice to eat. It should be stressed that Krendler was '''not''' drugged; as the brain has no nerves, Hannibal is not only able to cut open Krendler's head without killing him but Krendler believes that he's just been subjected to a light TapOnTheHead. He simply deteriorates into incoherent babbling as Hannibal slices away like a deranged Japanese steakhouse chef, and he's not even aware of what is happenin to him. Brr.

* ''Literature/FoxDemonCultivationManual'': Situ Zhoulan's death. Song Ci gets Xiaochao to drag her into a nightmare she can't escape, a nightmare that "was beautiful at the start, but as it progressed, it would begin to dig out the dreamer’s innermost fears and sufferings and repeat it over and over again". Then Song Ci cuts Situ Zhoulan's wrist so she slowly bleeds to death while still trapped in the nightmare.
* ''Literature/EndgameTrilogy'': When a player dies, it's bound to be gory. Some examples include being blown apart by a grenade, being crushed by massive debris, getting your throat ripped out by a bionic arm, getting sniped, being stabbed into the spine and heart, being impaled by a piece of wood... Not to mention the countless ways innocents died when the meteors hit in the Calling.

* ''Literature/ChooseYourOwnAdventure'': Many of the undesirable endings in these game books have particularly gruesome fates. These fates range from torn apart by squids, sharks and other forms of wildlife; being locked in a deep cellar of a warehouse and left for dead; falling great distances; being sucked apart by a force field or extreme pressure; being drawn and quartered; and much more.
** One fate is implied to be so horrific, so brutal and so indescribably violent that the description of the final confrontation reads (in bold print and all caps) "'''CENSORED DUE TO EXTREME VIOLENCE!!!'''"
* In ''Literature/JohannesCabalTheDetective'' the epilogue contains a short adventure involving Cabal, an amateur British spy, and an immortal Asian warlock named Umtark Ktharl. The EvilSorcerer has a variety of killing methods at his disposal, from his mentioned but not seen Red Snow (which falls softly and then dissolves with a sigh tearing flesh away and killing armies), and we see this when Ktharl encounters some bandits shortly after he is freed--he sets one on fire (he keeps screaming after he is ash) he apparently teleports one's skeleton out of his body, another vomits out his heart, another gets just his head set on fire and his skin melts like candle wax, another is partially teleported inside a cave wall (it's implied he might be alive) and yet another has an animated tree string him up by the ankles and dash his brains out. Our first hint to what a dangerous monster Ktharl is is Cabal's reaction--the man who insults Satan to his face is very, very scared of Ktharl.
* ''Literature/{{Hannibal}}'' has probably the worst one in the history of the written word. Hannibal Lecter, serial killer and cannibal, captures Clarice and Krendler, drugs and hypnotises Clarice, and slices off the top of Krendler's head to serve up his brain for him and Clarice to eat. It should be stressed that Krendler was '''not''' drugged; as the brain has no nerves, Hannibal is not only able to cut open Krendler's head without killing him but Krendler believes that he's just been subjected to a light TapOnTheHead. He simply deteriorates into incoherent babbling as Hannibal slices away like a deranged Japanese steakhouse chef, and he's not even aware of what is happenin to him. Brr.
* In [[http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/2/ "The Cone"]] by Creator/HGWells, a man gets deliberately roasted to death by being thrown onto the top of a blast furnace.
* ''Literature/EastOfEden'' has a character's mother get gangraped so brutally that she survives only long enough for someone to, quote, "claw (her son) from the mangled meat of his mother."
* In Upton Sinclair's ''Literature/TheJungle'', some workers are implied to have fallen into lard rendering vats and boiled into lard and their bones ground into fertilizer.
* In Jon Skiftesvik's book ''Viltteri ja Mallu'', the protagonist's father, a paperworker, dies from falling into a paper machine and getting [[SquashedFlat crushed by the calander rollers]]. Ouch.

