History Main / ChunkySalsaRule

* In ''VideoGame/Skyrim'', Conjuration spells that reanimate corpses will only work if the corpse is intact: if they are missing any part of their bodies, the spell will not work on them. Ditto if they have been reduced to a pile of dust. In addition, for each corpse, reanimation spells [[ItOnlyWorksOnce only work once]]: if the reanimated corpse runs out of HP, they automatically disintegrate into a pile of dust, preventing any further reanimation.

* The medics in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' can revive dead people, unless their heads have been blown off
* In addition to gibbing by explosives and the [[StrippedToTheBone Evaporating Particle Beam]], the Shotgun in ''VideoGame/{{FEAR}}'' can completely disintegrate Replica soldiers at close range. [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice Nailing an enemy to the wall]] with the Penetrator is also a guaranteed kill.
* In ''VideoGame/MaxPayne 3'', Max will instantly be chunkified if caught in a grenade's radius. Enemies can also OneHitKill via headshot, preventing him from going into Last Man Standing.

** Similarly, the Chunky Salsa rule is in play whenever infantry is brought to the battlefield (using the ''Total War'' rules); since combat in ''Battletech'' is calibrated to 'mech-size combatants, infantry-scale weapons like assault rifles simply do not exist within the ruleset: Any weapon that hits an infantry squadron will kill one soldier, instantly, no questions asked. Weapons classified as 'AntiInfantry' are the ones capable of a OneHitMultikill, like flamethrowers and machine guns.

** Similarly, the Chunky Salsa rule is in play whenever infantry is brought to the battlefield (using the ''Total War'' rules); since combat in ''Battletech'' is calibrated to 'mech-size combatants, anti-infantry weapons simply do not exist within the ruleset: Any weapon that hits an infantry squadron will kill a single soldier, instantly, no questions asked. Weapons classified as 'AntiInfantry' are the ones capable of a OneHitMultikill, like flamethrowers and machine guns.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' series, Samus Aran can very rarely get her hands on an instant-death weapon or two:

* ''[=Turnip28=]'': The game's artillery pieces - the Stump Gun, Grand Bombard and [[FatalFireworks St Alamei's Rocket Batteries]] - all have the option to bypass Vulnerability rolls, which are the game's equivalent of saving throws. The Grand Bombard, a cannon large enough that it can be [[AbnormalAmmo loaded with spare officers]] in a pinch, is particularly impressive at it; a direct hit from the Bombard will inflict six automatic wounds to the target unit, which is enough to outright remove the majority of enemy units. Unfortunately, these guns are also prone to suffering this themselves, what with having a rule that can cause them to explode, and are often PowerfulButInaccurate.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Mekton}}'', any mecha caught in the blast radius of a nuclear explosion is automatically destroyed, barring GM intervention, and any character within three times the blast radius is killed unless inside a protective bunker. The section on nukes also includes rules for supernovas: "Quit worrying. [[ApocalypseHow The impending destruction of an entire star system]] is going to make anything else seem meaningless by comparison. Luckily, supernovae are not a common game hazard... but you never know."

* The Arms Law combat system used by ''TabletopGame/RoleMaster'', ''Space Master'', and ''TabletopGame/MiddleEarthRolePlaying'' had a elaborate critical hit/miss system that included numerous automatically lethal injuries. One of the more humorous entries was for a piercing injury -- "Strike through ear destroys brain. The unfortunate lummox dies instantly, and any ear wax is removed."

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' has the "Massive Damage" rule. While the rule changes a bit depending on the edition, the effect can always be boiled down to some version of the following: if you take a massive amount of damage (usually well-beyond your maximum HP), you instantly die.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Arduin}}'', one of D&D's oldest competitors, had a rather infamous critical hit table, which contained possibly the earliest example of this trope. While there were several rolls which would give your target a lethal head wound, rolling a perfect 100 would result with: "Entire head pulped and spattered over a wide area, ''[[DeaderThanDead irrevocable]]'' death ensues."

** Warhammer Fantasy's sequel, Age of Sigmar, has swung the other way entirely. The stripped-down system is dependent upon weapon profiles, not standardized rules, and as such rules like the insta-kill double strength would not fit in the style of the game. The multiwound weapons are still a thing, they they too can be different depending on who is using them -- but they are much more common. Models also have more wounds than they did before. The former cap was 10 wounds, but now some large figures have over 30. Having originally (or so the rumors go) been designed as a skirmish game to run in tandem with a new edition of WHF, it makes sense that the models would be less disposable, and that larger models would be more resilient. When the rumored skirmish game was axed in favor of a full sequel, the salsa rule remained out in favor of more prevalent multi wound weapons and instant kills are more specific.

** Hilariously inverted with the Shokk Attack Gun if your dice aren't co-operating. One of the randomly-selected firing modes is specifically described as turning the gobbo ammunition into...chunky salsa. Said salsa (bones and all) is then launched through the warp portal at the enemy. [[CherryTapping It's about as effective as you'd expect]].

** Averted entirely in 8th edition Warhammer. Instead, they simply introduce Mortal Wounds, which cannot be saved against by Armor or Invulnerable saves, but explicitly CAN be saved against by certain effects. (Generally, that the person is so inhumanely resiliant, they ignore it.) No more Chunky Salsa.

** There was some confusion as to the rules involving ship-to-ship weapons introduced in ''TabletopGame/RogueTrader'', namely the fact that a broadside of macrocannons (whose individual shells are larger than most people) did the same damage of a good-quality lasgun, 1d10+3. The joke was that someone could "lean out an airlock with a heavy bolter" and out-shoot the capital ships. This was actually explained in the core book and expanded on in supplementary materials as simply being relative, and that ''individual shells'' hit with the force of hundreds of tons of TNT, with the lance strikes putting modern tactical nukes to the test, so anyone caught directly in the blast (rather than behind several dozen layers of bulkheads) would simply cease to exist, not even an attempt to roll in any way, and burning a fate point basically resulted in literal divine intervention. If the GM was feeling kind.

** This also becomes frighteningly easy if you've cheesed off the Villain/GM of your current game session enough to start firing vehicle or starship grade weapons at you. Each grade of difference between the weapon and the target multiplies the damage by a factor of 10. Your character might survive a low caliber auto-cannon round if they're lucky. Being hit by a gorram Anti-Ship Missile? Start praying the GM is willing to let you burn your Hero points to be left merely crippled for the rest of your character's life, or fetch a clean character sheet.

** Yig the snake god has a bite attack causing "1d8 damage + ''Instant Death''". Which is more sensible than it sounds, as if you block his bite with a weapon then the weapon will take 1d8 damage. If he bites you somewhere armoured then 1d8 may not be enough to actually bite into your skin. Once you take 1hp from his bite however, it's time to make a new character.

** Worth noting is that this is one of extremely few rules that has no work-arounds: there is no ability that lets you ignore this rule save [[ResurrectiveImmortality Unkillable 2 and 3]], but even then those are iffy, since they just bring you back after some time.

** Three hits to the engine is also guaranteed death: the fusion engine shuts itself down to prevent a catastrophic explosion. Standard engines take up 6 slots, but they were all in the center torso (behind the heaviest armor, unless you get hit from behind). Extra-Light engines take up half the weight of standard engines, but add an additional 6 slots (four if it's Clan-tech). And these slots are in the side torsos, which are more vulnerable.

** BT also has a rule of this kind with regards to repairing. While head destruction and 3 engine hits will render the 'Mech tactically inert for the rest of that battle, the 'Mech is not truly destroyed. It is not ''totaled''; it can be dragged off the battlefield and repaired. The only things that can render a 'Mech ''truly'' destroyed is the destruction of the center torso as a result of damage from:

** And playing this trope completely straight is the Point Blanking rules. Getting successfully hit while rendered sufficiently helpless kills you, barring some extreme factor in your favour (like magick), as does being choked for along enough.
* Thought not explicitly built-in to the system, this is often the result when a PC in ''TabletopGame/{{Scion}}'' with the right stats hits any normal human. Once you get into Ultimate Strength or the Avatar-level Boons, however, the game states that you can forgo using dice — if the target has no powers on the same level, it dies. ''End of story.''

** Then, there was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi Tsutomu Yamaguchi,]] the man who survived both nuclear blasts in Japan, and lived to age 93.[[note]]His autopsy listed the cause of death as stomach cancer, not [[Creator/ChuckNorris roundhouse kick]] as previously suspected.[[/note]]

* In the 2nd edition versions of ''TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem'' and ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheForsaken'', both of the titular species are immune to this effect because of their HealingFactor and, for vampires, the fact that their consciousness is tied more to their blood than to their body. Vampires downgrade all kinds of damage by one step, except for fire, sunlight, and supernaturally potent effects -- and there are ways to work around both the fire and the sunlight vulnerabilities. Werewolves heal so fast that they are outright immune to Aggravated damage, meaning that things like blowing them up, running them over or sniping them in the sniper's sweet spot will, at most, stagger them for a few moments before they heal up.

* The 3rd party parody product ''Fire And Brimstone: a Guide to Lava, Magma, and Superheated Rock'' promises to have rule sets which take into account the full complexity of lava and magma in all its forms. The rules promise they are completely compatible with all gaming systems. After a few pages of background information on lava and magma, you can find this gem. "If you fall into lava, you die. No save." There is a sidebar: "If you fall into lava and you are immune to fire, you don't die." The rest of the guide consists of charts and diagrams for those too thick to get it.
* ''TabletopGame/NewHorizon'' has wound levels which effect the rolls of characters. The highest wound level is Severe; anything beyond that is Critical, which either takes off a limb or kills you.

* TabletopGame/{{HC SVNT DRACONES}} has this as a recurring mechanic, due to the general rule that its a lot easier to make a big gun that it is to make armor that can withstand it, especially in a Sci-fi setting. It is also an explicit rule in the case of some particularly powerful devices.

** Assassinations (melee attacks in the back which snap the neck) are instantly lethal regardless of health ''or'' shields. They are so powerful that even a player designated '''invincible''' by the gametype will still die.

* Several bosses in the ''Franchise/SilentHill'' series have insta-kill attacks, for example the Split Headed Lizard in part 1 and the Split Worm in part 3 can swallow the protagonist whole, and Pyramid Head in part two has both an instant-death headbutt attack and an instant-death overhead knife slash, which just has to barely miss you to register a hit. (Poor hit detection programming?)

* In ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'', Witches can knock down a survivor in one hit, leaving them bleeding out or dead. On the other hand, zombies are extremely vulnerable to having their limbs blown off, though the lethality of this depends on the limb in question: an arm leaves them able to continue . Headshots will kill anything but the Tank or Witch though.

* Although there are many ways to die in ''VideoGame/NetHack'' irrespective of how many HP you have, most involve poison, disease, magic, or oxygen deprivation. Some purely physical deaths that come to mind involve being decapitated by one artifact sword, [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe bisected by another]], crushed by an opening or closing drawbridge, or pulped by an exploding one. The castle drawbridge is so dangerous, in fact, that many players destroy it with a force bolt and take their chances with the moat. If a mindflayer eats your brains, you will be unable to do anything but quit, even if you're playing in Wizard mode. One of the more literal examples is "sliming"--a green slime can [[ViralTransformation dissolve you into a green slime]], which technically doesn't kill you, but ends the game because there's no way to un-dissolve or to complete the game as a living puddle of goo.

* ''VideoGame/CortexCommand'' has a physics engine which dictates that if a dropship engine lands on your head, you gib. [[LudicrousGibs Little itty bitty pixel gibs.]] Also, clones can survive numerous gunshot wounds to the body. One correctly applied sniper rifle shot to the head? [[PinkMist SPLURCKRCH.]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} 3'', organic enemies killed by siege units are turned into a bloody goop and leave no corpses. This is notable seeing as the Undead faction uses corpses for various abilities, so this can be used to deny them corpses from their own dead untis.

* Unfortunately invoked with [[spoiler:Doyle]] in ''[[VideoGame/BrothersInArms Brothers In Arms: Earned In Blood.]]'' After taking a direct hit from an enemy tank's cannon, all that is left is is a puddle of blood on the ground, a fine red mist hanging in the air, and [[spoiler: his 82nd Airborne patch.]]

* ''VideoGame/BushidoBlade'': Uncharacteristically for a FightingGame there is no health bar, as every strike that would be fatal in real life is fatal in the game as well. It is also possible to cripple your opponent with a blow to a limb, or land a critical strike that will cause them to bleed out if they can't finish the fight quickly.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' has a variation. Its GodMode cheat doesn't quite make you impervious to damage, so much as it simply prevents you from taking damage from anything that deals less than 1,000 points. This means, in the base game, it is possible to survive anything the game can possibly throw at you - except a TeleFrag, which is coded to do ''10'',000 points of damage.[[note]]Damaging floors of a certain type also damage you by outright disabling god mode, but that's more a compatibility issue, since that type of floor is supposed to end the level in question by killing you.[[/note]]

* ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'': One of the [[http://whatif.xkcd.com/141/ "What If?"]] articles references something like this.

** Brought up and defied in the article on [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-138 SCP-138]], a 4000-year old man who suffers from CompleteImmortality. The article states that although 138 has suffered all kinds of wounds, burns, and other trauma from failed MercyKill attempts, he is somehow resistant to any injury that would completely destroy his body.

* [[VideoGame/{{Metroid}} Samus Aran]] has only possessed two instant-death weapons:

** In ''Metroid Prime 3'', the Nova Beam can bypass enemies' defenses and go ''straight for the brain''. It takes careful aim with the X-Ray Visor, and not every enemy is vulnerable, but those that are will die instantly -- including minibosses like Metroid Hatchers and Berserker Lords!

The Chunky Salsa Rule may also refer to rules specifically describing the effects of [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill taking much more damage than is required to kill a character, which is to say reducing the entire character]] [[LudicrousGibs to the consistency of chunky salsa]]. In addition to the grotesque visual, this may also negatively impact attempts to bring the character BackFromTheDead. This variation also tends to apply to anything that inflicts such extreme bodily trauma that assigning a damage value to it at ''all'' feels like a moot point. For instance, a character who is crushed beneath an object which is several dozen times larger than they are or [[TheWallsAreClosingIn gets forcibly compressed into a space that is wildly insufficient to contain the mass of their body]] is practically guaranteed not to survive, no matter how MadeOfIron they are[[note]]there's a ''reason'' why being crushed by level geometry elements is nigh-invariably an invulnerability-bypassing OneHitKill on par with or greater than a BottomlessPit in terms of lethality in most video games[[/note]].

*** Amusing and partly on-topic, it was also possible to deal triple damage even ''after'' slaying them instantly by obliterating their head or ribcage (not ''completely'' nonsensical, with special magic effects, hydras and so on (and because you could save to avoid the crippling, but not the double or triple damage)):

** The game also has Vorpal Blades, which state that a CriticalHit cuts off the target's head. Regardless of how many hit points you have, removing your head will kill you. If the target doesn't have a head or can survive without one, they still take alarge amount of slashing damage.

** In effectively all editions, there's one particular rule: if the body is gibbed, burned beyond recognition, or otherwise destroyed, [[BackFromTheDead Raise Dead]] won't work. You need more powerful magic (like Resurrection or True Resurrection) to revive the deceased (for instance, in the 3E period Raise Dead ''only'' brought you back to life and did some minimal hit point restoration. Any actual damage to bodily parts remained... meaning that while you could raise someone missing their arms or legs and they'd be alive if maimed, if you tried doing it with someone missing their head or torso, they'd just die again from lacking their head or torso). Gibbing someone helps make sure their trip back from the afterlife is a lot more costly.

An exception to the HitPoints system common to virtually all role-playing games, in that massive head trauma is automatically lethal to characters regardless of the number of hit points they have. This is a fairly common house rule in many TabletopGames groups, but a few systems have it explicitly built in, particularly those favoring realism. Games that feature a CombatResuscitation mechanic may make it so characters downed by a headshot don't get put in the incapacitated state, instead being killed outright without giving teammates a chance to revive them.

* Characters in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' have Health Vials, which amount to health bars. Characters are capable of taking large amounts of abuse, from John surviving inside of a Basilisk's mouth and being able to take abuse from two Ogres. When John gets [[spoiler:stabbed through the heart from behind by a psychopathic teleporting dog/god.]], however, it proves that the Health Vial does not apply in situations where death is instant.

* [[https://youtu.be/8SlWegS2sS0 One skit]] on ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' addressed the consequences of lacking a Chunky Salsa Rule: It starts with a werewolf confronted by a man who shoots it, and the werewolf declares that only a silver bullet can kill him. The man breaks out a mini-gun and reduces the werewolf's body to chunky salsa, and then subjects the resulting mess to various other abuses.[[note]]He sweeps it into a garbage bin, takes it home, burns it down to ash, rolls the ash into "rails" like one might with cocaine, SNORTS the rails like one might with cocaine, shits it out a day later, flushes it down the toilet, where it flows to a sewage treatment plant, where it gets FURTHER incinerated.[[/note]] It cuts to some kids playing a table-top game, with the RulesLawyer dungeon master saying "he's still not dead, it ''has'' to be a silver bullet", as one of the players protests "that's a bunch of crap!"

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Machine Guns can easily result in this rule. In most video games and other forms of media, the realism of the results widely varies by film, video game, etc... But in real life, the variations of this rule from machine guns goes wild to the point where no one organism just gets its head liquified via MGs in one specific way. It varies with the primary factor being the ''cartridge'' as well as the ''machine gun'' used against the target.
** This is one of the primary reasons Heavy Machine Guns are called ''heavy machine guns''. Not only are they "heavy", but the damage they do is really ''really'' insane. Imagine going out about your normal day, then suddenly, you get shot in the head with a M2 Browning MG. Not the kind of thing that most people would really want to see in their lifetime, at least not the sane.
* This doesn't just follow with Machine Guns. Anything that shoots powerful cartridges can turn a human head into soup with ease. There are too many that are capable of this.
** As mentioned in a previous article somewhere around here, 7.62x51 NATO ''WILL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF''. This extends from 7.62x51 onward.
** Most sniper rifles are like this. In fact, the chunky salsa rule is the primary reason sniper rifles ''were made''. As headshot guns. Most sniper rifles will definitely explode a human head, depending on the cartridge. The Barrett [=M82A1=], The M24 SWS, The M14 and its modern variants, this list just goes on and on!
* There was an infamous image/video of an Insurgent that was shot in the head with a .50 Caliber sniper rifle. The results were quite messy for a head shot. The problem is that ''there was nothing left of his head, it was gone of his shoulders''. Unfortunately (fortunately for you), the image is nowhere to be found so far. Trust us, DON'T GO LOOKING FOR IT!
[[/folder]]

* Mentioned in ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII'' - no matter how much more powerful your new cyborg body is, a bullet to the head is still just as fatal to you as to an unaugmented soldier. This also comes up in a form in the last Singapore level, where [[spoiler:Goh Xiulan is killed in a cutscene by bringing her head close enough to a fire to start melting her face off.]]

** Fallout 4 has two console commands to make it impossible for the player character to die. One of them (god mode) works by preventing the PC from taking damage; the other (immortal mode) doesn't prevent damage, but does keep the player's health from dropping to zero. However, a PC in immortal mode still ''takes'' the damage in the first place, so it's possible for an attack to obliterate a player's head/limb. This permanently reduces their perception (head) or agility (limb) to zero, prevents them from equipping any gear for that body part, and (in the case of the head) renders them mute for the remainder of the game, so it's generally necessary to reload from a previous save, just as if they had died outright.

* In the first ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefront'' game, Jedi were invincible to common soldiers, no matter how much firepower you poured into them (it didn't let you play as them, though). The only way to kill a Jedi is to land a starfighter on top of them (which kills anything), or on Cloud City throw them off with a grenade or any explosion. Also, when riding a speeder bike at full throttle any time you hit an enemy infantryman he dies, whenever you hit anything else you die, and whenever you hit a Destroyer Droid with its shields up you both die.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Quake I}}'' and ''II'' both the player and enemies gib if they take enough fatal damage. This is the only way to kill Zombies in the first game. In the second game, enemies can be [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill gibbed after they are killed]] (even before they hit the ground), which is required to prevent Medics from resurrecting them.
** Wanna feel what poor zombies do when gibbed? Just shoot your Thunderbolt under water. Yep, Chunky Salsa at its finest.
* In ''VideoGame/QuakeII'' and ''VideoGame/QuakeIV'', there's a Strogg called the Medic who can revive any corpse he finds, from a grunt to a dog to a miniboss (or worse, another medic). The only way to counter this is to go around with the pistol or shotgun gibbing every corpse.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} 3'', if you get caught in any running [[NoOSHACompliance exposed machinery]], you're chunky salsa.

* ''TabletopGame/NewHorizon'' has wound levels which effect the rolls of characters. The highest wound level is Severe; anything beyond that is Critical, which either costs you a limb or your LIFE.

** Most sniper rifles are like this. In fact, the chunky salsa rule is the primary reason sniper rifles ''were made''. As headshot guns. Most sniper rifles will definitely explode a human head, depending on the cartridge. The Barrett M82A1, The M24 SWS, The M14 and its modern variants, this list just goes on and on!

** Fifth Edition's massive damage rule says that if a player character's hit points are reduced to 0, and the remaining damage from an attack is at least equal to their maximum HP, the character instantly dies. There's also a few spells like Disintegrate which prevent normal resurrection spells from working by completely reducing the target's body to ashes, preventing Raise Dead from working.

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': Brought up and defied in the article on [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-138 SCP-138]], a 4000-year old man who suffers from CompleteImmortality. The article states that although 138 has suffered all kinds of wounds, burns, and other trauma from failed MercyKill attempts, he is somehow resistant to any injury that would completely destroy his body.

** In ''4'', if you're standing in the wrong place when the ship lands, it crushes you. In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} 3'', if you get caught in any running [[NoOSHACompliance exposed machinery]], you're chunky salsa.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Quake I}}'' and ''II'' both the player and enemies gib if they take enough fatal damage. This is the only way to kill Zombies in the first game. In the second game, enemies can be [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill gibbed after they are killed]] (even before they hit the ground), which is required to prevent Medics from resurrecting them.
** Wanna feel what poor zombies do when gibbed? Just shoot your Thunderbolt under water. Yep, Chunky Salsa at its finest.

* ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'': No matter what gear your character is wearing or what abilities they have, certain attacks (Inkzooka blasts, fully charged sniper shots, and melee attacks from rollers and Krakens) ''will'' instantly splat you if they connect.

The Chunky Salsa Rule may also refer to rules specifically describing the effects of [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill taking much more damage than is required to kill a character, which is to say reducing the entire character]] [[LudicrousGibs to the consistency of chunky salsa]]. In addition to the grotesque visual, this may also negatively impact attempts to bring the character BackFromTheDead.

*** There's a grenade that uses the force wave mechanic classified as a [[BlatantLies nonlethal weapon]], it releases a force wave that does stun damage that reflects off of a surface ten feet away or less with diminishing returns reducing the distance of the next reflection but NOT damage. One going off in a small space 5ft or less space is so high that nothing that fits in those spaces can reasonably survive. They renamed this grenade a flashbang. [[HilarityEnsues Yes, really.]]

** In 3rd Edition, it forces a Fortitude save if a character suffers massive damage, which is any single attack or other source of damage (such as a long fall) that does fifty or more HitPoints of damage to a character. Failing the save kills the character regardless of hit points. Of course, by the time any character reaches the point where 50 HitPoints of damage isn't sufficient to kill them, they're likely to have a fairly decent fortitude save.
*** Constructs, plants, undead and other creatures without discernible anatomies are exempt from the rule, along with them being immune to [[BackStab sneak attacks]] and {{critical hit}}s.
*** There's also the Coup De Grace rule, which states that attacks against a helpless target are instantly lethal, no ifs, and, or buts. As the rulebook puts it, it doesn't matter how powerful or well-equipped you are, "[[EyeScream a dagger through the eye]] is still a dagger through the eye".
** 1st Edition apparently did not have this rule. Second Edition did have an "Inescapable Death" clause (if "50-ton ceiling descending to crush him") and similar rule which forced any character who suffered more than 50 HP damage in a single attack to make a System Shock roll.

*** Spells & Magic did the same for spell effects, uber- Severity also affected how much of body was left:

** There are also Illithids, who can extract the brain of an enemy when grappling (assuming it has one, and actually uses it - Zombies, Golems and such are excluded again) as an instant-kill and a snack between meals.

** In effectively all editions, there's one particular rule: if the body is gibbed, burned beyond recognition, or otherwise destroyed, [[BackFromTheDead Raise Dead]] won't work. You need more powerful magic (like Resurrection or True Resurrection) to revive the deceased (for instance, in the 3E period Raise Dead ''only'' brought you back to life and did some minimal hit point restoration. Any actual damage to bodily parts remained... meaning that while you could raise someone missing their arms or legs and they'd be alive if maimed, if you tried doing it with someone missing their head or torso they'd just die again from lacking their head or torso). Gibbing someone helps make sure their trip back from the afterlife is a lot more costly.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Arduin}}'', one of D&D's oldest competitors had a rather infamous critical hit table, which contained possibly the earliest example of this trope. While there were several rolls which would give your target a lethal head wound, rolling a perfect 100 would result with: "Entire head pulped and spattered over a wide area, ''[[DeaderThanDead irrevocable]]'' death ensues."

** The above is only 40K. In WFB many high-strength attacks did a random (usually D3 or D6) amount of damage instead. Which means yes, a level 1 mage with 2 wounds can survive being hit with a cannonball. Chariot bodies, on the other hand, go pop when hit with one. There's also an Instant Death rule - Killing Blow - in FB, but that is a special rule, not a general one.

** Although much of the time if you want to get out of situations where logically you would end up the consistency of chunky salsa you need to burn fate (a mechanic where you permanently lose one fate point to in some way help you out of an otherwise impossible situation).

* In ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'', if a character hits -10 times their maximum HP, their body is destroyed utterly if at all plausible for the damage source, and if not they're not just dead, but in terrible shape -- they're reduced to ash, riddled with arrows to the point of being barely recognizable, chopped into tiny pieces, turned to monatomic vapor, etc. Meaning, no resurrection without divine intervention. [[note]]Ways of coming back from the dead that aren't actually ''resurrection'', such as cloning or restoring from a backup of your mind are still fair game, though[[/note]]

** ''GURPS'' also mentions the example of being held down and suffocated--you're dead, regardless of hit points. But you have to be rendered helpless first.
** Amusingly, creatures with Supernatural Durability can pretty much only die this way.

** What's fun about that rule is that the confetti is treated as obstacles for the remaining vehicles. So while it can be quite satisfying to completely shred an opponents vehicle, the end result is that you've made things harder on yourself.
** Then there's steamrolling, where a large vehicle just drives over a small one. Going by the rules, say an 80,000 lb semi hits a motorcycle with a roll of 3 damage. With a ram bar, that turns into 3 x 20 x 2 x 2. 240 damage. Now, evenly distribute this over all the armor and the player... which has up to 9 hit points. Yeah. Now note that this level of damage is likely to happen during say, a 15 mph crash(1d6-1). A 50 mph crash requires 5d6.
* In the classic ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} 2020'' taking more than 8 points of damage to any extremity would cause its loss, and losing one's head in this way was instantly fatal, no save. Another rule said that any damage to a character's head was doubled, and most weapons did about 20-30 points of damage per average hit. Suffice to say, a helmet was a smart investment.

** The only protection from an ammunition explosion is C.A.S.E. - Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment. The benefit of C.A.S.E. is that it prevents the damage propagation effect (though ''only'' for ammunition explosion) by "blowing out" the C.A.S.E.-mounted location completely. While it means that a 'mech can actually ''survive'' an ammunition explosion, it also means the location ''absolutely won't''. Ammunition on most 'mechs is stored in the left or right torso locations, which, if they explode, take out the associated arm as well, meaning that 'mechs with a C.A.S.E. explosion are highly advised to retreat and live to fight another day. Complicating matters even further, C.A.S.E. also takes up tonnage and space in the 'mech, which means either less armor, less weaponry, or less ammunition overall, and C.A.S.E. can, itself, suffer critical damage rendering it ineffective. And if that's not enough, C.A.S.E. is lostech, which means it's ''so'' rare prior to 3050 that it basically doesn't exist.

** ''Battletech'''s roleplaying game spinoff, ''Mechwarrior'' has had numerous variations on the rule, due to their use of varying concepts like "Hits To Kill," "Condition," and "Wound Value." In spite of all the differences to the rules involved, one thing has remained fairly consistent; any trooper not wearing PowerArmor that is hit by a 'Mech-scale weapon is pretty much dead beyond the hope of medical attention, and will likely have to be recovered from the battlefield with a squeegee and a bucket. Optional rules were included in some sourcebooks to offer a chance of survival for player characters facing 'Mech-scale weapons, but the odds are so ridiculously stacked against mere humans that most of the time they're just written off as dead anyway. Since the ''Battletech'' universe is science fiction with the barest minimum of fantasy and thus has no concepts like resurrection, revivification, or zombies, this is about as dead as the setting can manage.

* Thought not explicitly built-in to the system, this is often the result when a PC in ''TabletopGame/{{Scion}}'' with the right stats hits any normal human. Once you get into Ultimate Strength or the Avatar-level Boons, however, the game states that you can forgo using dice - if the target has no powers on the same level, it dies. ''End of story.''
* If a player of ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' faces Caine in combat, there's only one rule: You Lose. Even if you win, You Lose.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' doesn't have hitpoints as such, but instead has a system of wound levels, ranging from 'OK' through 'Wounded', 'Maimed' and 'Killed'. The level beyond 'killed' is known as 'Vaporized'. To quote the rulebook: "The target permanently and irrevocably Goes Away, reduced to a thick red spray, component body cells or subatomic particles. Being Vaporized is a significant accomplishment generally recognized by a brief but heartfelt round of applause."
** In truly spectacular cases, (ie, someone actually pulls the pin on that nuclear hand grenade) the GM is advised not to waste time rolling for damage, but to simply declare ''everyone'' in range vaporized.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'' uses a system called "Mega Damage" to account for the huge power of supernatural and super-technological weaponry. A single point of Mega Damage is enough to blow a car or small building into smithereens. Many starting characters can do several dice of Mega Damage ''per attack.'' The rules take time to explain what happens when that sort of thing hits an unarmored human; about the best you can hope is that it just winged you and severed a limb instead of killing you outright.
** The rule is averted in two cases. Mega-Damage creatures (and special cases like vampires) are immune to any kind of chunky-salsafication; since they can expressly shrug off jumping on an antitank grenade, their MDC have to be reduced to zero (and if they can regenerate, they're not dead until they are shot into red mist - chunky salsa is too likely to get back up - ''after'' being zeroed). Secondly, there are cases when an "ordinary human" or similar being has enough SDC to take a point or two of Mega-Damage without being reduced to zero. This situation is a corner case, and the rules for dealing with it are a bit inconsistent between books (and often suffer from WritersCannotDoMath).

** Seven levels of post-soak damage is enough incapacitate heroic mortals and Exalts who don't have increased numbers of health levels. This takes about 18 dice of damage, which is laughably easy to get. Luckily, Exalts have many ways of defending themselves, but if a big attack gets through they go splat.

* ''TabletopGame/TheDarkEye'' uses Wounds - hits that cause damage beyond a certain threshold, depending mainly on the character's constitution. Take three of these to an arm or leg, and it becomes useless (in the case of a leg, you also are out of the fight). Three to the torso, upper or lower, renders you unconscious and bleeding to death. Three to the head? As torso, plus an additional 2d6 points of damage (in a game where even a tough fighter will rarely go beyond 40 hit points).