History ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill / Film

* In ''TheGamers'', the protagonists {{backstab}} an old rival with a ballista.

* Dieter Von Cunth from ''Film/MacGruber'' after he survives getting his hideout blown up and attacks MacGruber at his wedding, MacGruber headbutts him off a cliff, shoots him half a dozen times as he falls, when he lands he hits his head on a rock splitting it open and spilling his brains out, MacGruber then blows up his corpse with a grenade launcher then pisses on it.

** The death of Sonny Corleone is the straightest example. Ambushed at a toll booth by a dozen [[RareGuns Tommy Gun]]-wielding gangsters, he is 1) shot several dozen times inside his car, 2) then shot some more outside the car, 3) then shot on the ground after he died, then 4) had his face kicked in for good measure. The commentary for the film confirms that this is all a justified trope: they wanted to make sure Sonny ''stayed dead'', given that his elderly father Vito had been repeatedly shot earlier in the film and survived, and that Sonny was known to be a tough bastard. (The generally accepted number of times Sonny had been shot is 147, incidentally.)

* ''TheUsualSuspects'': "He lets the last Hungarian go. He waits until his wife and kids are in the ground and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids, he kills their wives, he kills their parents and their parents' friends. He burns down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, he kills people that owe them money. And like that he was gone."

** In ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'', Raoul Silva tries to take out Bond with a runaway train.

* In ''Film/TheTransporter'', there's an attempt at killing Frank Martin at home. Since he's got a reputation of being BadAss, it involves [[MoreDakka thousands of machine gun rounds]] and [[MacrossMissileMassacre three missiles]]. He survives by [[spoiler:simply not being there]].

* MemeticBadAss Samuel L. Jackson describes this phenomenon perfectly in ''Film/JackieBrown'':

** In ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'', [[spoiler:it would only take a few Sentinels to kill the future X-Men, but in the final fight there are dozens. That’s not to mention the fact the X-Men are killed in the most horrifying ways by the Sentinels. Iceman, for example, is beheaded via strangulation while still in Ice form, and we get a close up of his head being crushed by a Sentinel foot! In the secondary BadFuture, just before history is rewritten, he is vaporized by Sentinel beams, again in Ice Form! Fortunately, with the past rewritten, these gruesome deaths are averted.]]

** In ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'', the X-Men of the BadFuture are killed in the most horrifying ways by the Sentinels. [[spoiler: Iceman, for example, is beheaded via strangulation while still in Ice form, and we get a close up of his head being crushed by a Sentinel foot! In the secondary BadFuture, just before history is rewritten, he is vaporized by Sentinel beams, again in Ice Form! Fortunately, with the past rewritten, these gruesome deaths are averted.]]

* In ''Film/XMenOriginsWolverine'', Logan brings down a helicopter and its mutant operator, who is then incapacitated and trapped. He could use his adamantium claws to stab his helpless victim, but decides instead to blow up the entire helicopter in a [[ImpressivePyrotechnics massive display of pyrotechnics]].

** In the first movie, [[spoiler:the BigBad falls to his death. Then is run over by a bus. And then a steamroller. And then a marching band playing "Louie Louie".]] And Drebin's boss starts to cry, saying "My father went the same way!"

* ''Hard Ticket To Hawaii'' has an assassin who rides around on a skateboard carrying a gun in one hand and a blowup-doll in the other. The heroes hit him with a truck. While he is flying through the air, they blow him up with a rocket launcher. Then they blow up the doll with another rocket.
* Dieter Von Cunth from ''MacGruber'' after he survives getting his hideout blown up and attacks MacGruber at his wedding, MacGruber headbutts him off a cliff, shoots him half a dozen times as he falls, when he lands he hits his head on a rock splitting it open and spilling his brains out, MacGruber then blows up his corpse with a grenade launcher then pisses on it.