* Creator/StephenKing works are rife with this trope:
** In the original draft of ''Literature/SalemsLot'', Doctor Jimmy Cody is eaten alive by a horde of rats. The book's editor convinced King that it went too far, so he replaced it with a scene in which the doctor falls into a booby trap made of butcher knives that have been driven through a table. When the book was rereleased as a "10th Anniversary Edition", he (King) made sure the original scene was restored to the story.
*** The [[FilmOfTheBook 2004 TV movie]] has him fall onto ''a running table saw''. '''''Tzzzzzing!'''''
** In ''Literature/{{IT}}'', Patrick Hockstetter receives what is quite possibly the most horrific death in the whole book. He is killed by the titular BigBad, who has taken the form of what can only be described as giant, flying leeches who possess ''extremely'' large and ''extremely'' sharp proboscises, which proceed to completely swamp him and almost completely drain him of his blood. It's made even ''worse'' by the fact that one of them ''penetrates his eyelid'' and [[EyeScream utterly destroys his eyeball]], and another lands in his mouth and ''drains all the blood from his tongue''. He eventually dies after fainting, being dragged away to Its lair, and then being devoured alive when he awakens.
** The botched execution of Eduard Delacroix from ''Literature/TheGreenMile'', which happened because Percy Wetmore, the guy who insisted upon being in charge of the execution and a sadistic asshole to the core, neglected to soak a sponge in brine that was supposed to be tucked inside the electrode cap to ensure a quick death in the electric chair because he wanted to get back at Del in the cruelest way possible for laughing at him in an earlier scene. When the switch is thrown, the result is a prolonged, agonizing and exceedingly horrific death involving Del being ''burned alive'' in the chair. The volume in which this execution takes place is called "The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix" with good reason.
*** The film adaptation toned this scene down from its original literary version, removing, among other things, Del's eyes popping out of their sockets (which was TruthInTelevision -- electric chair victims had to wear a leather hood to catch them). And the scene in question, despite all toning down, ''still'' manages to be one of the most brutal and agonizing scenes for any movie that was marketed (at least in Europe) for young teens, which only showcases how utterly horrifying Delacroix's death actually was.
*** This scene was actually based off of the very first execution by electric chair in America where the person burned alive due to a malfunction of the chair. Stephen King said once that he got the idea from that.
** In ''{{Literature/Misery}}'', Annie murders a cop by running over his head with a riding lawn mower.
*** She herself dies from injuries sustained when Paul throws the 50-lb. Royal typewriter at her back, knocking her to the floor....after which he repeatedly stuffs handfuls of charred paper soaked in champagne down her throat....and ''then'' she falls and hits her head after somehow getting to her feet and tripping over said typewriter. But she doesn't die right away--it takes hours, hours in which she's still struggling to live. We don't feel too sorry for her, despite the horror.
** In ''Literature/{{Firestarter}}'', Andy's "push" can accidentally set off an echo effect in the mind of the individual being "pushed," causing them to become dangerously obsessional about certain objects or concepts. When he pushes Dr. Herman Pynchot, this echo effect causes Pynchot to become enamored with his wife's new garbage disposal. He commits suicide by turning on the disposal and sticking his arm into it (while wearing his wife's underwear, to boot).
** Most of the deaths in Chapter 38 of the Unabridged version of ''Literature/TheStand'' would qualify for this trope. To survive the superflu, only to die of accidental or natural causes because no one's around to help you? That is "cruel and unusual" writ large. Of particular note are:
*** The death of five-and-a-half-year-old Sam Tauber, who falls through a rotted well-cover while picking blackberries, breaks both his legs at the bottom and dies twenty hours later, "as much from fear and misery as from shock and hunger and dehydration."
*** Irma Fayette, morbidly afraid of being raped, finds a .45 pistol and some "green and mossy-looking" bullets in the attic of her home and camps out on her front porch, waiting. When a man approaches her, she points the pistol at him and fires. The gun explodes, killing her.
*** Judy Horton, a petty and shallow teenaged girl, who doesn't seem to mind that the world has ended (or that the superflu has taken her husband, baby boy and everyone else she knows). She accidentally locks herself into the walk-in freezer in the basement of her apartment building, and that, as they say, is that. No great loss.
*** Arthur Stimson steps on a rusty nail. His foot goes gangrenous, and he dies trying to amputate it himself.
** And no discussion of this trope as regards ''Literature/TheStand'' can be complete without mentioning the death of The Kid, Trashcan Man's insane companion (for a short time) on his journey West. Flagg sends wolves after The Kid to take him out, but before they can, he dives into an old Austin. The wolves stay, waiting patiently. Later in the book, Stu, Larry, Glen and Ralph find his body on ''their'' journey West. The Kid's remains are half in, half out of the Austin, his hands wrapped around the neck of a dead wolf.
** Flagg also crucifies people who piss him off. One victim screams in agony as he's being nailed to the cross hoisted up, since he never imagined anything could hurt that much. Of course, one hapless guy who fails Flagg discovers that this isn't the worst thing Flagg can do to people.
--->There were worse things than crucifixion. There were teeth.
** The superflu itself is pretty horrific (think of the worst cold you've ever had, and now imagine if it just got ''worse and worse'' until the symptoms were so bad they killed you), but some of the things that go on in the last days of the pandemic also count, such as a college student at a protest being cut in half by army machine guns.
* ''Literature/TheReynardCycle'': Let's just say that the Chimera of this series have the tendency to eat people while they are still alive. ''[[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil And some of them may rape their victim first.]]''
* In one of the ''Literature/PreludeToDune'' prequels, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen has his etiquette teacher drowned in raw sewage. The man had been trying to teach the Baron how to behave in polite society.
** Anyone swallowed by a sandworm qualifies, as they get incinerated in its burning belly.
* Deposed Archbishop Edmund Loris has Bishop Henry Istelyn hanged, drawn, and quartered in ''[[Literature/{{Deryni}} The Bishop's Heir]]''. Some time before hand he has the man's ring finger cut off (complete with his bishop's amethyst ring) and sent to Kelson in a show of defiance, and afterwards, he sends Istelyn's head.
* The ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series has a couple of these, the most notable being Honor's execution-by-duel of minor antagonist and SmugSnake Denver Summervale, who had a few weeks prior murdered her lover in a similar duel. He comes to the dueling ground expecting to first humiliate and then kill her; instead she [[LaserGuidedKarma puts five shots in his belly before]] [[KarmicDeath blowing his brains straight to a well-deserved Hell]] with her sixth.
** Honorable mention goes to ''anyone'' killed by a [[GravityIsAHarshMistress compensator failure]]. While not exactly cruel for the person on the receiving end, who are almost certainly all dead before they can feel a thing, getting [[ThereisNoKillLikeOverkill turned into anchovy paste by the sudden application of six hundred times the force of gravity]] certainly counts as unusual.
* ''Literature/AmericanGods'': A minor goddess is chased down and runover by the Kid's limousine over and over until she's small and liquid enough to be washed away in the rain.
* In Günther Wallraff's novel ''Ganz Unten'' (The Lowest of the Low) a Turkish steelworker is reported to have fallen [[LavaPit into a blast furnace]].

* Creator/OrsonScottCard:
** In "Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory" (collected in ''Literature/MapsInAMirror''), the AssholeVictim protagonist becomes forever plagued by monstrous, grotesquely-deformed infants whose sucker-like suction cup appendages rip off his skin when they make contact with it, as well as cause pus-filled sores to appear. And only HE can hear... and see... and experience these things, causing everyone else to believe him to be insane.
** In "A Thousand Deaths" (also in ''Maps in a Mirror''), a repressive government uses [[BodyBackupDrive cloning and brain-taping technology]] to torture a dissident to death over and over and over again, in increasingly gruesome and detailed manners -- and each time make his newly decanted self, fresh from the trauma of dying, clean up the bits of his body. This story actually ''inverts'' the trope however, because the protagonist eventually ''gets used to'' dying horribly, so the torture no longer works.
* Creator/MatthewReilly seems to like these. We've got being eaten by killer whales, roasted alive when the sparks from some {{Mook}}s' guns ignite flammable gasses in the air, hung upside-down in a pool full of killer whales and eaten, poisoned by sea snake venom and getting lockjaw, freezing after getting soaked in liquid nitrogen, crushed in a depressurizing diving bell, stabbed in the back by your own squad mate, getting drilled through the head, and being mauled alive by mutant elephant seals. And that's just in his ''second book''.
** His first book contains being thrown through a book case then being ripped in half, getting mauled alive by wolf-like aliens, burning to death, being electrocuted, being {{telefrag}}ged and, being crushed under a descending elevator.
** In ''Scarecrow'', in addition to the more mundane exploding planes and multiple bullet holes, there's being burned alive by a fighter jet's afterburner, multiple decapitations using various methods like guillotine and machetes, the burning oil trap, microwave beams causing a person to explode, being eaten by shark, and having a hole burned through the mouth.
** His other series involved many appearances from the DurableDeathTrap, amongst other things. There's getting melted by volcanic mud, smothered by tons of sand, hunted by specially trained hyenas, ''having the Hanging Gardens of Babylon dropped on you'' (that one doesn't take, but still), along with other oldies but goodies like getting caught under a rolling boulder during an IndyEscape, falling into a spike pit, being thrown into a TurbineBlender, and getting shot with an anti-aircraft cannon.
** Temple: Being eaten by monster-sized caimans and freakishly huge black panthers called rapas counts as this. The bad guys--members of a Neo-Nazi terrorist group and members of a US militant group whose leader is psychotic and hellbent on literally destroying Earth with a planet-killing weapon called the Supernova--die in more memorable ways. Anistaze, second-in-command of the Nazis, gets decapitated by helicopter rotors. Ehrhardt, the leader of the Nazis, gets blown up by the backup detonation, after Race disarms the Supernova bomb. Nash, the leader of the army group (who also massacred the Navy group and tried to steal the idol made of a magical nuclear element), has his arms bound (since his hands were cut off), gagged, dragged to the sacrificial chute, has his legs bound, and is tossed down the chute to be eaten by the rapas. He's alive and screaming when it happens, but he deserved it.
** Area 7: The Sinovirus kills everyone but Asians in a gruesome way. Gastrointestinal irritation, stomach melting, kidney and liver melting, complete organ failure, and then death in under two minutes. A 7th Squadron Commando gets his skull crushed after being ejected from an aircraft. Scarecrow blows up a Chinese space shuttle. Warrant Officer Webster, the guardian of the Football (the suitcase containing the nuclear weapons codes), is a traitor and is league with the main Bad Guy, General Russell. Webster gets his throat slit by Mother during a pit fight. Colonel Harper, the head of Area 7, seems to escape death by setting off a grenade loaded with Sinovirus, but he doesn't. Lucifer Leary, the Surgeon of Phoenix, a serial killer who carves his victims into pieces, captures, crucifies, and carves up Harper. The aforementioned Leary gets eaten by komodo dragons. Major Logan, a minor bad guy, goes splat after falling 400 feet down an elevator shaft; that and his head gets sliced off. And Russell, the main bad guy, he gets shot in the chest, then, assuming he was still alive, was obliterated by a W88 nuclear warhead detonating.
* There are some grisly deaths in ''Literature/FateOfTheFortySixth'', but the one that stands out is when Wolf kills a dragon by punching through its neck and yanking out its windpipe.
* Christina's death (from before the story started) from ''Literature/{{Haunted 1988}}''. She set the house on fire, killing everybody who was trapped inside, accidentally got herself set on fire, she jumped into the pond to stop the flames and drowned.
* The worms from David Gerrold's ''Literature/TheWarAgainstTheChtorr'' series eat their victims alive, and their mouths are built to inflict about as much pain as possible while they're doing it. But here's the bad part: the worms aren't the ''worst'' thing that can kill you in this story...
* Creator/FranzKafka's ''In the Penal Colony'' features an execution machine that gets examined in such meticulous detail that what it actually does seems ten times as horrifying.
* In ''Literature/TheVorGame'', Miles is investigating the mysterious death of a soldier found stuffed in a drainage pipe. Turns out the soldier had been hiding contraband (homemade cupcakes) and went to save them when the rain started, got lost in the dark, panicked, and managed to wedge himself in the drain pipe so that he suffocated.

