History Main / BodycountCompetition

:: Sarge's body count up to that point is effectively zero.

* ''Fanfic/FateZeroSanity'': Rider ([[LightNovel/FateZero Iskander]]) and Caster ([[spoiler:[[Manga/FairyTail Natsu Dragneel]]]]) engage in this in the battle against Avenger's army.

* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': In "[[Recap/StargateAtlantisS03E04Sateda Sateda]]", Sheppard gives his body count of Wraith, Teyla gives hers, and Sheppard changes his to one more than hers.

-->-- ''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick''

* Riddick and Kyra in ''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick''.

* Literature/TheBible: A young David had to collect [[TwentyBearAsses one hundred]] [[GroinAttack foreskins]] of the Philistines in order to earn the hand of King Saul's daughter Michal in marriage. So this is OlderThanFeudalism. And then he went double for nothing and collected ''two hundred'', which made him a [[{{Pun}} cut]] above the rest. Given the HomoeroticSubtext between David and her brother Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:26), it might well have been fair payment...\\\

* Spoofed in ''Film/HotShotsPartDeux''. During a shootout, there is a counter running which declared at different numbers to have a bigger body count as other movies. At the end, the counter declares the movie to be the most brutal ever. The numbers are a joke, but the movie's real body count was still a record at the time with 114. Although they only fall down without any visible wounds (even the guy who gets literally splattered over a wall lacks regular injuries), [[BloodlessCarnage making the "bloodiest" claim a complete lie]]. Which may have been a subtle joke in itself.

* ''Film/{{Us}}'': At one point, Zora boasts to her family that she killed more Tethered than them. By the end of the film, the Wilsons are literally and symbolically [[spoiler:tied at two kills each.]]

* ''Series/KamenRiderKuuga'': The serial killings of the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Grongi]] are literally this. Each of them puts a set of rules on themselves when it's their turn as part of their game and are required to kill a certain amount of people. Failing can get their kills voided or boot them out of the game. [[GoodCannotComprehendEvil The police department is]] ''[[GoodCannotComprehendEvil not]]'' [[GoodCannotComprehendEvil happy when they discover this.]]

* Literature/TheBible: A young David had to collect [[TwentyBearAsses one hundred]] [[GroinAttack foreskins]] of the Philistines in order to earn the hand of King Saul's daughter Michal in marriage. So this is OlderThanFeudalism. And then he went double for nothing and collected ''two hundred'', which made him a [[{{Pun}} cut]] above the rest. Of course, given the HomoeroticSubtext between David and her brother Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:26), it might well have been fair payment...\\\
{{Squick}}y as it may be, collecting the foreskins of slain enemies was the surest way to tally up kills without cheating; men have two ears, ten fingers... only one foreskin. Lips and nose are one each, but they could come from women. Furthermore, Judeans were circumcised and Gentiles were not, so that meant David couldn't harvest from his own dead soldiers. This trope was actually the start of Saul's animosity toward David. At first he was impressed by David and promoted him to a high rank in the army. However, when people started to sing of David's combat prowess, saying "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands," Saul didn't take it well.

* The community for pretty much every online shooter in existence, to the point where [[StopHavingFunGuys your opinion usually doesn't count if someone with a better K/D ratio argues against you]]. PVP battleground disputes descend into this (especially on the losing faction of the particular battleground), even among veteran players.

* Pretty much any co-op game of ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors'' has the potential to turn into this. And with ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriorsOnline'', It's a game mode! You and 3 other players, or A.I. players, go against 4 enemies to see who can commit mass genocide first, by defeating either 2000 or 3000 [[{{Mook}} helpless soldiers]] between all 4 on that team, and a backup condition, should the main objective of other matches not be met, is also this but with no limit. As with above, they all have an actual incentive to do it even when it's not the game mode, as you will score a little more honor if you've killed more mooks than your team.

** [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Annihilators]] have these. At times, they've attacked their own forces to up their kill count. Of course, you never see that in-game because after Ciretako (the most famous Annihilator friendly fire incident) the kill counters were removed and the annihilators were given new stimulants making them more likely to attack their enemies. They were removed, then put back when it was proved how much they improve combat performance. One log you can find has the Komato who wrote the kill count display shitting himself because the counter only has four characters and will eventually roll over from 9999 to 0, and he knows how that will end for him. Apparently [[MeaningfulName Iosa the Invincible]] reported the bug once.