* ''UndercoverBrother'''s [[spoiler:Mr. Feather is dropped out of a helicopter over the ocean. Just before falling hundreds of feet (the impact alone of which would've killed him instantly) a great white shark leaps out of the water, and eats him.]]
* In ''ThreeHundred'' and ''Film/{{Hero}}'', [[spoiler:Leonidas and Nameless are each killed with a RainOfArrows plentiful enough to fell a whole regiment. Though in Leonidas' case, he was with a regiment. Most of them had died by that point, but still!]]

* In ''{{Shooter}}'', a GunNut recounts the story of a sniper who was infamous for his brutality on the battlefield. The opposing side despised him so much that when they corner the sniper in the building, instead of trying to flush him out, they just bombarded it with enough artillery to level an entire city block. This is standard tactics for dealing with snipers, just not usually while they're in urban areas.
* ''LettersFromIwoJima'' is a rare example of overkill being shown from the ''receiving'' end.
* ''Film/DieHard'':
** It has VERY pragmatic "terrorists" (there's always a twist on what they really are in each movie, usually thieves). Even when [=McClane=] was a nobody, and when the bad guys thought it was just a random guy, they took no chances and attempted to kill him several times, prompting John's ProperlyParanoid moments on the walkie talkie.
** Then there's a scene in the second movie where the bad guys shoot at an airplane cockpit with machine guns, filling it with bullet holes, and then ''throw all their grenades'' just for good measure. When they see him parachuting out of the explosion, they just call him (again pragmatically) "[[NoOneCouldSurviveThat Lucky Bastard]]".
* ''{{Swarmed}}''

* ''InBruges'': Ray kills [[spoiler:the priest]] with many, many gunshots, even though he was at close range. [[spoiler:A few of those unnecessary shots had gone off-target and ''killed a little kid.'']]

* Subverted, sort of, in ''LooneyTunesBackInAction'':

* In ''BeverlyHillsCop'', drug dealer Victor Maitland gets shot about twenty times by Foley and Bogomil at the climax.
* In ''TheTransporter'', there's an attempt at killing Frank Martin at home. Since he's got a reputation of being BadAss, it involves [[MoreDakka thousands of machine gun rounds]] and [[MacrossMissileMassacre three missiles]]. He survives by [[spoiler:simply not being there]].

** Given that Robocop is built from a murdered police officer, that Alex Murphy would die in the line of duty would have to happen before he was [[WeCanRebuildHim rebuilt]] as the titular cyborg. When cornered by Boddicker and his men, what results is that Murphy receives an execution by firing squad with shotguns that gets very out of hand.

* ''Film/PacificRim'': How do you DoubleTap a kaiju? You fire your plasma cannon into its chest until most of its torso is a burning skeleton.

* BertIGordon's 1955 debut monster pic ''King Dinosaur'' has a group of astronauts exploring a rogue planet that's drifted into the solar system, and discovering a [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant iguana]] among its native animals. After being forced to flee from it, one of the astronauts calmy announces "I've brought the atom bomb", and they proceed to ''nuke'' the giant lizard. As stock footage of a mushroom cloud fills the screen, the heroes proudly announce, without a trace of irony, that "we've brought civilization to Nova."

** The death of Sonny Corleone is the straightest example. Ambushed at a toll booth by a dozen [[RareGuns Tommy Gun]]-wielding gangsters, he is 1) shot several dozen times inside his car, 2) then shot some more outside the car, 3) then shot on the ground after he died, then 4) had his face kicked in for good measure. The commentary for the film confirms that this is all a justified trope: they wanted to make sure Sonny ''stayed dead'', given that his elderly father Vito had been repeatedly shot earlier in the film and survived, and that Sonny was known to be a tough bastard.

* In the first ever animated Disney film, ''Film/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', the evil queen is struck by lightning (well, really it strikes the cliff she's standing on). She [[DisneyVillainDeath falls over the cliff]], and the boulder rolls off after her. What's left of her is presumably scavenged by vultures afterwards.