* In the Literature/LordPeterWimsey short story "The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers", an artist murders his mistress because he suspects her of cheating. He kills her by electroplating her. The artist later [[HoistByHisOwnPetard falls into his own vat and is killed in a similar manner]].
* In "A Very Offensive Weapon", a take-off of heroic fantasy by Creator/DavidDrake, the hired retainers know there's no chance of surviving the heroic quest they're on. So they strive to die heroically, regaling each other with tales of legendary deaths.
-->''"Say, did you notice the way the Old Man threw his arms and legs wide as he fell forward? He was making sure that he'd be smashed ''absolutely'' flat. Now, that's craftsmanship if I ever saw it."''
* In ''Polystom'', a servant convicted of murdering an aristocrat is executed using the "skin frame": after fattening him up to loosen the entire skin, the skin around his ankles is cut and pinned to the lower part of the frame and he must hold the upper part of the frame until his arms give way with fatigue.

* Creator/CarlHiaasen:
** In ''Strip Tease'', the sleazy ex-husband of the main character falls into a drug-induced sleep in a vat of sugarcane -- which is then fed through a processing plant.
** In ''Native Tongue'', a hitman falls into a tank at a "Sea World"-like attraction, and simultaneously drowns and is humped to death by the undersexed dolphin that lives in the tank.
* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', deaths happen. Like, seriously, a whole lot of death. Most of them have an element of ironic petards getting hoisted for the final time to them, as well. Some outright hit DeadBabyComedy. Here are a few samples:-
** Viserys Targaryen weds his sister to Khal Drogo in the hopes of using Drogo's army to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. Eventually he pisses Drogo off enough that Drogo crowns him. With ''molten gold''.
** Also Joffrey, who dies by slowly choking to death and clawing out his throat at his own wedding as a result of being poisoned.
** In the "embarrassing" mode of things, we have Lord Tywin Lannister who is shot in the bowels, and ends his life with a stunning aversion of NobodyPoops.
** Then we have the Bolton's preferred execution method (FlayingAlive), what the Mereenese Grand Masters did to the slave children (nailing them alive to posts with their entrails hanging out), what Dany did to said Grand Masters (the same), a bunch of dragonfire-related incidents (most notably Quentyn), the sacrifices presented to R'hllor...
** And then there is the death of Gregor Clegane. He is wounded with a spear smeared with a poison that is specifically designed to kill someone slowly and painfully. [[WorldsStrongestMan Gregor's monstrous strength]] and [[MadeOfIron resilience]] arguably even prolong it further. The maesters try for days to save him. After they fail, Cersei suggest to [[MercyKill just kill him]], but Qyburn thinks [[ForScience it's worth to take a better look on the nature of the poison]].
** The spear in question was delivered by Oberyn Martell, who dueled with Clegane with the intent to kill him out of the fervent belief that the Mountain had murdered his sister and her children years ago on Lord Tywin Lannister's orders. After Oberyn delivered the lethal blow with his spear, Clegane confessed to raping and murdering Elia Martell, and her infant son... ''[[{{NoKillLikeOverkill}} while gouging Oberyn's eyes with one hand and pulverizing his entire skull with the other]]''. This he did in front of half of Westeros' nobility.
** For that matter, the deaths of Elia and her children. Her daughter, three-year-old Rhaenys Targaryen, was stabbed ''fifty times'' by Gregor simply because she was constantly screaming at him. Her one-year-old brother, Aegon, was thrown into a wall, splattering Gregor with his blood. He then proceeded to rape Elia ''with Aegon's blood on his hands'' before crushing her head. Even Tywin Lannister, who ordered their deaths in the first place, [[EvenEvilHasStandards was shocked]] by the utter brutality of its all.
** Possibly the worst deaths in the series (though admittedly there is a lot of competition) are the deaths of Rickard and Brandon Stark in the backstory, for both physical and psychological torture. Rickard was roasted alive while his son Brandon watched. Brandon had a noose around his neck and his sword was placed just out of reach, causing him to strangle himself while trying to save his father.
** Robb Stark breaks his vow from the first novel to marry a Frey girl, and instead marries Jeyne Westerling. Angry at the slight and having made plans with the Lannisters, Walder Frey invites another marriage pact between Catelyn's brother Edmure Tully and his daughter Roslin Frey. At this wedding, the Freys break the time-honored and sacred guest right (a guest cannot be harmed after they have received food and drink at a host's table) and slaughter most of the northmen, including Robb and Catelyn (they originally wanted to keep her alive as hostage, and only killed her out of mercy after [[SanitySlippage she began clawing her face in madness]]). Robb's head is removed, as is the head of his direwolf Grey Wind, and Grey Wind's head is sewn onto Robb's body as a mockery. This wedding is known from then on in the series as The Red Wedding.
** The first High Septon (the obese one) was dragged from his litter and torn apart by an angry mob. Tyrion thinks that they resented the septon for being too fat to walk while they went hungry.
** Kevan Lannister gets a crossbow bolt to the chest and is stabbed to death by a bunch of ''children''.
** Possibly the most horrifying death in the series is that of Vargo Hoat. He gets captured by Gregor Clegane, who proceeds to cut off each of his body parts, cauterize the wound and FEED them to him until he runs out of body.
** The method that Tywin Lannister used to wipe out House Reyne turns out to have been pretty nasty as well. [[AllThereInTheManual As revealed in]] ''Literature/TheWorldOfIceAndFire'', all of House Reyne and their followers fled into a series of mines, thinking the Lannisters would be reluctant to storm it, since the narrow mines were easily defensible and filled with traps; what's more, while the Reynes knew all the various twists and turns of the mines, the Lannisters didn't, therefore attempting to take them by force would require time and massive casualties. Thus to the Reynes it seemed like a good move to buy time, either for the allies of the Reynes to arrive or for Tywin to decide that negotiation was the better way to go. Instead Tywin sealed the exits to the mines and [[KillItWithWater diverted a local river into those mines]], flooding it completely and [[DrowningPit drowning all of the hundreds of men, women and children trapped inside]].
--->Tywin Lannister did not honor Ser Reynard's offer with a reply. Instead he commanded that the mines be sealed. With pick and axe and torch, his own miners brought down tons of stone and soil, burying the great gates to the mines until there was no way in and no way out. Once that was done, he turned his attention to the small, swift stream that fed the crystalline blue pool beside the castle from which Castamere took its name. It took less than a day to dam the stream and only two to divert it to the nearest mine entrance. The earth and stone that sealed the mine had no gaps large enough to let a squirrel pass, let alone a man... but the water found its way down. Ser Raynard had taken more than three hundred men, women, and children into the mines, it is said. Not a one emerged. A few of the guards assigned to the smallest and most distant of the mine entrances reported hearing faint screams and shouts coming from beneath the earth one night, but by daybreak the stones had gone silent once again.
