History Main / NecroNonSequitur

* This is the entire premise of the ''Film/FinalDestination'' film series, though the worst offender comes from one of the novels: Going in for some liposuction, one of the women fated to die, along with the doctors and nurses on call, gets knocked out. When she awakens hours later, she finds [[YouFailBiologyForever that the machine is still on and had sucked out all her internal organs]].

* ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends''. 'Nuff said.

* ''HappyTreeFriends''. 'Nuff said.

* ''TheKurosagiCorpseDeliveryService'' has an insurance salesman in one arc who found a way to play with probability and kill people through untraceable freak accidents for profit. By the end of the arc, he's killed [[KarmicDeath when a screw falls off a plane flying by, hitting him in the head at terminal velocity.]]

* Lampshaded and soon subverted in ''{{NCIS}}'' episode "Family Secret", wherein Abby describes a complex set of events that caused an ambulance to blow up.

* In one cliffhanger episode of ''KingOfTheHill'', Peggy discovers the body of [[spoiler: Buck's disgruntled mistress Debbie]] in a dumpster, just as Buck is in the midst of a messy divorce. The following episode revolves around the mystery of who killed [[spoiler: Debbie]], and despite several people having different reasons for wanting her dead, they eventually figure out that [[spoiler: Debbie accidentally killed herself: while hiding in a dumpster waiting to kill Buck with a shotgun, she got impatient and bought a giant nachos and drink, then tripped over the shotgun trying to climb back into the dumpster without spilling her soda and shot herself.]]

** Another one went something along the lines of: a big abusive drunk/drug addict boxer was poisoned by someone he was having an affair with, using his shellfish allergy. As he was stumbling about with his throat closing up, he encountered a slightly slow individual he'd beaten up on several occasions, who for some reason had a crossbow shot at him, thinking he was some kind of demon. The arrow passed ''through his trachea'', giving him a makeshift tracheotomy, which allowed him to breathe again. Instead of going to the hospital, he went and found his allergy medication, and fixed that issue. He then went to sit down by the swimming pool, whereupon his lawn chair collapsed and dumped him in, and he drowned. The {{CSI}}s despair of the case ever coming to anything against the original poisoner, since "the lawn chair did it." He was also hit on the head with a crowbar and injected with snake venom. In fact, the snake venom was what started the entire chain of events, while the crowbar was the last thing to happen before he went to the swimming pool (and ironically, the two were done by the same person, the crowbar in self-defense after he came looking for her because of the snake venom). The lack of a potential conviction came from the fact that, with five possible causes of death ranging from drowning to poisoning, the coroner was unable to determine who actually killed him. This would not likely have worked out quite like that in real life, because they would simply have charged all involved with separate accounts of attempted murder. However, [[RuleOfFunny it was funnier that way]], and Jim Brass' expression after he's gotten the third consecutive person to confess - only to find out that's not what killed him - is one of the funniest moments in the show.

* Many UrbanLegends deal with these kinds of deaths, with some covered by the various ''{{CSI}}'' incarnations.

** The [[FurryFandom good old furry episode]] featured a man in a fursuit mildly poisoned, shot when [[spoiler: mistaken for a ''coyote'']] and finally hit by a car driven by his girlfriend, who is herself killed moments later by an incoming truck.

* [[FanFic/TheOpenDoor "You mean where he put a round between the eyes of that one guy with poor trigger safety and someone managed to have the bullet spray from the death spasms break the locking mechanism on a crane, thus dropping a cargo container full of volatile drugs on the advancing forces right before we were about to be overrun? Yeah, I'll admit that was art,"]] [[spoiler: [[MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha Vita]]]] conceded.

* Played with in ''Manga/DeathNote''. The user of the Death Note can specify the circumstances of their victim's death, including what exactly they ''do'' before death, offering a limited degree of MindControl over the victim; however, if the specified circumstances are physically impossible, or the actions described are completely out of character, the victim will simply die of a heart attack in 40 seconds as usual. (Suicide is apparently not considered "out of character" as far as the Death Note is concerned.)

* In ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2318355/1/Make-A-Wish Make a Wish]]'' a considerable number of Death Eaters and other villains suffered injury or death in various bizarre and mostly-accidental circumstances. A couple of the more notable ones were (a) Lucius Malfoy and several Mooks plummeting to their death when they tried to Portkey to Harry while he was standing on a hotel balcony; (b) a group of bandits in Egypt deciding that a sandstorm was the perfect chance to check out the boss' locked strongbox containing what they ''thought'' was a Nundu ''statue'' and (c) the Lestranges using a deliberately-faulty third-party Portkey only to end up in the soda machine where Harry had just spent the coin with the tracking charm they were following.
* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3639659/3/A-Bad-Week-at-the-Wizengamot A Bad Week at the Wizengamot]]'' ex-Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge throwing a rock through the open window of Dudley Dursley's home meth lab started a highly-improbable chain of events which ended with Number Four Privet Drive exploding and Fudge being decapitated by a flying toilet seat.

** For example, one victim was hit by a runaway car... while water skiing. One was stung to death by bees that appeared out of nowhere in the trunk of her car. But perhaps the most spectacular was when [[spoiler:Harry redirected the curse at the last moment to an attacking vampire, only to see him crushed by a frozen turkey falling at terminal velocity. And then the timer dings.]]

Depending on the situation, the COD could be used for a number of plotlines; the two biggest being (1) to give the investigators something more oddball to occupy their time with and (2) to convey that some [[PowersThatBe higher power has an active hand in things]], and [[CosmicPlaything is a sick, sick little monkey to boot]], or 3.) the writers were concentrating on ways to create a CruelAndUnusualDeath in order to generate pure, unadulterated horror.

* [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer]]'s various near-misses in ''Treehouse of Horror XI'' segment "G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad". He ends up dying by choking on a piece of broccoli.

* In a reversal of ''TheXFiles'' example, ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'''s "Bad Day At Black Rock" features an ArtifactOfDoom lucky rabbit's foot that grants its owner ''phenomenal'' luck... until they lose it(and "EVERYONE LOSES IT!"), at which point they suffer more and more until they eventually meet their demise with this trope.

* An episode of ''TheXFiles'' had several mobsters trying to kill the luckiest man on Earth; all of them perished themselves in increasingly complicated ways. They were trying to kill him because he was using his luck to collect enough money to pay for a new liver for his dying neighbor. The last mobster to die was an organ donor, and just happened to be a match for the sick neighbor.
* The [[GrimReaper reaper]] characters in ''DeadLikeMe'' had these sorts of deaths (along with murder and suicide, much less often) as their areas of specialization, and a gaggle of little nearly invisible hobgoblin-things running around to make sure the inane contrivances necessary would be set up JUST right.

** MythBusters has been known to test these crazy deaths, though they use crash test dummies, ballistics gel, and data-gathering instruments to determine whether a person would actually die in the circumstance and how. For example, in a myth where someone was decapitated by a ceiling fan, they determined that while the ceiling fan could certainly deliver a deadly blow, it could not completely sever head from body.

* The ''AeonFlux'' short animations and the pilot were like this:
** The protagonist nimbly shoots his way through a small army of mooks and climbs into a flying ship by jumping on the dead mooks that were trying to rappel down. He gets shot almost-offscreen and the camera continues like it still was in the middle of a typical action sequence.
** Aeon Flux is held at gunpoint by an enemy mook. Her comrade is trying to sneak up on the mook from behind. She makes faces to distract the mook. The mook shoots her, turns and shoots her comrade. The [[FacelessGoons Faceless Mook]] then upgrades himself to MauveShirt by removing his mask and proceeds to gun down the rest of the invaders.
** She has successfully shot her way through hundreds of mooks and is spying on the BigBad from a windowsill. She puts some weight on her heel, driving a stray nail through her boot. Distracted by pain, she loses her balance and falls.
** She's climbing on a plane and slips when she's just about to reach the hatch. She falls, but does manage to get her grappling hook attached to a nearby bridge. However, she is too distracted to notice that the rope has tangled up around her neck. Cue GoryDiscretionShot.
** She's on a mission to assassinate someone and jumps off from a ladder. She slips and falls in full view of a camera. Embarrassed, she tracks down the tape for the camera but fails to notice that the camera also captured someone else descending the same ladder. She continues to explore the house until she gets shot by the mystery antagonist.
** She has successfully infiltrated an alien ship and retrieved some alien eggs. On her way out, she encounters a fully-grown alien. The alien makes a maze of metal bars to hinder her escape. She nimbly navigates the maze, but the alien is nimbler. Cue GoryDiscretionShot.
** While she is less accident-prone in the series, there is one incident where she's in the middle of a RiseToTheChallenge involving a fluid that paralyzes everything it touches. The antagonist has already escaped the flooding facility, so she goes back to find the missing part of the MacGuffin, which could neutralize the fluid and allow her to swim out. She gets it in the nick of time and races to the escape hatch, where the other part of the MacGuffin is. She almost gets the other part before the corruption responsible for the flooding breaks the handrail she was holding on. The last shot is of her floating in the fluid, seeing the two parts of the MacGuffin floating and just barely ''missing'' combining right next to her.

* Similarly to the ''Science Of Discworld'' example, ''Literature/AndAnotherThing'' has Fate get so piqued at Arthur's survival that every other Arthur Dent in the [[AllTheMyriadWays multiverse]] gets killed in ways ranging from the plausible (being run over by the bulldozer when lying outside his house) to the less so (being electrocuted by his headphones while at his local radio job). Most of them are {{Continuity Nod}}s, with the cleverest example probably being the Arthur who drowns in a freak rainstorm after pissing off [[PersonalRaincloud Rob McKenna]].

* Arguably, JohnDixonCarr's ''The Hollow Man'', often considered with some justification to be the definitive LockedRoomMystery. It's a very clever explanation, but [[FridgeLogic the more you think about it, the less likely it becomes]].

* In the Franchise/HarryPotter fic ''Make a Wish'' a considerable number of Death Eaters and other villains suffered injury or death in various bizarre and mostly-accidental circumstances. A couple of the more notable ones were (a) Lucius Malfoy and several Mooks plummeting to their death when they tried to Portkey to Harry while he was standing on a hotel balcony; (b) a group of bandits in Egypt deciding that a sandstorm was the perfect chance to check out the boss' locked strongbox containing what they ''thought'' was a Nundu ''statue'' and (c) the Lestranges using a deliberately-faulty third-party Portkey only to end up in the soda machine where Harry had just spent the coin with the tracking charm they were following.

Possibly the most {{egregious}} (and possibly stupid) black sheep of DeathByIrony, though not always meant as such. A Necro Non Sequitur puts a character on a one-way track at full speed, destination 6 feet under, [[{{Railroading}} on the "What the hell was that?" express]]. Characters who die by this trope meet their demise in the form of a cosmic RubeGoldbergDevice of coincidences, with [[RubeGoldbergHatesYourGuts everything lining up just so]] to ensure that the sheer impossibility of how they were killed [[DisasterDominoes happens just like clockwork]]. Sometimes it's long and tedious, sometimes it's quick and convenient, but no matter what, it cannot make any sense whatsoever when one looks at it close enough. Also, depending on the situation, the COD could be used for a number of plotlines; the two biggest being (1) to give the investigators something more oddball to occupy their time with and (2) to convey that some [[PowersThatBe higher power]] [[RubeGoldbergHatesYourGuts has an active hand in things]], and [[CosmicPlaything is a sick, sick little monkey to boot]].

Or, alternatively, 3.) the writers were concentrating on ways to create a CruelAndUnusualDeath in order to generate pure, unadulterated horror, leaving little room for thinking [[FridgeLogic of much else]].

* ''TheKurosagiCorpseDeliveryService'' has an insurance salesman in one arc who found a way to play {{Xanatos Gambit}}s with probability and kill people through untraceable freak accidents for profit. By the end of the arc, he's killed [[KarmicDeath when a screw falls off a plane flying by, hitting him in the head at terminal velocity.]]

* In ''ComicBook/TheSandman'', [[spoiler:Morpheus]] meets his end due to one of these. [[spoiler:It is implied that it wasn't so much this trope as a XanatosRoulette set up by himself.]]

* A character dies this way in ''{{Frankenfish}}'' (incidentally being the only character not killed by the fish). The main action takes place on houseboats, through a complicated series of events there ends up being an unoccupied houseboat, on fire, with various weapons laying on it. Just as one character on another houseboat starts explaining how they have a plan to escape, the heat from the fire causes one of the guns lying on the deck to go off, shooting that character in the face. Which [[FridgeLogic when you think about it]] [[BizarreAndImprobableBallistics doesn't make any sense whatsoever]]. A few seconds later an explosion on the burning boat sends a flaming piece of wreckage soaring over the main characters houseboat and down into the houseboat behind it (also occupied). Though no one dies from that.

* In the HarryPotter fic ''Make a Wish'' a considerable number of Death Eaters and other villains suffered injury or death in various bizarre and mostly-accidental circumstances. A couple of the more notable ones were (a) Lucius Malfoy and several Mooks plummeting to their death when they tried to Portkey to Harry while he was standing on a hotel balcony; (b) a group of bandits in Egypt deciding that a sandstorm was the perfect chance to check out the boss' locked strongbox containing what they ''thought'' was a Nundu ''statue'' and (c) the Lestranges using a deliberately-faulty third-party Portkey only to end up in the soda machine where Harry had just spent the coin with the tracking charm they were following.

!!Examples:

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

[[folder:Comics]]

[[folder: Fan Fic ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* One episode of ''{{CSI}}'' had the disappearance and death of a college student turn out to be a series of horrible coincidences (her trash can was swallowed by a grabby trash chute; when she went down to the dumpster to retrieve it, the dumpster was hit by a car, and she was slammed against the wall -- she then fell into the dumpster and died of internal bleeding). Her parents refuse to accept it, and claim they'll hire a private investigator to find the real killer.

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* Many UrbanLegends deal with these kinds of deaths, with some covered by the various ''{{CSI}}'' incarnations.
** MythBusters has been known to test these crazy deaths, though they use crash test dummies, ballistics gel, and data-gathering instruments to determine whether a person would actually die in the circumstance and how. For example, in a myth where someone was decapitated by a ceiling fan, they determined that while the ceiling fan could certainly deliver a deadly blow, it could not completely sever head from body.

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

* ''TabletopGame/GeistTheSinEaters'' mentions that these are the kinds of deaths that claim the Forgotten the first time around.
* In ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension'' this is a typical result of pissing off an Entropy mage. Many players favour this method of assassination as it is 1) "coincidental magic" (much safer than obvious displays of supernatural powers) and 2) allows them to get sadistically creative

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* This is the entire premise of the ''FinalDestination'' film series, though the worst offender comes from one of the novels: Going in for some liposuction, one of the women fated to die, along with the doctors and nurses on call, gets knocked out. When she awakens hours later, she finds [[YouFailBiologyForever that the machine is still on and had sucked out all her internal organs]].

* In a season 3 episode of ''Series/{{Fringe}}'', set in the AlternateUniverse, a low-IQ test subject was tested with a drug that increased his intelligence to unseen levels, but, since in that universe subjects must be returned to their previous state when the trials end, he, who became so intelligent that can compute and predict all the outcomes of actions in the near future, started setting up the doctors to die in this fashion so he won't come back to normal. One example is the very first scene, where he balances a ballpen over a mailbox on the street, which falls to the ground and prompts an old man nearby to pick it up (probably out of nostalgia, since in the AU pens were almost entirely replaced by digital means), the old man stood in the way of a biker, who tried to avoid him and ended up hitting a shop stand, which distracted a bus driver, who then ran over the intended target.