* Virgil's death by interrogation in ''Film/TrueRomance'': Virgil beats up Alabama, trying to find out where Clarence and the drugs he stole from Drexl Spivey are. Throwing her into the shower, she blinds him with shampoo, hits him over the head with the toilet cover, then sprays him with hairspray, stabs him once, and blasts him to hell with a shotgun, and once she's used up all the shells, strikes him with the shotgun barrel for good measure.

** Let's not forget [[Film/{{Moonraker}} Hugo Drax]], who gets shot with a poison dart ''and'' ejected into space, leaving a mystery as to what killed him first - poison or asphyxiation?

** At the beginning of the same movie, O.J. Simpson's character is shot six times, then hits his head on a pipe, burns his hand on a stove, leans against a freshly painted door, gets his other hand caught in a window, falls face first into a wedding cake and then steps in a bear trap before finally falling into the harbor. He survives.

** The Narada, Nero's ship is capable of wiping out whole fleets of ''Klingon Warbirds'' and drilling down to a planet's core. (The drill is left over from when it used to be a mining ship.) As soon as he gets his hands on Red Matter, a [[spoiler:substance that can create artificial black holes]] his raging overkill tendencies just get that much worse. [[spoiler:He starts destroying planets with it.]] Just a bit of an OmnicidalManiac.

* In ''Disney/TheGreatMouseDetective'', Ratigan tries to dispose of Basil with an overkill-tastic DeathTrap including a mousetrap, a crossbow, an axe, a gun (given that the characters are mice, it's more like a ''cannon''), and a falling anvil, noting that he couldn't decide which method would be best . . . so he used them all. [[spoiler:Of course, Basil is able to use the various parts of the trap against each other and escape.]]

-->Ernest:(coming down the stairs with what looks like a whole lot of fishing gear, strapped with wires and making whirring sounds.) You see before you the state-of-the-art troll-fighter of tomorrow. This multi-directional unitized high-tech fighting machine is toll-free, mucus-free and comes equipped with fifteenmillion megabytes of double-density wayfer-thin alloy forming a virtual reality of modern troll extermination.(he heaves the large device he's carrying gun-like on his shoulder into his hands in a dramatic pose.) Need I say more? (He glances down at Lady Hackmoore who is decidedly unimpressed).

* The fate of [[spoiler: Cyrus the Virus]] in ''Film/ConAir'': beaten to within an inch of his life, smashed through a bridge on the extended ladder of a moving firetruck, gets electrocuted after he falls off the ladder, dumped on a conveyor belt and his head smashed by a piledriver (the machine, not the wrestling move). He doesn't get better.

* In ''Film/InglouriousBasterds'', [[spoiler:Hitler and Goebbels]] were riddled with bullets, blown up with dynamite, and [[spoiler:the cinema they were in]] was burned to the ground. [[spoiler:Other high-ranking Nazi officers]] suffered similar fate as well, although not as bad.

* StevenSeagal is made of this trope. See the climax of ''Film/MarkedForDeath''. Seagal grabs the BigBad, [[EyeScream gouges out his eyes using his thumbs]], throws him through a wall, breaks his back over his knee and finally sends him down an elevator shaft, where ''he lands on a spike.''

* ''FinalDestination'' In the first movie after the cast cheats Death, they begin to die off one by one. Most of these deaths were simple [[spoiler:death by bus, decapitation, etc.]], except for one. [[spoiler:For some reason Death seems to really hate Ms Lewton, the teacher. First her computer explodes which lodges a sharp piece of glass into her throat, then the spark from the explosion causes fire which spreads inside her house. As she staggers, she falls down and manages to get stabbed by her own kitchen knife, then the gas cooker door blows open, spewing out gas. Then to top it all off, thanks to the gas, the entire house explodes.]] Sure you don't want to divert a meteorite to crash into the wreckage just to be absolutely sure, Death?