** When choosing a career in the Seven Kingdoms, ''don't'' pick court bard or WanderingMinstrel. If you do, expect a veritable smorgasbord of humiliation, torture, death and the mutilation of your corpse should you wander into politics a little too deeply. Most of it could be described as self-inflicted, since actively ignoring "don't lie about, get satirical about or annoy people who can put you in prison on a whim for getting too witty about them, since they can do physical 'wit' right back at you with or without the help of paid 'friends'" could be seen that way.
* ''Literature/TheWindUpBirdChronicle'', by Haruki Murakami, illustrates, in horrific detail, just how terrifying it would be to watch someone getting skinned alive.
* ''Literature/WarriorCats'' has Tigerstar, who gets ripped open, causing him to scream in fits of agony as he bleeds to death ''[[CatshaveNineLives nine consecutive times]]''. Other deaths include being run over by a car, getting killed (and presumably eaten) by an AxCrazy mountain lion, and being stabbed in the throat with a wooden spike and gushing blood everywhere. And this is a series [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids marketed for children]].
** Plus there was the incident with one cat getting killed by dogs.
*** Ripped to shreds by dogs. SHREDS.
** Snowkit- a deaf kitten snatched out of the camp and eaten by a hawk.
** Antpelt is beaten so badly in a ''training session'' in the Dark Forest ([[ItMakesSenseInContext which he was visiting in a dream)]] that he [[YourMindMakesItReal died in real life]].
** Several cats die [[DeathByChildbirth by giving birth]]; the descriptions generally involve enough blood to give the reader nightmares.
** Honeyfern is bitten by an adder and dies screaming as its poison slowly kills her.
** Fallen Leaves was trapped in a pitch-black tunnel that was being flooded. He drowned while trying to desperately get out.
** Two very young kits are ripped apart by a fox in "Yellowfang's Secret".
** Firestar's final death is pretty brutal. He gets squished by a ''[[IronicDeath flaming tree]]''.
*** [[WordOfGod Word of God]] later states that he actually died of his wounds while taking down Tigerstar and the character who saw him killed by the tree in fact hallucinated him standing up. Either way, a brutal death.
** Bright Stream is snatched by an eagle while trying to save Gray Wing. To make matter worse, she was [[spoiler:pregnant with Clear Sky's kits.]] We can only [[NoodleImplements imagine]] her fate.
* At one point in the war story ''Literature/TheThingsTheyCarried'', the protagonists pitch their tents in a field they later find out is fertilized with the excrement of the entire nearby town. When they're attacked in the middle of the night, the explosions stir up the ground, and a major character ''drowns in shit''. Proving that life is [[JustForPun shittier]] than fiction, the book's BasedOnATrueStory, and the death was apparently a real incident (though this is [[MindScrew definitely]] [[UsualSuspectsEnding questionable]]).
* ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'':
** The death of Annalina Aldurren in the final book is particularly cruel. The actual death is fairly quick (you don't live very long when someone blasts a foot-wide hole in your chest), but the killers then disintegrate her body, not just to cover their tracks, but explicitly stating that they're doing it so nobody will ever know what happened to her.
** In the first book, we have the death of Demmin Nass, TheDragon, pedophile, child murderer, and all around bastard. After taunting Kahlan about how Richard was dead and he was going to let his men rape her to death while her friends are forced to watch, she goes into a TranquilFury UnstoppableRage and confesses him, then chops off his testicles and feeds them to him before embedding a mace in his head.
** And in the backstory, Zedd's wife's death qualifies. Not only is she beaten, raped, and left for dead by a squad of D'Haran soldiers, but she's left for Zedd to find. Zedd, being a Wizard of the First Order, naturally attempts to heal his wife...only to find doing so sets off a trap spell designed to kill her painfully in response to any magical healing.
** In Faith of the Fallen, Verna orders that the assassin who killed her husband Warran be [[DisproportionateRetribution tortured all night before being put to death in the morning]]. These are the Good Guys.
* The short story "Dark Red Mind" has a scene where, after finding out that [[TheMole the Colonel was in on the villain's plan]] the whole time, the three lead superhumans kill him in a truly nightmarish way. The Colonel gets in his car, turns the key in the ignition, and looks into the rear-view mirror to find Justin and Bethany sitting in the backseat. Just before he can get out, Justin uses his telekinesis to forcibly buckle the Colonel's seatbelt as tight as he can, making sure he can't get out. But that's not enough. Bethany uses her phasing powers on his hands ''without even touching him'', making sure he won't even have a physical chance to escape. Then, the third superhuman, Kaitlyn, with the ability to cut through things with her mind, slams her hands on the hood of the car. The Colonel begs for mercy, and Justin, with his only line in the story, simply replies, "Sorry, man. None left for you." Then Kaitlyn uses her power to ''cut through his neck as slowly as possible'' until she finally cuts all the way through.
** All of this is happening while [[SoundtrackDissonance Nocturne #2 in E-Flat Major is playing on the car radio.]]
* Pick a tale by Creator/TheBrothersGrimm: odds are good there'll be a gruesome death - you've got dancing to death in red-hot iron shoes, ripping yourself in twain pulling your foot out of the floor... and Herr Korbes had a pretty bad day.
* In the ''[[Literature/TheDraka Domination series]]'' by S.M. Stirling the stock punishment for any dissent is to be staked. The victim slowly dies, but if they tire and relax they'll just fall onto the stake more. It takes some skill to make the stake just the right length so as not to kill the victim too soon.
* In ''[[Literature/JackRyan Without Remorse]]'', John Clark tortures and kills a drug dealer by jamming him into a decompression chamber and giving him the bends.
** And it goes on for a chapter. With all the detail and exhaustive research that Tom Clancy is famous for.
* Creator/RichardKMorgan's fantasy novel ''[[Literature/ALandFitForHeroes The Steel Remains]]'' has one society sentence various people to death by gradual, mechanically-assisted impalement. This happens to a childhood friend of the main character. Later, due to a journey through possible alternate worlds/lives, the central character himself lives through such an experience. The description is... memorable, and not in a good way.
** More to the point, in his other novel series, the Takeshi Kovacs novel ''Broken Angels'' has a description of a torture device used on soldiers deemed fit for the brutal punishment. Essentially a modified autopsy machine, the device in question flays the skin, flenses bone, breaks teeth and probes the exposed nerves, boils the eyes, disects and removes organs, and finally decapitates the body. Whilst the criminal is alive. Suffice to say, when Kovacs blows up the teammate subjected to the toture, it is nothing less than a {{mercy kill}}.

* In his short story [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotism_%28short_story%29 "Patriotism"]], writer Creator/YukioMishima describes the act of {{seppuku}} in excruciating detail, to the point of causing physical discomfort in some readers. The film adaptation is no less brutal. Mishima-san would later make himself a RealLife example of the practice.
%%* The short story "Jericho" has the titular hero exiled by his own people, captured by humans, beaten, whipped, and eventually castrated and skinned alive.
* Failing to bind an Andat in ''Literature/TheLongPriceQuartet'' can have some pretty horrific consequences. For example, having your veins fill up with crushed glass. Or growing twisted mouths all over your body that vomit up you blood. Or slowly filling up with seaweed and black ice until your stomach ruptures.
* In Creator/DouglasCoupland's ''Hey Nostradamus!'', which is based on the Columbine massacre, one character ends up being trapped under a table by a group of angry teens. The students jump up and down on the table, and Coupland has the narrator describing how as the students are jumping on the table, the gap between the table and the floor is getting smaller and smaller, until the table is practically touching the floor. OK, the person under the table was part of a group who had shot several students dead for no real reason, but it's still pretty nasty.

* "The Cocoons" by Creator/ThomasLigotti has psychiatric patients being eaten from the inside out by giant [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraftian]] arthropods after the "pills" they were given have hatched. While this never actually occurs "on-stage", the narrator watches some [[SnuffFilm very educational home videos]] of his doctor's work...
* In the Creator/LarryNiven short story "Literature/WaitItOut", the first manned spacecraft to land on Pluto malfunctions and strands Jerome Glass and the unnamed narrator there. Glass commits suicide by leaving his spacecraft and removing his helmet. The narrator, inspired by the cryopreservation of humans back on Earth, leaves the ship and completely removes his spacesuit. Freezing to death is a horrific way to go, but this qualifies for the trope because he froze in such a way that his brain "turns back on" when he's out of direct sunlight, making him conscious of the fact that a) he's a HumanPopsicle and b) he's likely to stay that way until the sun explodes or until help arrives. Even while his mind is switched on, his time perception is altered, and he has blissful oblivion after sundown -- so he hopes he can "Wait It Out." Someone's sure to come back to Pluto someday, and who knows what Earth science may be able to accomplish by then?
* In the Creator/DavidEddings novel ''Regina's Song'', Twinkie, the Seattle Slasher, killed her victims by stabbing them with a syringe of curare to paralyze them, and then slowly carved them to pieces with a linoleum knife. While singing. When she finally tracked down the man who killed her sister, she slices him with the knife about eighty times. The coroner wasn't sure of the exact count, as some of the cuts were very close together -- especially around the groin. He ''was'' still alive when she cut his throat at the end.
* In the book ''They Thirst'' TheRenfield falls into a SnakePit with rattlesnakes inside after the IntrepidReporter fights him off. He soon realizes that being TheRenfield doesn't save one from death by rattlesnake bite. He was evil, but the way his death is described is borderline horror.
* Tame compared to some of those listed here, but several characters in ''Literature/DarknessVisible'' are killed by mishaps with [[PortalCut collapsing Reality Thresholds]]. The guy who gets his head cut off gets off lightly, compared to the one who gets cut in [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe half]]. Even worse is the one who loses a couple of limbs and bleeds out under Lewis's hands whilst screaming in agony.
* Patrick Bateman's victims in ''Literature/AmericanPsycho'' definitely go through this trope, at the end you're left wondering whether Patrick really did commit all those murders or if they were all in his head, but still...
* In ''Literature/ThePaleKing'', Chris Fogle's father gets his arm stuck in a closing subway door, and is dragged the length of the station and beyond. The authorities find pieces of him roughly 65 yards away from the platform, at which point the train was traveling over 50 miles an hour.
* In ''Literature/TheHungerGames'', many of the deaths in the arena are especially cruel. And some of the ones in ''Mockingjay'' are so gory that many had to be heavily cut down to avoid an R-rating.
** Specifically, Cato, who gets ripped apart by muttations for ''hours'' before Katniss [[MercyKill ends up shooting him out of pity]] in The Hunger Games, and poor Messalla, who gets ''melted alive'' by some kind of laser beam in Mockingjay; Katniss describes it with something along the lines of ''"[[NightmareFuel his skin melted like wax off a candle.]]"''
* The last chapter of Zola's ''Nana'' focuses on other characters as they visit the title character's deathbed. The cheerful prostitute, who single-handedly ruined the fortunes of some of the richest men in France through sheer profligacy, dies horribly disfigured by smallpox.

* Grenouille, the protagonist in ''Literature/PerfumeTheStoryOfAMurderer'', has murdered twenty-five beautiful virgins to create the most glorious, irresistible perfume in the world. For his crimes he is ''supposed'' to have his ankles, knees, hips, wrists, elbows and shoulders shattered and then be hung up to die, but he escapes this fate: in the end, he pours the perfume over himself and is torn to pieces and devoured by an adoring mob. The author makes it clear just how hard it is to tear a living human being into pieces, too.
* In "The Quest for Blank Claveringi", a short story by Patricia Highsmith, the protagonist is stranded on an island populated by [[ItCanThink INTELLIGENT]] man-eating snails the size of Buicks. Suffice it to say this does not end well.
* In ''Literature/TheParasiteWar'', one of the rebels is grabbed by the giant "Neonate", or monstrous alien baby. It rips off first one arm, then the other, then rips him in half.
* In ''Literature/TheBraidedPath'', the fate of one would-be Blood Emperor is to be set on fire, fall off a tower, and be pecked apart by pissed off crows.
* In ''Literature/{{Unwind}}'', we have Roland. Oh my God, Roland. He was being unwound (systematically taken apart, organ by organ) while conscious... The few details aren't very gory, but that leaves what exactly they're doing to him to your imagination.
* An off-screen death in ''Literature/AuntDimity Beats the Devil'': Josiah Byrd imprisoned his daughter in an attic room after she fell in love, maintained contact with the forbidden suitor, and became pregnant. Her father allowed her to die of birth complications, and the nurse had to smuggle out the infant girl to keep him from killing her as well. Lori senses the ghost leave her when she and her companions find the room; apparently the experience was so traumatic the ghost can't or won't return to the room.
* ''Literature/BattleRoyale'' is absolutely loaded with these, but perhaps the most infamous one is when a boy makes an AttemptedRape on a girl. She [[EyeScream gouges out his eye]] with two fingers, [[GroinAttack crushes his genitals]] with her foot, stomps on his throat and finally stabs the roof of his mouth with an ice pick, killing him.
* ''Literature/TheEdgeChronicles'', by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell, take much glee in giving their characters the most inventive and horrific deaths imaginable. It's like Creator/RoaldDahl and [[Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents Lemony Snicket]] had a party and got Bosch to provide the illustrations.

* In the TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} SpaceMarine Battles novel ''The Siege of Castellax'' , several of the [[TheStoic Iron]] [[{{Jerkass}} Warriors]] who rule the titular slave-planet suffer some very interesting and undignified deaths at the hands of the [[BloodKnight Ork Waaagh!]] invading the planet:
** [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Algos the Skintaker]] suffers [[TheDogBitesBack the dog biting back]] in a particularly embarrassing fashion -- paralyzed by rubble, this superhuman champion of the Dark Gods has his throat cut. [[WhosLaughingNow By a slave.]] With a piece of rebar. Worse, Space Marines have special genetic enhancements that prevent blood clotting, so this incredibly humiliating end for a ProudWarriorRaceGuy takes quite some time.
** [[TheDragon Over-Captain Vallax]] ends up captured, [[ColdBloodedTorture tortured]], and [[MindRape lobotomized]] by an [[MadScientist Ork Dok.]] After helping his captors gain access to the Iron Warrior's stronghold, all sneaky like, he snaps out of it...only to be beheaded.
** Mallox, another Iron Warrior, is ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice on an [[EliteMooks Obliterator's]] [[ChainsawGood chain fist.]] Only then does the Obliterator actually turn the device on, shredding him.
** [[EvilOverlord Warsmith Andraaz]] suffers possibly the nastiest, and most drawn-out, end of the lot, coupled with a HumiliationConga. After engaging the Ork Warboss in close combat, he has his PoweredArmor shut down, immobilizing him. It is then spit open, and he is pulled out of it piece by piece, all whilst the Orks laugh at him for giving a poor fight.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
** These don't tend to happen on page, but Vetinari mentions one of his predecessors used to have people pulled apart by wild tortoises. [[DeadpanSnarker It was not a quick death]].
** Although none of them happen onscreen, horrible tortures and cruel deaths keep being mentioned in ''Literature/InterestingTimes'', too, not least by the Emperor himself, who thinks it's fun.
** And in ''Literature/SmallGods'', Brutha is handcuffed to a big iron tortoise and almost roasted alive.
* Discussed in Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/LineOfDelirium''. The protagonist is a professional bodyguard hired by one of the most powerful men in TheEmpire to safely deliver his son to a remote planet. Should he succeed, the man, who is the owner of the [=aTan=] Corporation that specializes in resurrection technology, will grant him unlimited resurrections (i.e. eternal life). Should he fail, he will ''also'' grant him unlimied resurrections... only to be tortured and killed in the most painful and unusual ways possible. In fact, the man says he will hire the best torturers and writers to think of new tortures to that end. When the protagonist talk to the man's son, the boy reveals that this is not an idle threat and that a number of former bodyguards are already getting the "eternal torture" end of the deal.
* In ''Literature/TheKingkillerChronicle'', the Maer of Severen is a stern and intelligent leader who nevertheless has a cruel streak when it comes to theft from his holdings. One of his subjects accused of banditry was locked in a cage suspended from the western gate and abandoned. He sat there for weeks, starving to death and begging to be released while visitors watched. His skeleton is still there as a grim reminder.
* In Iain M Bank's ''Literature/UseOfWeapons'' the bad guy has his sister made into a chair. Her bones make the frame, and her skin is the cushion. Fortunately, we never see this happening on the page. It is truly one of the most shocking moments of the book.

* Elfangor's death in ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}''. In one prequel novel Visser Three promised Elfangor that he would make Elfangor's death [[ItsPersonal very personal]]. He kept his word. Visser Three transformed into a huge monster and [[EatenAlive ate Elfangor alive]]. The Animorphs hear Elfangor's psychic death cries and watch as pieces of Elfangor's flesh fall to the ground and are eaten by hungry Taxxon-Controllers.
* In ''Literature/TheDrownedCities'' soldier boy Soa is set on fire and then eaten alive by coywolv. Not a good way to go.
* In ''In Death Ground'' and ''The Shiva Option'' both by Creator/DavidWeber and Steve White, humans and their allies are engaged in a BugWar against the Arachnids. The Arachnids like to [[EatenAlive eat populations they conquer alive.]] For added horror, they tend to prefer children and will also raise sentients on ranches the way humans raise cattle and pigs. Humanity's reaction to this behavior is [[NuclearOption quite]] [[FinalSolution severe]].
* ''[[Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo 1634: The Baltic War]]'': One subplot surrounds Eddie Cantrell's captivity in Denmark, where he is forced to help the Danes develop diving technology. Unfortunately, they forgot to install a safety valve on their old-fashioned diving suit. After the pump fails and the diver (who was a condemned criminal) is crushed by the water pressure, the king plans to use it as a method of execution for treason and similar crimes. Anyone who has seen the ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' episode with the Meatman knows [[NightmareFuel why]] this is here.
* In her first (and hopefully last) science fiction story, "Commencement," Joyce Carol Oates writes of the 200th commencement ceremony of an unnamed university. The highlight of the televised ceremony comes when the three dignitaries -- identified only as the Poet, the Educator, and the Scientist -- receiving honorary degrees are dragged up a temporary pyramid on stage and restrained while two university functionaries cut out their hearts and flay them. Why the honorees were unaware of this tradition is never explained.
* Dr. Donald Williams in ''Literature/StarTrekTheEugenicsWars'' met his end when [[BewareTheSuperman Khan]] decided that he [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness was no longer useful]]. He died minutes after being exposed to genetically engineered streptococcus, which killed much of his flesh before toxic shock finally finished him.
* In ''Literature/DoraWilkSeries'', Viola is ripped apart by angry ghosts until nothing but her skeleton remains, in a manner so vicious, even [[SeenItAll Dora]] considers it messed up.
* The greedy and hypocritical merchant Droogstoppel in ''Literature/MaxHavelaar'' is made to choke on coffee by the book's author. However, depending on how you read the passage, it's also possible to interpret the passage as Droogstoppel ''drowning'' in coffee.

* Rubin Pritchard in ''Literature/WhereTheRedFernGrows'' dies a surprisingly awful and prolonged death, considering the book was written for preteens, and the fact that he himself was only a kid. He trips while carrying an ax and ends up with the blade embedded in his stomach. This includes lines about him bleeding profusely and begging Billy to pull the ax out, finally dying after he succeeds when a "bubble of blood" bursts from his mouth. His death is actually toned down in some prints of the book, and the film version goes directly for the GoryDiscretionShot method.
** Billy's dog, Old Dan, dies a slow, horrifying death at the end of the book, getting disemboweled by a mountain lion trying to protect Billy from it. The walk home from the attack includes surprisingly gruesome lines about Old Dan's intestines dragging on the ground behind him and getting caught in bushes, with Billy having to clean dirt and leaves out of them, before he finally dies shortly after arriving home.
* In ''Literature/TheDinosaurLords'', Pilar dies when trying to stop a pack of hunting raptors (small, but vicious and sharp-teethed dinosaurs) from catching her friend Melodía. She's quite literally torn apart alive.
* In ''Literature/TheDiscreetPrincess'', Rich-Craft captures Finette and intends to kill her by putting her in a barrel filled with blades and rolling it off a mountain. She acts so calm that he loses all caution in anger, allowing her to push him in instead. He survives... for a few months, at least.
* ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' has several, from tailored plagues designed to be agonizingly painful. But standing out is the mass crucifixion of Christians when Muslims occupy Boston.
* Many victims of Roderick Whittle, aka UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper, from Creator/RichardLaymon's ''Literature/{{Savage}}''.
* ''Agakuk'' tell the story of an Inuit living in the cold north in 1940. At some point, Agaguk killed a smuggler. Some chapters later, a lone RCMP officer came to investigate the murder. Agaguk's father, Ramook, wasn't very cooperative. The RCMP officer eventually realize he has outstayed his welcome and hastily departed. Before he could make it far, Ramook shot the policeman him in the back. Then the whole village descended on him. They stripped him off naked, in the snow, and chopped him off ''piece by piece'', while he was still alive and screaming in agony. [[ImAHumanitarian His penis was cut off and the women fought among themselves to devourer it. Ramook took the liver and ate it]]. In the end, there was nothing left of him but bones. The chapter was appropriately entitled "The Butchers".
* In the second book of ''Literature/TheGirlFromTheMiraclesDistrict'', Nikita crucifies Turner with a nail gun to the wall of his room to show other Shadows what happens when you cross her. And because after an entire book of his mooks hounding her, she's absolutely tired of him.
* In Oroonoko, the title character's death is essentially a slow cutting off of body parts with a dull knife, mostly to allow readers to be impressed with said character's stoicism as he sits there smoking a pipe, his only concession to the loss of various appendages and finally limbs being to evetually slump over. Said body parts are mostly burned, though his torso is then cut up and distributed piecemeal.

* ''Literature/JourneyToChaos'': Basilard punishes the assassin [[PapaWolf who went after his daughter]] by turning said assassin's blood into acid, thereby melting all of her internal organs. Zettai herself is horrified by this.
* In ''Literature/HarryPotter'', Gryffindor's house ghost, the Nearly Headless Nick, was executed with ''forty-five'' blows to his neck with a dull axe.
** Barty Crouch Jr. suffers [[FateWorseThanDeath the Dementor's Kiss]].
* ''Literature/JoePickett'': In ''Free Fire'', geologist Mark Cutler is murdered by being thrown into a geyser where he boils alive in a matter of seconds. At the end of the novel, [[spoiler:Clay [=McCann=]]] suffers the same fate.
* In ''[[Literature/{{Kane}} Darkness Weaves]]'' BackStory king Netisten Maril finds out that his wife Efrel has been cheating on him and plotting to kill him. He sentences her to be dragged by an enraged bull through the streets of his capital. [[spoiler: Being an EldritchAbomination, she survives, but only as a ruined wreck.]]
* The Flazgaz Heat Ray, created by the Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe in ''[[https://www.peltorro.com/Badger_SF089.pdf The Intruders]]'', has gone down in legend as a ForgottenSuperweapon, but in-Universe it's banned for this reason; its target is roasted alive and dies in intolerable pain.
* Befalls many of the [[BigBad Big Bads]] in the ''Literature/AlexRider'' series:
** Dr. Grief is killed when Alex launches a snowmobile at the helicopter he is escaping in from a ski ramp.
** Damian Cray dies when he is sucked into one of the engines of Air Force One, reducing him to a "cloud of red gas" that disappears into the atmosphere.
** Julia Rothman is crushed when Alex destroys the hot air balloon carrying the satellites required for her scheme, and the entire platform falls to earth and lands directly on her.
** Nikolei Drevin attempts to escape in a seaplane; Alex ties two boats to the plane's floats, hoping it will make it too heavy to take off, but instead the boats and ropes get tangled in some foliage and tear the seaplane in half.
** Major Winston Yu suffers from brittle bone disease. He dies when Alex deliberately sets off the bomb Yu is using in his EvilPlan too early, meaning it cannot cause a tsunami as originally planned; Yu is hit by the bomb's shockwave, and it ''fractures every single bone in his body at once''. His remains are described as a bag of skin filled with broken bones.
** Desmond [=McCain=] goes out when Alex attaches an [[ShoePhone explosive pen]] to a barrel of fuel and rolls it over to him, immolating him.
** Abdul-Aziz Al-Razim falls off a bridge in his fortress whilst fighting Alex, and lands in a giant pile of salt his men have collected from the nearby desert. The salt pile acts like quicksand, crushing him and pulling him underneath, and cooks him from the inside once it goes through his pores. He is last seen with white foam pouring out of his eyes and mouth as his head is pulled under.
** Giovanni and Eduardo Grimaldi chase Alex down in a steam-powered locomotive. Alex fills a thermos with fuel and throws it into the train's stack, causing it to explode and derail the train, throwing them into the side of a mountain.
* In ''Literature/KeasFlight'', two [=BGs=] who rebelled against the Board are put through the recycling machine and cut to pieces alive, instead of being given a lethal injection first.
* ''Literature/ProjectTau'': Renfield is knocked out, dragged off to a high-security room, and eaten alive by Project Epsilon. It's never stated whether he was conscious or not, only that it took just under twenty minutes for him to actually die. Not only that, Chatton also mentions ''predecessors,'' meaning that Renfield wasn't the first person to suffer this fate.
* In Creator/RobertSheckley's "The Victim From Space", a civilization is depicted where violent death (preferably a painful one) is considered a blessing and a way to heaven. When a human comes to the planet and is believed to be a sentry of gods, a lot of thought is given to how he deserves to die... after the peasant who reported his ship arriving gets his skull caved in as a reward. After the priests reject poison quills and fire, they finally agree to bury him in an anthill, until a girl who loves him convinces them to upgrade it to "The Ultimate" - a torture rack which is only brought out once a thousand years or so. Meanwhile, the majority of the population aren't too optimistic that the priests will consider them worthy of death, so they arrange "accidents" for themselves. One takes an hour to die after [[https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1957-04/page/n81 making a thorny tree fall upon him]], and all the priests can do is preach how one should be careful.
* ''Literature/LogansRun'': "The Homer" is used to support future society's [[WeWillHaveEuthanasiaInTheFuture mandatory euthanesia]] at Age 21 -- people who comply get a peaceful death by euphoric DeadlyGas, but those who don't are hunted down by StateSec and shot with a weapon that slowly, torturously shreds their nervous system.
* In ''Literature/TheOutlaws'', the protagonist and his comrades are being taken away by the revolutionaries after their surrender in Harburg, they encounter the corpse of Lieutenant Bertholt stripped of his uniform, covered with knife cuts, and missing its head and one hand.

* ''Literature/{{Semiosis}}'': [[spoiler:Harry]] is tied down and left to be eaten by flesh-dissolving slugs. Tatiana desperately hopes that his heart gave out early.
* ''Literature/TheRiftwarCycle'': The nation of Kesh has a unique and terrible punishment reserved for traitorous nobles, which is described in ''Prince of the Blood.'' The convicted is taken from the royal court and imprisoned, kept up all night by a guard reading their sentence to them in full every quarter hour, so they get no rest. At dawn the next day, they are taken from their cell, stripped naked, chased to the temple of the God of Hunters by guards armed with whips and hot brands, excommunicated from the Keshian afterlife, and are chased and whipped around the city of Kesh once more, eventually being herded to the main city gate. Here they are placed in a suspended cage and left to be taunted and poked with sticks by anyone who wishes to torment them. During this time, they are fed only rotten wine and salted moldy bread. After several days of this, when they are judged to be close to dying of exposure, they are taken from the cage, chased by whip and brand-wielding guards once again into the swamps outside the city, castrated, bound and thrown to the crocodiles. Also acts as a FateWorseThanDeath, as the whole slow execution is meant to destroy the condemned's soul, as their body and spirit are broken, and all written record of their existence is rewritten to remove their name and their name is forbidden to any member of the royal family forevermore.
* In ''Literature/LegendsOfTheRedSun'', the leader of the Screams gang was born from the union of a human male and a banshee (banshee is this world are a human-like race that has the psionic ability to sense imminent death and they wail as a reaction to this). As such he's referred to as a banHe and while he can detect imminent death like a real banshee, he ends up vomiting explosively instead of wailing. This later causes his death during the Okun invasion, so many people die that he exploded from vomiting so much.
* In Gregory Frost's ''Shadowbridge'', Leodora has broken many of her village Bouyan's taboos - including public nudity and riding a sea dragon that are only for men. Her uncle Gousier is blacklisted until he brings in Leodora for a terrible "purification rite" that hadn't been used in 3 generations. Leodora is first to be dunked in the sea until everything from the stomach, bowels and bladder is voided out. Then a sharp stick is to be slowly pushed up her ass until it's all along her spine. She'll then be cooked over an open fire, then chopped up and sprinkled in the sea. Gousier promises her that she'll be alive through almost all of it.
* In ''[[Literature/TheBookOfTheNewSun Shadow of the Torturer]]'', this trope helps kick off the story. The torturer Severian, becomes the lover of the exultant Thecla during her imprisonment. When she's finally sentenced to her "excrutiation", her punishment is the "revolutionary" - a device that causes the body to rebel against itself. One of the first things to happen is the hands attempt to gouge out the eyes, unless the victim uses their ever-dwindling willpower to force them down. Eventually the hands will win out...the body meanwhile is slowly consuming itself, so that no victim lasts more than a month. Severian can't save Thecla, but he gives her a knife to end her suffering before she loses control.

** For that matter, the deaths of Elia and her children. Her eldest daughter, three-year-old Rhaenys Targaryen, was stabbed ''fifty times'' by Gregor simply because she was constantly screaming at him. Her one-year-old brother, Aegon, was thrown into the wall, splattering Gregor with his blood. He then proceeded to rape Elia ''with Aegon's blood in his hands'' before crushing her head. Even Tywin Lannister, who ordered their deaths in the first place, [[EvenEvilHasStandards was shocked]] by the utter brutality of its all.

** Robb Stark breaks his vow from the first novel to marry a Frey girl, and instead marries Jeyne Westerling. Angry at the slight and having made plans with the Lannisters, Walder Frey invites another marriage pact between Catelyn's brother Edmure Tully and his daughter Roslin Frey. At this wedding, the Freys break the time-honored and sacred guest right (a guest cannot be harmed after they have received food and drink at a host's table) and slaughter most of the northmen including Catelyn and Robb. Robb's head is removed, as is the head of his direwolf Grey Wind, and Grey Wind's head is sewn onto Robb's body as a mockery. This wedding is known from then on in the series as The Red Wedding.

** Honorable mention goes to ''anyone'' killed by a [[GravityIsAHarshMistress compensator failure]]. While not exactly cruel for the person on the receiving end, who are almost certainly all dead before they can feel a thing, getting [[RealityEnsues turned into anchovy paste by the sudden application of six hundred times the force of gravity]] certainly counts as unusual.