* Looks like it, and even non-zombie games are in on it too: ''[[VideoGame/RockBand Rock Band 3]]'' has an achievement, "HOPO-cidal maniac" that reads, "Kill ''53,596'' Hammer-ons and Pull-offs."

:: Mind that Sarge's body count up to that point is effectively zero.

** Of course, the quibbling eventually turns into LoopholeAbuse:

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/GeneratorRex'', "The Swarm", featured this sort of contest between Rex and his buddy Bobo against an entire horde of BigCreepyCrawlies. Bobo annihilated the most using firearms, but Rex won by a landslide by discovering how to cause the metal-consuming insects to devour each other, making him the winner. Of course, knowing what a SoreLoser Bobo can be, as Rex guessed, the EVO Chimp let the News Channel expose to the entire world Rex's GoofyPrintUnderwear, Bonus points for the News channel mentioning it was a "smell collected from it" that saved the world.

* Estimating enemy losses in battles is pretty much ubiquitous across modern militaries for both pragmatic reasons (it helps to determine what the enemy's strength currently is, after all) and propaganda. Oftentimes, the publicly released figure will differ from the more accurate internal figure, which itself differs from the real figure due to the imperfect methods of estimating enemy losses (these are only accurately established after the war is over and each side releases their medical records). A great example is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol#Aftermath Battle of Khalkin Gol]]. According to the public Soviet official history, the Japanese took 61,000 casualties; according to the Soviet military's own estimations (kept secret), the Japanese took 29,085 casualties; and according to Japanese records, the Japanese took 17,716 casualties.

** This goes back to the feudal practice called Kubi-jikken, which is ''literally'' counting heads at the end of battle. This was important, as at the time samurai's pay was directly related to how many and who he killed.

* During the Vietnam War, due to the nebulous nature of the conflict, the US Army resorted to body count of dead PAVN soldiers as a measure of its effectiveness. Unfortunately, this led to a great deal of abuse, such as counting limbs as whole bodies, or writing off dead civilians caught in artillery or aircraft bombardments as "Viet Cong." Interestingly, when the Vietnamese government finally released its official record of military losses during the Vietnam War (849,018+ dead), it was found that U.S. body count estimates were pretty damn close to the truth. Of course, given the scale of the war, a relatively small margin of error for PAVN military losses such as 10% corresponded to roughly a hundred thousand people...
* The strict definition of "air ace" is "a fighter pilot who has shot down a certain number of enemy fighters" (usually 5). [[RedBaron Manfred von Richtofen's]] record of 80 kills was unbeaten in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. In all of the history of air warfare, though, the highest scoring ace is Erich Hartmann of the WWII Luftwaffe, who was credited with 352 kills over the Eastern Front. The highest scoring Allied ace is rather farther down [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_air_aces the list of WW2 aces]], Ivan Kozhedub of the Soviet Union with 62 kills (the Allied air forces had a policy of rotating out the best pilots to serve as trainers, so this isn't unexpected). Gun-cams were invented to keep track of the fighter pilots' kills, ''[[InvokedTrope for the very reason of invoking this trope]]''. Note that the gun-cams had a purpose beyond kill-counts -- to accurately gauge how much enemy material had been destroyed.
* [[ColdSniper Snipers]]. Simo Häyhä supposedly has the largest body count of any sniper ever, standing at 705 confirmed kills (505 by sniper and ~200 by submachine gun), all of which he scored in a war that lasted less than a hundred days. The next best, Francis Pegahmagabow, had 378 kills. Which, like aircraft, is more about keeping track of how many enemy forces are left, for the spotter to find out if it is safe to go in yet or not. Snipers keep detailed notes about every kill. On Häyhä, he's another example of the above-mentioned public exaggeration in action. His official figure of 505+ contradicts contemporary sources, namely Häyhä's division commander A. Svensson and his unit's military chaplain Antti Rantama, who credited him with 219 sniper kills and 259 sniper kills, respectively. Note that both of these figures were likely exaggerated x2 or x3 to begin with just due to usual fog of war. The figure of 200 submachine gun kills appears to be flat-out fantasy- all of Häyhä's submachine gun action came when he was a section (squad) leader ambushing Red Army patrols, when he'd have over a dozen other men also with submachine guns hosing the same targets. In such a case it would be impossible to verify who fired the kill shot, meaning it's very likely they just credited every kill by his section (again, probably exaggerated to begin with) to him personally, another common propaganda tactic in "body count" reports. So while Häyhä almost certainly did kill over a hundred people, maybe even over two hundred, his commonly reported toll is just a very successful propaganda coup, so much so that it's still believed nearly a hundred years later.

* Played for laughs in ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'', Season 3, when Sarge and Caboose happen upon a pile of dead Blues while chasing Doc/[[TheVirus O'Malley]]:

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' keeps track of how many enemies each party member killed, and what was the strongest (highest [[ExperiencePoint XP value]]) enemy they killed. By the end of the campaign these numbers will be in the hundreds of not thousands.

* ''WesternAnimation/CatwomanHunted''. When Catwoman and Batwoman are attacked by 52 ninjas from the League of Shadows, they engage in a non-fatal competition to determine who can beat the larger number. Catwoman claims victory, though Batwoman objects that two of Catwoman's count were brought down by her cat Isis.

* In ''ComicBook/SupermanBatman'' #5, at least two of Bruce's (future adopted) kids are enjoying the competition:
-->'''ComicBook/{{Robin|1993}}:''' I got two on the side yard. How many did you take out, Huntress?\\

'''ComicBook/{{Batgirl|2000}}:''' ''[holds up four fingers]''\\

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* ''Film/TheSuicideSquad'': Peacemaker and Bloodsport end up trying to outdo each other in stylish kills when they're trying to rescue Rick Flag.

* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}''

** Another ''Batman'' Villain, Victor Zsasz, keeps an obsessive count of the number of people he's "liberated", by [[KillTally carving marks into his own flesh]]. These marks are so important to him that, on one occasion when he thought he'd killed the Bat and made his mark, he went crazier than usual when he found out Batman had survived. Ditto when he made a mark for Alfred.
* The first time Comicbook/{{Wolverine}} appeared in ''Comicbook/{{Daredevil}}'''s comic he invoked this during a mook brawl.
-->'''Wolverine:''' When you gonna pull your weight? I've taken down a dozen and you've only got what? Four?\\
'''Daredevil:''' This is a necessity, not a contest, ''(PUNCH!)'' five.
* ''Film/TheWarWagon'' was also referenced in the ''Franchise/GIJoe Reloaded'' series, specifically laid out and lampshaded by [[DrillSergeantNasty Beach-Head]]... to [[SilentProtagonist Snake Eyes]].
* The "Cobra Civil War" from the story arc of the same name in [[ComicBook/GIJoeIDW IDW's G.I. Joe]] took the form of one of these, with 9 high ranking Cobra members competing for the position of Cobra Commander by seeing who could kill the most members of G.I. Joe.
* A recurring plot in ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' is various people going for "the record" (Most murders by one person in a single day), with Dredd trying to stop them. In this case the competition is against a score set by some previous villain, who had probably been executed by a Judge shortly after setting it and is unable to defend it in person.

* Marvel villain Nuke ([[WearingAFlagOnYourHead the guy with an American flag tattooed on his face]]) once carried an assault rifle that was somehow able to keep count of the people it killed. For each mission, he'd try to break his own record.
* From ''ComicBook/SupermanBatman'' #5 at least two of Bruce's (future adopted) kids are enjoying the competition:
-->'''ComicBook/{{Robin|Series}}''': I got two on the side yard. How many did you take out, Huntress?\\
'''ComicBook/{{Huntress}}:''' I wasn’t aware this was a contest, Robin.\\
'''ComicBook/{{Batgirl|2000}}:''' *holds up four fingers*\\

'''Comicbook/{{Nightwing}}:''' ''*whispering*'' Robin! Keep it down. We’re the stealth team–remember? You want to make noise, go up front with the “S” squad.

Both fiction and real life have massive battles between enormous armies consisting of thousands of soldiers. Such a battle will invariably result in obscene amounts of bloodshed, carnage, death, slaying, maiming, slaughtering, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking stubbing of toes]], and generally any other word for mass killing you can think of. In the middle of it all will be these guys making sport of it. A must trait for [[BloodKnight Blood Knights]], and or [[PsychoForHire Psychos For Hire]] that want to outcompete each other.

Both fiction and real life have massive battles between enormous armies consisting of thousands of soldiers. Such a battle will invariably result in obscene amounts of bloodshed, carnage, death, slaying, maiming, slaughtering, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking stubbing of toes]], and generally any other word for mass killing you can think of. In the middle of it all will be these guys making sport of it. These types are always exhibited by more than one [[BloodKnight Blood Knights]] wanting to outcompete each other.

* Literature/TheBible: A young David had to collect [[TwentyBearAsses one hundred]] [[GroinAttack foreskins]] of the Philistines in order to earn the hand of King Saul's daughter Michal in marriage. So this is OlderThanFeudalism. And then he went double for nothing and collected ''two hundred'', which made him a [[IncrediblyLamePun cut]] above the rest. Of course, given the HomoeroticSubtext between David and her brother Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:26), it might well have been fair payment...\\\

** A more traditional example happens as the ending line of every campaign's score summary: "X number of zombies were harmed during the making of this film" where the X averages to a four-digit number.

* ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'' also had a 53,596-kill achievement called "Z-Genocider 2: Genocide Harder", but may have put an end to the RunningGag with its "Zombie Genocide Master" achievement for 72,000 kills (that would be 1000 kills per in-game hour, actually somewhat difficult even in a vehicle).
* And then Capcom fittingly brought the gag back from the dead with ''VideoGame/DeadRising3'' and its achievement for 53,597 zombies killed.
* And again in ''VideoGame/DeadRising4'' for 53,598.
* ''[[Videogame/{{DEFCON}} DEFCON: Everybody Dies]]'''s particularly descriptive "[[AC:GENOCIDE]]" mode is about racking up the highest body count (in megadeaths) in a game of [[WorldWarThree global thermonuclear war]]. The standard score penalty for losing your own civilians is gone; all that matters is that the commies/bourgeoisie/whatever [[YouNukeEm die in a nuclear fire]].

** An amusing BathroomStallGraffiti version in the safe room of [[AbandonedHospital No Mercy]] 4. Each post one-ups the previous, culminating in someone posting their 53,595 kill-count (which itself had several replies calling bullshit on it). Killing that many Infected yourself gets you an achievement, called "Zombie Genocidest". This number is actually a reference to the previous zombie-killing game ''VideoGame/DeadRising'', where the "Zombie Genocider" achievement required 53,594 zombie kills (which is equal to the entire population of the town the game is set in).

'''Gimli:''' ''(chuckles)''Forty-two? Oh that's not bad for a pointy-eared Elvish princeling. I myself am sitting pretty on forty-'''three'''.\\
'''Legolas:''' ''(shoots an Uruk-Hai beneath Gimli)'' Forty-three.\\

* An amusing scene in ''[[Literature/{{Gor}} Assassin of Gor]]'' has Tarl and a group of warriors fighting some two hundred enemies. When the one of the men tries to start a competition another makes fun of him.

* Drizzt and Wulfgar have one in ''Literature/TheIcewindDaleTrilogy''.
* Gimli and Legolas during the Battle of the Hornburg in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', occasionally asking other characters if they've seen Legolas/Gimli to update the score. [[spoiler: Gimli wins by a point, but Legolas doesn't begrudge it]], [[VitriolicBestBuds because they were each just glad the other was alive]].
* During the [[BigBadassBattleSequence Battle of Coruscant]] in the {{Novelization}} of ''Literature/RevengeOfTheSith'', Anakin bets Obi-Wan that he can blast twice as many vulture droids.
* The opening of Kenneth Oppel's novel ''Literature/{{Silverwing}}'' has a bat named Shade and his friend racing to see who can eat 100 mosquitoes first.
* In the Literature/ThursdayNext book ''Lost in a Good Book'', Thursday and Spike escape a zombie infested churchyard while seeing who can kill more of them.
* In the ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' short story ''The Wrath of Khârn'' by William King it transpires that that [[TheBerserker Khornate Champion Khârn the Betrayer]] has a kill-counter built into the H.U.D. of his helmet, and regularly amuses himself by conducting a body-count competition against his own personal best in every battle and campaign that he takes part in; a tally of 5,000 in a day being merely "quite good" by his own reckoning.

* While never a major plot point, the Viper pilots in the re-imagined ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' are occasionally seen doing this. In "Scattered", Kat takes advantage of [[TheAce Starbuck's]] absence to get a high score. [[GeneralRipper Admiral Cain]] is also mentioned to have encouraged this.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'' episode "Lethe", [[TheCaptain Captain Lorca]] and [[SpaceMarine Lieutenant Tyler]] go through a VirtualTrainingSimulation in which they [[ShootingGallery shoot as many Klingons as possible]]. Afterwards, Lorca's rifle records 24 kills; Tyler claims he got 22, but Lorca checks his rifle and it reads 36. He then tells Tyler not to apologize for excellence and that he expects his chief of security to be a better shot.

* In Literature/TheBible, a young David had to collect [[TwentyBearAsses one hundred]] [[GroinAttack foreskins]] of the Philistines in order to earn the hand of King Saul's daughter Michal in marriage. So this is OlderThanFeudalism. And then he went double for nothing and collected ''two hundred'', which made him a [[IncrediblyLamePun cut]] above the rest. Of course, given the HomoeroticSubtext between David and her brother Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:26), it might well have been fair payment...\\\
{{Squick}}y as it may be, collecting the foreskins of slain enemies was the surest way to tally up kills without cheating; men have two ears, ten fingers... only one foreskin. Lips and nose are one each, but they could come from women. Furthermore, Judeans were circumcised and Gentiles were not, so that meant David couldn't harvest from his own dead soldiers.
** This trope was actually the start of Saul's animosity toward David. At first he was impressed by David and promoted him to a high rank in the army. But when people started to sing of David's combat prowess, saying "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands," Saul didn't take it well.

* Season Two of ''Webcomic/AnsemRetort'' had a "murder-off" between Axel and Cloud. It ended when Aerith cheated on Axel's behalf and played "OneWingedAngel", [[BrownNote driving Cloud insane]]. [[ThemeSongPowerUp It also drove]] [[{{Jerkass}} Axel]] [[AxCrazy insane]]. It was awesome.

* Inverted in ''Webcomic/FlakyPastry'', when the normally bloodthirsty Zintiel competes with her arch rival Mona to see who can ''rescue'' the most people.
* Seen in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' when the [[FourStarBadass Jäger Generals]] finally [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20120518 take the field]]. Quite a friendly competition, albeit with much quibbling about what does and doesn't count.

* Done in ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' between Riff, Torg, and Gwenn to see who can kill the most zombies. [[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/090206 With a running score count.]]

Both fiction and real life have massive battles between enormous armies consisting of thousands of soldiers. Such a battle will invariably result in obscene amounts of bloodshed, carnage, death, slaying, maiming, slaughtering, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking stubbing of toes]], and generally any other word for mass killing you can think of. In the middle of it all will be these guys making sport of it. These types are always exhibited by more than one [[BloodKnight BloodKnights]] wanting to outcompete each other.

Both fiction and real life have massive battles between enormous armies consisting of thousands of soldiers. Such a battle will invariably result in obscene amounts of bloodshed, carnage, death, slaying, maiming, slaughtering, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking stubbing of toes]], and generally any other word for mass killing you can think of. In the middle of it all will be these guys making sport of it.

* In ''Videogame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'', one of the Jedi Consular's companions is Qyzen Fess, a Trandoshan bounty hunter (and regular hunter) who keeps detailed counts of his enemies dispatched as part of his worship of the "Scorekeeper", a Trandoshan goddess of the hunt. At one point he encounters fellow companion Felix Iresso, a career soldier who values [[AFatherToHisMen accomplishing the objective and then getting everyone out alive]], and asks him which of the two has a higher kill count. Iresso confesses to the Consular that he actually doesn't know, as he considers it unimportant compared to missions completed, and wryly wonders if he should start keeping track.
* ''VideoGame/StarWarsRepublicCommando'' has Sev and Scorch, two of your commando team, constantly chattering about their kill count. In the novelization, it's revealed that Sev has his heart set on getting 4,982 kills, one for each commando killed on Geonosis.
-->'''Sev:''' Damn, I don't believe it!\\