* In ''Film/{{Ghostbusters}} II'', we learn that [[BigBad Vigo the Carpathian]] was "poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled & drawn and quartered" (replied [[DeadpanSnarker Peter Venkman]] upon hearing this, "[[{{Understatement}} Ouch."]]). After all that, he still managed to say a few words before his head died...basically declaring that even ''this'' wouldn't be enough eventually. [[spoiler: He came darn close.]]
* The SelfDestructMechanism for ''Anime/ResidentEvilDegeneration'' probably counts. In sequence, it consists of: drenching the contaminated areas, up to and including the whole facility, in flammable decontamination fluid, igniting said fluid, dropping the contaminated sections down a 3000ft deep shaft, blowing them up again, and then, if the whole place is contaminated, sealing everything under a steel cover thick and tough enough to withstand a nuclear blast. Admittedly, they are working with some of the most lethal infectious pathogens on the planet, but it's still a little overboard. Considering what has happened in ''Resident Evil'' before when these lethal infectious pathogens get out, you can never be too careful.

* In ''ThreeHundred'' and ''Film/{{Hero}}'' [[spoiler:Leonidas and Nameless are each killed with a RainOfArrows plentiful enough to fell a whole regiment. Though in Leonidas' case, he was with a regiment. Most of them had died by that point, but still!]]
* The captain of the salvage team in ''Film/EventHorizon'', after having found out that the titular ship [[spoiler: was possessed by infernal forces]], he was inclined to fire missiles at it until it's vaporised.

** Then there's a scene in the second movie where the bad guys shoot at an airplane cockpit with machine guns, filling it with bullet holes, and then ''throw all their grenades'' just for good measure. When they see him parachuting out of the explosion, they just call him (again pragmatically) "[[NoOneCouldSurviveThat Lucky Bastard]]"

* The death of a revived [[Film/KamenRiderZO Doras]] in the ''Decade'' [[TheResolutionWillNotBeTelevised finale movie]] isn't quite as over-the-top, but close. He gets taken out by [[spoiler: no less than twelve Kamen Riders, ten of whom were in their [[SuperMode Super Modes]], hitting him with their respective finishing attacks]].

** The amount of energy required to destroy a planet is some eight - nine orders of magnitude greater than what killed the dinosaurs, and seven - eight more than required to just kill everyone. And the Death Star gives five - six orders of magnitude more than '''that'''. Not to mention, that they could have cracked the surface, or burned away the atmosphere, using a lot less resources (A Hyperdrive with the safety's turned off, for instance ).

** In the second movie, he kills his first Graboid with 4 pounds of C-4(which even he admits was excessive). And then kills another with a cluster bomb. Then, he shoots one of the Shriekers with a .50 caliber anti-tank gun with a solid broze bullet(though that one was justified in that it was the last bullet he had). Then they detonate 4.5 tons of high-explosives and reduce an entire oil refinery to a large crater to kill the remaining Shriekers.
** In the 3rd movie, he blows up his entire house to kill a single Ass Blaster. [[spoiler: And then he finds out it was completely unneccessary.]]

* ''Film/ThePunisher2004'': Castle just doesn't kill Howard Saint, but also just about everything Saint cares about. [[spoiler:He sabotages Saint's money-laundering operations and then gives the money away. He then causes a rift with Saint's Cuban partners. After following both Saint's wife Livia and his best friend Quentin Glass, he creates the illusion that the two of them are having an affair behind Howard's back (despite the fact that Quentin is gay). When Howard finds out thanks to Mickey (who is Castle's mole), he stabs Quentin to death and then throws Livia over a bridge, she survives the fall but can't get off the train tracks in time and gets run over by a train. After he kills all of Saint's men in the club, he rigs a trip-wire grenade and forces his son John to hold up the grenade, where he eventually tires out and is blown up. An injured Howard tries to run, but Castle ties him to a car and sends it towards a parking lot, where he has rigged several hidden bombs that blow up as the car dragging Howard passes by, which light Howard on fire before that car blows up and we get an overview shot of the flames in the shape of the Punisher's iconic skull]]. Saint's an asshole that had it coming to him, but damn, what an example of overkill. To top it all off, Castle calmly explains it all in detail to Saint before finishing him off.

* 2004 Film/ThePunisher movie: Castle just doesn't kill Howard Saint, but also just about everything Saint cares about. [[spoiler:He sabotages Saint's money-laundering operations and then gives the money away. He then causes a rift with Saint's Cuban partners. After following both Saint's wife Livia and his best friend Quentin Glass, he creates the illusion that the two of them are having an affair behind Howard's back (despite the fact that Quentin is gay). When Howard finds out thanks to Mickey (who is Castle's mole), he stabs Quentin to death and then throws Livia over a bridge, she survives the fall but can't get off the train tracks in time and gets run over by a train. After he kills all of Saint's men in the club, he rigs a trip-wire grenade and forces his son John to hold up the grenade, where he eventually tires out and is blown up. An injured Howard tries to run, but Castle ties him to a car and sends it towards a parking lot, where he has rigged several hidden bombs that blow up as the car dragging Howard passes by, which light Howard on fire before that car blows up and we get an overview shot of the flames in the shape of the Punisher's iconic skull]]. Saint's an asshole that had it coming to him, but damn, what an example of overkill. To top it all off, Castle calmly explains it all in detail to Saint before finishing him off.

* The poor {{Mook}} from ''Film/TheExpendables'' ''2''. After rounding a corner, he happens to meet up with the entire crew, who have just made mincemeat out of a small army of bad guys. He gets ventilated by every one of them at once.

* In ''Film/{{Ghostbusters}} II'', we learn that [[BigBad Vigo the Carpathian]] was "poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled & drawn and quartered". After all that, he still managed to say a few words before his head died.

* In ''{{Shooter}}'', a gun nut recounts the story of a sniper who was infamous for his brutality on the battlefield. The opposing side despised him so much that when they corner the sniper in the building, instead of trying to flush him out, they just bombarded it with enough artillery to level an entire city block. This is standard tactics for dealing with snipers, just not usually while they're in urban areas.

* In ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'', Raoul Silva tries to take out Bond with a runaway train.

** The main character's brutal death at the hands of Boddicker and his men before he was [[WeCanRebuildHim rebuilt]] as the titular cyborg.

** The death of Santino "Sonny" Corleone. Ambushed at a toll booth by a dozen [[RareGuns Tommy Gun]]-wielding gangsters, shot several dozen times inside his car, then shot some more outside the car, then shot on the ground after he died, then had his face kicked in for good measure. The commentary for the film confirms that they wanted to make sure Sonny ''stayed dead'', given that his elderly father had been repeatedly shot earlier in the film and survived, and that Sonny was known to be a tough bastard.
** At the end of the movie, [[spoiler:the elimination of the heads of the Five Families during the Baptism scene, along with Moe Greene and Tattaglia's mistress who had the misfortune of sharing his bed at the wrong time... and Carlo Rizzi, Michael's brother-in-law, for his role in Sonny's death.]] The body count for the end of Part II is relatively minor compared to Part I [[spoiler:but aside from Hyman Roth's death, there was no real need for Michael to have the other two killed... [[MoralEventHorizon including his own brother Fredo]].]] It would take [[MoreDakka the mob boss massacre orchestrated by Joey Zaza]] in Part III to top the whole trilogy.
** In ''TrainingDay'', [[spoiler:Alonzo Harris is a lesser version of this as a deliberate ShoutOut: first the Russians crash his car, then they shoot him in the car, and after Alonzo leaves the vehicle, battered, he is shot brutally on full-auto.]]

* Dieter Von Cunth from ''MacGruber'' after he survives getting his hideout blown up and attacks MacGruber at his wedding, MacGruber headbutts him off a cliff, shoots him half a dozen times as he falls, when he lands he hits his head on a rock splitting it open and spilling his brains out, MacGruber then blows up his corpse with a grenade launcher then pisses on it.

* MemeticBadAss Samuel L. Jackson describes this phenomenon perfectly in JackieBrown: