Boom Headshot / Video Games

Examples of Boom, Headshot! in video games.

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Action Games

• In one level of 2005's The Punisher video game, the eponymous protagonist is accompanied by S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers. Whenever a criminal is shot in the head, one of the soldiers excitedly growls, "Headshot!" On another level that features head of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, if the Punisher lands a headshot, Fury says, "Way to make it messy, Castle."
• Invoked by Pigsy in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
• MORDHAU is full of melee examples, with some ranged ones. Since the hitboxes for head, chest, and legs are neatly separate, you can aim for one or the other (it pays to aim for what's least armored if someone skimped on leg armor for example). And strikes to the head are very damaging, to the point some weapons (like the maul) can kill you no matter how thick your helmet is. However, having a helmet still pays off enormously, because even relatively small arming swords can cleave your skull open or just straight-up remove it from your neck if you're going without head protection for whatever reason.

Action/Adventure Games

• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • In his Batman: Arkham City DLC, Nightwing is equipped with wrist darts that stun his targets, but a headshot is an instant takedown. Unfortunately, Nightwing's aim constantly sways, which is aggravated if you zoom in for a better shot.
  • In Batman: Arkham Knight in which you get to shoot unmanned drones in the Batmobile, the cannon mounts of drones are their "heads", and a shot at those with the 60 mm cannon will instantly destroy non-Mamba drones, as opposed to a shot at their chassis which will only drain half of their "life". Mamba drones always require at least 2 shots (except with the Missile Barrage), although rapid firing at their "heads" with the Vulcan Gun also seems to kill faster.
• In inFAMOUS, throughout most of the game headshots (or head shocks, as you're using electricity) are instant kill and give extra XP. Especially if the target is in the air, which is one of the stunts.
  • In In Famous Second Son, Smoke and Neon encourage this tactic in Good and Evil players, respectively.
  • Smoke has the Sulfur and Knockout Headshot upgrades for the Smoke Shot, which allows Delsin to stun enemies, opening them up for a non-lethal takedown, and even instantly subdue the weaker ones (Drug Dealers, for example) with the latter upgrade. This earns Good Karma.
  • Neon has the Laser Insight, in which aiming shows you the enemies' weak spots. Aiming for the ankles binds enemies in violet and blue neon light for Good Karma, while shooting the head obliterates them in a shower of red neon light, and earns Evil Karma.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: This trope is optionally self-inflicted. There is a section at the Snowpeak Ruins dungeon that contains cannons. If you load one with a cannonball and one of your bombs and position Link in front of the blast, he will die instantly, regardless of how many hearts you have at the time.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Shooting an enemy in the head deals twice normal damage while also (usually) incapacitating them for a few seconds. This is an essential tactic for fighting Guardians, Lynels, and most bosses, since they are too tough to be stunned in any other way (Urbosa's Fury works on some of them, but it has to recharge for several minutes after three uses). "Stal" enemies can only be killed by destroying their heads; if you don't get a one-hit-kill headshot, their skull just falls off temporarily and will join back up with its body if you don't destroy it quickly.
• This is the preferred tactic of hammer or hunting horn wielders when applicable in the Monster Hunter series, due to their ability to knock out a monster temporarily with repeated hits to the head. The head is also commonly the weakest point on a monster, and exceptions to it are generally rather obvious.
• Played for drama in [PROTOTYPE]. Cornered by Alex Mercer, McMullen chooses to shoot himself in the head to spite Alex. He knows he's going to die anyway, but he deliberately goes for the head so Alex can't take his memories. Later, when Alex is disguised as Col. Taggart, General Randall shoots him in the head, which doesn't do much to him, but would have killed a normal human.
• The Uncharted games award an instant kill on a headshot, and getting several headshots in a row (as well as hitting certain thresholds of career headshots) helps unlock bonus content.

Adventure Games

• Future Purple Tentacle in Day of the Tentacle always goes for a headshot, even though his weapon is nonlethal and has the same effect no matter where the blast hits. This habit leads to his downfall.
• Police Quest: SWAT (the FMV one) lets you practice the Failure drill on the weapons range.

Casual Games

• The trope is invoked in Angry Birds 2, which gives you a "Headpop!" reward if you land squarely on a pig.

Fighting Games

• In Bloody Battle, one of the methods of execution in the game is shooting someone's head, which will cause it to explode. Shooting any other area will just cause them to be knocked out unless they ran out of lives.
• Getting a headshot in Divekick concusses the opponent, making them lose all their special meter and move slower the next round for a few seconds.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe: The Joker and Deathstroke both have fatalities ending in this. The Joker uses his flag gun, then whips out a revolver and does a headshot, while Deathstroke stabs the opponent in the stomach with his sword, then pulls a headshot as a Mercy Kill. Shang Tsung has the Joker's fatality in Mortal Kombat 9, and it's shown uncensored.
  • Mortal Kombat X: Erron Black has multiple moves where he unloads entire clips from his pistols straight into his opponent's head, and they get up just fine. It takes brutalities to finish the deed.
  • Mortal Kombat 11:
    • The Sonya from the past has defeated past Kano and is ready to snap his neck, but Kano holds past Johnny Cage with a knife, reminding past Sonya that if past Cage dies, Cassie ceases to exist. Past Sonya, thanking Kano for reminding her of the rules, takes out a gun and kills past Kano by shooting him in his right eye, which in turn causes Kano to be affected and become Ret-Gone.
    • RoboCop's That One Time Brutality normally has him shoot an opponent in the crotch, leaving them to bleed to death; but against females, he aims for their heads instead, killing them instantly.
• In the mobile game Shadow Fight 2, blows to the head inflict more damage.

First-Person Shooter

• Ace Of Spades:
  • Not only played straight but very nearly a Game-Breaker, as the hitbox for a player's head is enormous. The standard semi-automatic rifle is nearly as good as a Sniper Rifle, and headshots with it are a One-Hit Kill. Being hit in the head by the sub-machine gun "only" costs you 75HP, which is hardly better given that most players who wield it really believe in More Dakka, and the shotgun... Well, let's just say it averts Short-Range Shotgun.
  • As of version 0.75 the rifle was made much less accurate (making sniping with the submachine gun a viable alternative), the shotgun now follows its stock trope and the SMG is the most commonly used weapon around.
• The Aliens vs. Predator PC shooters both allow the titular xenomorphs to score MELEE headshots in which the player trains their crosshairs on the offender's cranium for a moment (causing teeth to appear all around the edges of the screen), then launches the alien's inner jaws at the target, EATING THEIR HEAD and TOTALLY HEALING YOU, all from up to 15 feet away! This can even be performed on corpses. All parties in the game can go for headshots. The Predator, however, can attack a killed enemy's head with his wristblade to take a trophy.
• Assault Cube. With booming "Headshot" announcement, and double kill-score.
• Battlefield: Generally, only the sniper rifle can really nail a OHK with a headshot, other weapons will just deal out more damage. Bad Company 2 gives you ten more points if you finish an enemy off with a headshot though (a kill is normally 50 points).
• Battlefield 3: Several weapons can OHK with a headshot and will get a headshot bonus for it. The bonus for Snipers is a marksmanship bonus for doing it at extreme ranges.
• BioShock:
  • The first game has headshots with the basic pistol deal quadruple damage. This is enough to put down most splicers in one hit-at least until the player reaches Farmer's Market, at which point every enemy gets a massive boost in health. Later on, the player gets a crossbow that deals ten times normal damage when aiming for the head, enabling you to kill even the toughest splicers with a single bolt.
  • BioShock 2 has a tonic that amplifies headshot damage with all weapons.
  • In Bioshock Infinite, each weapon has its own headshot damage multiplier. Whether or not it's an instant kill depends on the power of the weapon and the health value of the enemy being shot.
• In Black, a good headshot is a good way to get rid of the Incredibly Durable Enemies that can otherwise take more than 20 bodyshots to take out. Masked shotgunners are immune until you spend some ammo shooting their masks off first unless you're packing the M16A2, which is a One-Hit Kill on a headshot no matter what.
• Borderlands:
  • Nearly all headshots in Borderlands will remove the head, and even sometimes destroy the entire body. This is sometimes a necessary gameplay gimmick since some enemies will shrug off everything but a headshot. There are also challenges centered around getting certain numbers of headshots for bonus XP.
  • As of Borderlands 2, we have Face McShooty. Averted on non-mammalian targets, though. Spiderants and varkids are more susceptible to abdominal shots, threshers are best dealt with by targeting the eyes (which can be in some pretty weird places - on their tentacles, for example), Hyperion Loaders quite literally fall apart when targeted on the joints, and Crystalisks are virtually invulnerable unless you hit them on the visible crystals on their legs (it's hard to tell if they even have heads).
• Headshots in Bulletstorm are the easiest skillshot to pull off, though also the least rewarding point-wise. You do however, get bonuses for the PMC's Charged Attack (Overkill), the Screamer (One-Hit Wonder for the primary fire, Enlightenment for the Charged Attack), the Head Hunter (Hotshot), the Flailgun (Grenade Gag), and the Penetrator (Root Canal).
• Call of Duty.
  • Worth noting are the Juggernauts from Modern Warfare 2 and 3. Though they can stay alive even after multiple headshots from a Barrett .50 cal, a direct headshot from a Thumper or RPG-7 is still a One-Hit Kill. How you manage to line up that headshot between their More Dakka and the infamous difficulty of use/inaccuracy of those two weapons, though...
  • World at War includes a Death Card for co-op mode that, when activated, causes enemies killed via headshot to explode.
• Clive Barker's Jericho has the Achievements/Trophies named (Insert Adjective Here) Of Pop, where landing so many headshots nets you an additional character bio sheet in the extras section.
• In Combat Arms, a headshot which causes a death results in a rather satisfying "HEADSHOT" plaque showing up. Often happens with the ridiculously overpowered L96 and G36E guns, but no one's complaining. Even better if it's through two people's heads.
• Counter-Strike. Oh, so very much.^note  This is actually the game FPS Doug was playing, making it the indirect Trope Namer, although he was also talking about America's Army in his first appearance. Indeed, the thwack! sound effect and special icon were firsts for FPS games, making this the Trope Codifier in some respects.
• In Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, it is possible to do this with a bow and arrow - assuming you can get close enough to both aim and avoid the sorta-subversion of No "Arc" in "Archery", you can insta-kill opponents will a well-placed arrow to the face. You can even do it with the Rope Bow. Sniping zombies from the rafters, hi-larious.
• In Day of Defeat and Day of Defeat: Source, shooting someone in the head results in a shhunk sound and the opposing player's helmet flying off (provided it wasn't knocked off prior by an explosion). All weapons are a one-hit kill to the head, provided it didn't pass through any objects prior.
• The Delta Force series of games awards double points for knocking your opponent's block off in multiplayer. Especially amusing is the fact that this can be done with any of the guns - the knife can't manage it (but killing with that is so rare as to be worth triple points anyway) and nor can the various forms of Boom a player can leave lying around or throw into the other guy's path, but you can score a headshot with a LAW. As in, a rocket that is supposed to be for cracking open TANKS. It was also immensely satisfying to Cherry Tap an opponent by sneaking to within ten metres of them and planting a 40mm grenade from the M203 In the Back of their skull, since at that range it won't explode, but will do enough damage to kill the recipient.
• Deus Ex. This trope can even apply with weapons like the minicrossbow, though rather than killing them when they, say, receive a crossbow dart in the eye, a tranquilizer dart will take immediate effect as opposed to taking several seconds to knock them out.
• The Brutal Doom and Project Brutality mods for the classic Doom games allow the player to shoot enemies in the head for greater damage. Much like the vanilla game's gibbing mechanic, a headshot that reduces the enemy's health to their starting health times negative one will result in their head exploding in a shower of blood and brain matter. This was picked up in Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, with a loading screen telling you "If an enemy has a head, it's a weak spot", which applies to every enemy (except the Cacodemon, which is nothing but a head).
• The End Times: Vermintide and Vermintide II: Many enemies take substantially more damage from headshots. This is increased further by weapons with the Headshot trait, including the handgun and the executioner sword. Some character and weapon abilities add extra benefits, like the Huntsman's headshots consuming no ammunition and the Witch Hunter Captain's Critical Hit headshots causing a One-Hit Kill.
• In Evolve, hitting the monster in the head deals double damage. Behemoth is the exception, with its weakspot in its underbelly. Conversely, hitting a limb does half damage. This only affects projectile-based weapons, as all other weapons deal flat damage regardless of where you hit.
• In Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Rex Power Colt says this word for word as one of his phrases when you use a sniper rifle and shoot an enemy in the head.
• Headshots in Fistful of Frags not only deal twice the damage but cause the victim's hat to fly off.
• Left 4 Dead has a few achievements based around this; one for scoring a certain number of headshots over all, one for killing a zombie who hasn't seen you by bashing its head in from behind, and one for killing a Witch with a single headshot (which basically has to be done with a shotgun from point-blank range. And if you screw it up, man is she pissed...)
• Left 4 Dead 2 has "realism mode" which (among other things) makes headshots much more important. While shooting the normal zombies center-of-mass enough times will still kill them, they don't go down nearly as easily as in the standard mode...and you also chew through ammo a lot faster. The "Headshot!" mutation plays this trope more straight: headshots are the only thing that will kill a common infected, including melee weapon hits to the head. Hitting them anywhere else causes them to just stumble back. Fire, explosions, and chainsaws can still kill commons in a single hit no matter in what body part.
• GoldenEye (1997) is an early example of this, and certainly made console owners aware of it. However, headshots only do amplified damage, as showcased by it taking several of them to kill an enemy with 1000% health.
• Half-Life. The pistol will require a few headshots to kill most things, but it's very accurate so you can stay well out of range. The magnum will probably do it in one with roughly the same accuracy. Then there is the sniper crossbow: much deadlier than it looks, and headshots can be surprisingly messy. Opposing Force replaced the magnum with the Desert Eagle which was likewise supremely accurate if you aimed using its Laser Sight rather than your own HUD crosshair. And it had a true sniper rifle.
• Half-Life 2: Not only do bodyshots towards headcrab zombies do less damage; they also risk leaving the headcrab itself alive to try to attack you. Father Grigori advises you to aim for the head. You will do well to listen to him. The crossbow's back, too. It's still the long-range terror against anything your size, and it now features heated rebar for bolts.
• Like most shooters, Halo encourages the player to aim for the head:
  • The pistol was particularly infamous in Halo: Combat Evolved for being a headshot machine—it's a Hand Cannon with a camera that syncs with the Master Chief's armor, essentially giving it a scope—while the Halo 3: ODST version came with a laser sight that unfortunately only works when there is fog or smoke in the area. Halo 5: Guardians's Warzone mode has some pretty powerful pistol variants too.
  • There's also the "Noob Combo", which is where you shoot a shield draining shot with the plasma pistol before scoring a headshot with the regular pistol, which was overused to no limit in Halo 2's online gameplay.
  • Later games feature a "skull" that, when activated, makes the heads of Grunts, the weakest enemies, explode into confetti with the sound of children cheering. It's a hilarious way to encourage selective aiming since headshots are the most efficient way to kill them.
  • Defied throughout the series with Hunters, however: the head and most of the body are armored well enough to fend off small arms fire. You can kill them by aiming for the neck, but it's much easier to strafe behind them and land a few shots in the small of their backs (the weak points are helpfully colored bright orange).
  • Defied with the Flood Combat Forms. Shooting their heads off does nothing, because the thing actually controlling the body is in the chest cavity. So you do actually want to aim for center of mass when dealing with Flood.
• In Jedi Outcast, a headshot was usually a lethal take down. Good luck getting one with the stormtrooper rifle, which, as a sort of Mythology Gag, was ridiculously inaccurate).
• Killing Floor:
  • All Specimens have a weak point in the head. Blowing said head off doesn't guarantee an instant kill, but it does prevent them from using any special abilities (the clot's grab, the bloat's vomit, etc), causes them to stagger around blindly (they can still hit you if they find you), makes any further damage hurt more, and kills them after a few seconds anyway from bleeding out through the neck stump. So, aim for the head.
  • The Sharpshooter perk is based around this - his weapons are typically single-fire or semi-auto fare which he gets massive headshot-damage and reload-speed bonuses for, from various pistols and revolvers, up to a crossbow and even a breech-loading, .50-caliber sniper rifle.
• This is a handy way to bring down enemies in Killzone 2, as well; but first you often have to shoot off the enemies' helmets and reveal their big pale Bald of Evil before you can actually score a lethal hit there. Unless you're using the shotgun at close range, or the sniper rifle, which scores 15 headshots with the snipe rifle and you're rewarded with the 'Melonpopper' Trophy. Or you can simply aim for their Glowing Eyes of Doom.
• Medal of Honor:
  • The first Medal of Honor game has a way of naming the different places where you shoot someone the most (for instance, if you shot the Nazis in the arm the most in a level, one of the titles you could receive would be winger) so if you shot them in the head a lot, you'd get titles like melon popper, cap shooter, helmet plunker, etc. A shot to the center mass can also One-Hit Kill enemies, especially with higher-power weapons.
  • Medal of Honor: Vanguard rewards the player with a medal if they get over a certain number of headshots per level.
• Metroid Prime Trilogy:
  • Metroid Prime: Hunters shows "HEAD SHOT!" on the screen when you score one. The sniping laser, the Imperialist, obviously does a one-hit kill if it's a head shot and one of the hunters has the ability to be invisible when idle if he has the weapon.
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: The Nova Beam has the ability to kill certain enemies in one hit if you shoot a particular area (usually the head), and the X-Ray Visor highlights these vulnerable areas. You can even "headshot" Metroids, which are otherwise hard-to-kill nuisances.
• Nexuiz and its Spiritual Successor Xonotic have the Nex and the Vortex, respectively, which are capable of instakilling by hitting the head, complete with the announcer screaming "Headshot!".
• The bots of PAYDAY: The Heist will encourage you to go for headshots, with shouts of "I want to see helmets flying!" Because yes, when you land a headshot, the hat or helmet worn by the victim will pop up as a "well done!" signal. Interestingly, the headshot-immune civilians are all bareheaded.
• Perfect Dark has headshots be One Hit Kills.
• In Postal 2 a headshot with a shotgun makes the head of the victim asplode.
• Headshots in Project Blackout are instantly lethal if the target isn't wearing a helmet.
• Rainbow Six used this since the beginning, though it wasn't as noticeable in the original trilogy, where any shot could kill you or an enemy. The cross-hairs would automatically aim for the head regardless, though, and it's become even more important into the Vegas duology and Siege, where no matter what kind of armor your target is wearing, a single bullet to the head will still put them down.
• Parodied in Rayman: Raving Rabbids 2s FPS segments. You can get a regular headshot, but can also get a buttshot by hitting them from behind.
• The FPS Red Steel has an automatic lock-on system, which puts box corners around the entire target's body and lock crosshairs in that region. If the target is standing up or even moving, it's trivially easy to fire at head level (the upper middle portion of the box) and nail the target's head. The lock-on system works through walls, and the location of the crosshair will scale to the size of the box - aiming at head level when the target is sitting will still be locked to his head when he stands.
• Resistance 2 has a nice, squishy sound when you pop a cap in a Chimera's face, instant kill with even upper-tier enemies except for the bosses, which is handy to know as those Ravagers can be damned lethal.
• The game Sniper: Ghost Warrior makes a definite point of forcing the player to think much like a real-life sniper, though it somewhat averts this trope by allowing you to miss the sweet spot and simply remove a target's helmet without the insta-kill. Also averted in that a single center mass shot with the high powered rifle is typically enough to drop any target.
• In Soldier of Fortune, in addition to headshots, any shot that removes a limb or disembowels the enemy, or a shot to the nether region, is a One-Hit Kill.
• Splitgate: While all weapons can score headshots, the damage varies per weapon; only the Sniper Rifle consistently delivers an instant kill on a headshot where it otherwise wouldn't.
• Headshots in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series are instantly lethal for human enemies not wearing helmets and deal massive damage to everything else^note a single well-placed shot with a Makarov can kill a boar instantly but are very difficult to score at anything moving at farther than point-blank range. As opposed to most other shooters, though, hitting the center of mass usually makes the human enemy stagger. There's a reason why the Mozambique Drill is so popular in gameplay videos. Subverted, however, by the realistically detailed ballistics system; bullets are affected by weather and gravity, and any gun outside of the sniper rifles that is not tinkered with by a professional technician will make it frustrating for players to get a clean headshot. Therefore, in order for a gun to be considered a proper head-blasting machine, the gun itself must be maxed out in its stats by the map's resident technician to be truly effective. Depending on the gun, it can cost a fortune for upgrades, and to further complicate things, the upgrades are separated into tiers. Furthermore, once a particular upgrade is chosen, the other gets locked out forever, and a few certain guns can only be acquired once, thus forcing you to think your options wisely. This feature is only prevalent in Call of Pripyat and Clear Sky; in CoP's case: you have to find the toolkits in all three maps of that game to unlock the tiers, while in CS, you have to find particular items requested by the giver to unlock the tiers.
• In the TimeSplitters games, zombies often need headshots to be killed. The aiming of that game can be a bit hard though, so the easiest way to kill them is with your fists. The reason is simple, one punch makes their heads fall off.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The Sniper is the only class that does critical damage on a headshot. A charged-up headshot (from anything but the Sydney Sleeper, which minicrits on headshots instead) is able to One-Hit Kill almost everyone else. Everyone else's weapons (with one sole exception, see below) do the same damage no matter where they hit.
  • The "Meet the Sniper" video opens with shots of the Sniper driving his RV through the desert; inside, he flicks a TFC VIP bobblehead on his dashboard and says, "Boom. Headshot." Cut to the title card. Good things are in store.
  • One of the Spy's revolvers, the Ambassador, is the only non-Sniper weapon in the entire game that can get a critical hit on a headshot. The unpatched Ambassador used to be able to over-penetrate targets, with hilarious results, and before the headshots were subjected to damage fall-off, it was able to two-shot most classes at any distance - in a game mostly focused on fighting up close.
• If Jet makes a head shot in TRON 2.0, it's almost always an insta-kill. The times it's not is when it's glanced off armor. Jet will also say something like "Ouch" or "Yes!" if he manages a perfect hit.
• The original Unreal Tournament is responsible for the "HEADSHOT!" announcement so dominant in CS servers. Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict and Unreal Tournament III bring this to the extreme by adding the "Head Hunter" award, for 15 consecutive headshots, which typically result in the offending extremity vanishing in an explosion of red chunks. UT2003 also introduced the Lightning Gun as a replacement/alternative to the normal sniper rifle - headshots with it set its victims' neck stumps on fire along with decapitation for good measure. Interestingly enough, in the '99 original, you can lop an enemy's head off with the Enforcer. It's purely an aesthetic effect, though, as shooting someone in the head with the Enforcer doesn't do any extra damage.
• Urban Chaos: Riot Response even had awards for attaining extremely easy headshots, thanks to the controls.

Flash Games

• Many Flash "assassin" games, such as Sift Heads and Anaksha: Female Assassin require you to shoot your target in the head. In Anaksha's case, it's justified — with the amount of gun crime that goes down in Santa Lina, many citizens have taken to wearing body armor.

Light Gun Games

• In Ghost Squad (2004), hitting an enemy on the head results in a "Good Shot" bonus, but like in Virtua Cop, also by Sega-AM2, headshots cannot be followed up with extra shots. There is a special but very difficult to achieve bonus known as "2 Body 1 Head", which is done by doing a Mozambique Drill on an enemy, plugging 2 shots into the torso and then 1 shot into the head.
• House of the Dead, being about zombies, encouraged this. In most games, you can kill them by way of pumping their bodies full of lead, but the quicker way to down them was to blow off their heads, which usually killed them in three shots.
• Averted in Point Blank (1994); in stages where you shoot at human-shaped cardboard targets, shooting the center of the chest yields 100 points, the highest point value on the target. Shooting the head only nets 60 points.
• Silent Scope, obviously. Double points and a decent time bonus, plus One-Hit Kill on the bosses.
  • In the third Silent Scope game, your life / time meter will refill a bit on head shots.
  • Headshots on most bosses are a One-Hit Kill unless they are wearing a mask/helmet.
  • Certain bosses must be shot in the head on the first shot. Failure to do so results in retrying the stage (if it's a non-final boss in Silent Scope EX') or a Non-Standard Game Over (if it's a Final Boss).
• Target Terror on the highest violence setting, had this. Multiple bullets in the head of a terrorist would result in Your Head Asplode, a massive point bonus, and in the Gold edition, there's a combat medal for headshot streaks.
• In Time Crisis 2, 3, and 4, hitting non-armored Mooks anywhere will kill them, but headshots yield the most points, followed by body shots, then limb shots. However, getting points doesn't stop at a headshot; shooting the head once and then shooting their body twice (you can hit a Mook twice more after the initial hit) yields the most points.
• Virtua Cop is possibly the Ur-Example of headshots in video games. Inverted in Virtua Cop 3, however, where headshots are actually the least lucrative, as they score low and don't allow for chains. The better alternatives are shooting their gun, or just chaining 3 hits starting with any other part of the body.

MMORPGs

• The Headshot skill in Urban Dead results in that zombie being forced to spend 5 more Action Points than normal to rise. However, a skill allows veteran zombies to circumvent this somewhat. In the Diary of the Dead tie-in side city Monroeville (where the zombies are conveniently Romero-style zombies), a headshot is an instant kill.

Platformers

• The final boss of Bionic Commando, an ersatz version of Adolf Hitler (and actually Hitler in the Japanese version), dies by way of bazooka to the face, with the villain's head graphically exploding (and said exploding being kept in all releases of the game, in a rare exception to Nintendo of America's famously strict censorship rules at the time). The remake Bionic Commando: Rearmed doubles down on this trope with a Repeat Cut of the killing blow and a close-up of the final boss's exploding head.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day:
  • During the main adventure, you can only kill zombies by shooting them in the head with the shotgun.
  • The multiplayer arenas (at least the N64 version) track these. Especially fun when the headshot is from crossbow or knife; the bolt or knife will be stuck in the head as they spin dazed. As an added bonus, in the War multiplayer especially, the player character will often yell dialogue for certain kills, and headshots come with a raft of them, such as "Oooh, nasty!" and "Oho, headshot!"
• Anytime you run into a seemingly-invincible enemy in the Mega Man series, his Weak Spot will inevitably be his head. If the enemy's head fills the screen, then it will be the eyes or an obvious gem or protrusion somewhere on his head. You can even use this trope in Mega Man X8 to hijack Ride Armors. A well-aimed shot to the head blows up the pilot without damaging the mecha.

Puzzle Games

• Flaming Zombooka: Shoot a zombie in the head to kill it instantly and get more points (500 in the first game, 1000 in the second game and onwards).

Rail Shooter

• Star Fox: Assault: The Sniper Rifle does bonus damage on a head shot. Of course, the thing is so powerful, you don't even need a headshot to take most opponents down. Wolf is the only multi-player character that can survive being shot at all, but he's also the fastest.
• Headshots in Transformers: Cybertron Adventures will outright kill the smaller enemies, while bosses and the Destroyers can shrug a few off at the expense of a noticeable percentage of their health.

Role-Playing Games

• In Brutal Orchestra, any character who is in front of Trigger Fingers when he performs this attack will be dealt an obscene 1945 worth of damage, way more than any of them will handle. Complete with an animation of two bullets utterly destroying their skull. An achievement of this trope name verbatim will unlock should it happen.
• In Dark Souls, getting a headshot with a bow causes extra damage.
• Though you can't actually aim for heads in Dragon Age: Origins, one of the death animations for humanoid enemies has the attacker make a wide swinging blow that slices the head off in a huge gush of blood.
• In Fable II, the last dexterous style is sub-targeting, which allows you to target specific spots on an enemy such as the hand (to disarm them), groin, or head. A headshot will often kill an enemy in one shot, decapitating them in the process. One achievement actually requires killing a Hollow Man by first shooting their weapons away, then blasting its head off before finally killing it for good. You can boot the heads around when you shoot one off, too.
• Fallout:
  • In the original Fallout, creatures have a location map for called shots; critical hit effects depend on specific location, and head shots tend to be severe. But it's far from "always instant kill" and usually the head is the second hardest to hit location after the target's eyes. Other times, it's more beneficial to aim for a different location even if it doesn't bring the enemy down as fast — you'll want to cripple that Deathclaw's legs so you can survive long enough to try for a headshot.
  • The Sniper perk exists to facilitate these, and gives a substantial bonus when using VATS to aim at heads, which combined with sneak attacks allows you to one-shot many enemies. The Bloody Mess perk on the other hand can cause victims' heads to asplode even if you hit them in the foot. With a flamethrower.
  • This trope is parodied in Fallout 3 with the quest "You Gotta Shoot 'Em in the Head". A ghoul hires you to kill a bunch of humans who considers ghouls to be just like mindless zombies, and specifically requests that you shoot them in the head or else you're paid less. The game also features Mirelurks, bipedal mutant crab people with a heavily-armored carapace. Shooting them in the head is the quickest way to bring them down, but said soft target is deeply recessed in their torso and often hidden when they're attacking, making pulling this off easier said than done.
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • The base game starts with this trope, as the Courier receives a double-tap to the skull, courtesy of Benny. Of course, seeing as that's only the start of the game, it doesn't quite take. The game later averts this with the "Three-Card Bounty" quest, in which headshots are discouraged because the questgiver wants the targets' skulls intact so he can verify they're dead. There's also the "Center of Mass" perk that gives the player a damage bonus to shots aimed at the enemy's torso.
    • The "Dead Money" DLC for Fallout: New Vegas features "ghosts", which recover from being killed unless they're overkilled to the extent of being decapitated or otherwise dismembered. The easiest way to do this is to cause enough damage to knock them down, then pull a Boom, Headshot on them.
  • While attacks to the head in Fallout 3 and New Vegas cause twice as much HP loss, the effect of specifically injuring the head is almost comically minimal: Perception is lowered by 4 (not that big a deal because Perception only matters before the battle starts), accuracy is lowered somewhat, and if it's the player character they also get an occasional Interface Screw in the form of an Impairment Shot. For comparison, crippling an arm hurts accuracy far worse and a crippled leg can make melee enemies too slow to catch up with you backpedaling.
  • Fallout 4 has one of the most unintentionally ludicrous examples of this trope. The companion perk Killshot was supposed to increase the VATS accuracy of a headshot by 20%. However, due to a typo, it was increased by 2000%, making it almost impossible to not get a headshot, and essentially turning the player into John Wick.
• In Fable of all games, thanks to existent but heavily reduced sway of hands, you can headshot from a fair distance with a crossbow or even a bow. It comes complete with a fountain of blood and the disembodied head spinning for another moment in the air. It's only if you can inflict a one-hit kill with it, though (sometimes even more resistant normal enemies can survive a headshot when it's from a weak enough hero and when they're at full HP). For the more sadistic among us, you can also make enemies' head explode in much the same way with a Lightning spell.
• A finishing move when equipped with a sword in Jade Empire is decapitation. It doesn't show where the head goes, but it does show a fountain of blood, which makes you wonder just how much of the head is intact afterwards.
• Kingdom Hearts II contains a boss battle against Sark and the MCP that has this trope as an option. Sometimes, Sark will put up a wall to prevent the party from fleeing. But a reaction command allows for Sora to climb that wall, leap off, and use the Keyblade to stab Sark in the head for a One-Hit Kill.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III has Giliath Osborne taunting Ash, who is under the will of the curse of Erebonia, to point his gun at Osborne's head to kill him to satisfy his revenge for the Hamel Incident. He never goes through it because the emperor volunteers to get shot in the chest instead which nearly kills the emperor.
• Mass Effect
  • Through the series, a headshot is (if not an insta-kill) a high damage hit. In Mass Effect 2 if it is a kill shot your teammates will make impressed comments about it. One of the upgrades for sniper rifles gives an extra damage bonus to headshots.
  • In the case of security mechs, killing them with headshots causes them to explode damaging anyone nearby (useful, since they come in packs). Headshotting YMIR Mechs (which always explode on death) causes them to go critical and detonate with a massive boom.
  • You can also score perhaps the ultimate headshot on the final boss. Human-Reaper's head, meet Cain.
  • There are even armor pieces to improve the power of your headshots (Garrus wears one).
  • Averted in a realistic sense by the Widow series, though: it's so overwhelmingly powerful that there's little incentive to go for headshots. Any hit will kill most enemies outright.
  • Averted with Zaeed's backstory. His business partner double-crossed him and had six of their underlings restrain him while said partner put a gun to Zaeed's head and pulled the trigger.
    Shepard: You survived a gunshot wound to the head?
    Zaeed: Yeah, and you survived getting your ship blown up. A stubborn enough person can survive anything. Rage is a hell of an anesthetic.
  • Contrary to the first game's relatively realistic Pretty Little Head Shots with small entrance and exit wounds through the helmet, headshots on Cerberus troops in Mass Effect 3 cause the entire head and helmet to disappear, leaving behind bloody neck and a bit of exposed spinal column.
  • Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode managed to zigzag this trope. Originally, bosses did not suffer from head shots, with the exception of the Geth Prime, which did due to a bug. A patch removed this and some other similar bugs and people complained that it removed the incentive to aim, as the bosses were the main targets you needed head shots on. A latter patch added weakpoints for bosses in, but at a much lower bonus. Headshots did 150% bonus damage, and there were a few weapons and bonuses that could increase this. The new weakpoints (sometimes the head, sometimes somewhere else) did 40% bonus damage and were not affected by weapon or other bonuses to headshot damage.
  • Mass Effect 3's DLC weapon, the M-11 Suppressor, is built around this trope. While not as powerful as other pistols available, it has the largest headshot bonus of any weapon in the game. This essentially means that as long as you can aim for the head, it is guaranteed to kill in two shots if not instantly.
• In Persona 5, the default Non-Standard Game Over for missing a deadline ends with a mysterious man (Goro Akechi) blowing your brains out in captivity. In the true ending, this is how your Ultimate Persona Satanael disposes of Yaldabaoth in the end.
• All of the ranged weapons in Phantasy Star Online 2 have the passive ability to deal increased damage to most enemies by scoring a headshot, which is accompanied by a distinctive sound and hitspark.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey: One gun has this technique. The effect is simulated by a chance of inflicting Curse damage.
• A successful headshot in Valkyria Chronicles will cause critical damage to the opponent. For snipers, who are good at this sort of thing, it's almost a guaranteed One-Hit Kill. You can protect yourself from these types of hits by crouching behind sandbags or laying down in the grass where the enemy can't see you. Specifically, going into cover (grass or sandbags usually, but other things can give cover, too) prevents critical hits from actually happening, even if a character is actually hit in the head. Unfortunately, it works both ways. Enemies under cover can't receive criticals, either.
• In Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, the battle system lets you break off parts of monsters depending on what part you hit. If the part you break off happens to be the monster's head, it's instant death, unless the enemy is a zombie or skeleton or something.
• Warrior Of Ras was an early RPG that required called shots for each attack. While the head was weak, it is still stronger than the neck which only had a few hitpoints.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has Sharla's Headshot art. While the name is mostly for flavor, fitting with her sniper side and working regardless of the enemy having a head or not, the spirit of the trope remains. The attack has a very high damage output, especially for a medic, and is the only attack the team has that's capable of inflicting Instant Death on the enemy.

Shoot Em Ups

• In Centipede, shooting the head of the centipede gives you more points than shooting body or tail segments.
• In Gradius and its spin-offs, starting with Salamander and Gradius II, only one original boss per main series games (except in Gradius V) has the head as its weakpoint, as the announcer directs by shouting "Shoot it in the head!".

Sports

• Subverted in first-person hunter Deer Hunter 2005. Headshots will kill the deer instantly, but you won't get the special slow-motion insta-kill bullet cam you get with a lung/heart shot.
• Later played straight in subsequent Deer Hunter games, notably Deer Hunter Classic (formerly Deer Hunter 2014), where only the final animal you kill gets the special slow-motion insta-kill bullet cam.
• In Mutant Football League, sportscaster Grim Blitzro threatens this on "Brickhead" Mulligan after an obnoxious touchdown commentary.
  Brick: GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!
  Grim: Brick, if you ever do that again, I'll shoot you in the head!
  Brick: But they like it!

Stealth-Based Games

• In Manhunt when you shoot an enemy in the head with a shotgun their head explodes with bits of brain and skull fragments raining down.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid Head shots are handled realistically in this series, all guns have meaningful recoil and idle sway meaning that you do have to adjust your shots at a distance especially if aiming for the head. Also head shots are always instant kills unless the enemy soldier's head is shielded in some way, and there is no gore so even with higher-powered guns such as the Barret M82 sniper rifle there are no flashy results. There's even a multiplayer mode for the hardcore enthusiasts, where head shots are the only shots that deal any damage. Scoring a headshot with a non-lethal weapon will cause the sedative to take effect instantly.
  • Metal Gear Solid V, in keeping with the Darker and Edgier feel, averts the "no flashy results" part, with a headshot with any weapon except the tranq guns resulting in a massive blood spray and very nasty wounds.
• In Sniper Elite, scoring a headshot rewards you with a slow-motion shot of the bullet hitting the enemy and going out through the other side. The sequels go even further, giving you an X-ray shot of the victim's head as the bullet travels through their skull.

Strategy

• Kardel Sharpeye quotes this in Dot A 2, aptly classed 'Sniper'. He also has a Headshot skill that is generated at a random chance that does additional damage and makes his target so dizzy they move and attack slower.
• This is one of Caitlyn's quotes from League of Legends. Her occupation? She's a sheriff carrying a sniper rifle. Her special ability? Every eighth shot she fires is... you guessed it... called 'Headshot', which does additional damage.

Survival Horror

• In Cold Fear, the only way to kill a zombie is to shoot their head, or else they won't stop coming after you.
• In Condemned 2: Bloodshot, getting a headshot will result in the unfortunate target's head bursting like a squeezed zit, even if you're using a dinky .22LR pistol. Considering how guns in the game are rare and mostly situational weapons, this is an efficient way of using them.
• In Daymare 1998, headshots are the fastest way to kill a zombie, seeing as how they inflict greater damage. The chances of being able to actually blow a zombie's head off is very low, but the likelihood is increased when either using the shotgun, magnum, or Hallow Point ammo.
• The Dead Space series are notable for their explicit aversion of the trope. Oh sure, feel free to ignore the multiple warnings of "Cut off their limbs" written in blood across the walls of the ghost ship Ishimura; watch as your delight turns to horror as the now headless space zombie continues charging at you to claw you into iddy biddy pieces. The only way to kill Necromorphs is to sever their limbs... the head is utterly useless to them. The Unitologist soldiers from the third game, on the other hand, are ordinary humans and therefore quite vulnerable to headshots.
• In Deadly Premonition, headshots do more damage, interrupt enemies' attacks, and earn you bonus Agent Honor.
• The Evil Within: The bad news is that your opponents are psychically mutated, so sometimes headshots don't work. The good news is, you can increase your critical rate (the probability that shooting a mook in the head kills them). Their heads explode in disgusting gore, if they aren't ripped into pieces by a weaker shot first. And considering the difficulty of the game, you will APPRECIATE their violent deaths.
• Literally so in the Fatal Frame series: photo-shots centered around the target ghost's head will destroy the ghost quicker. Unfortunately, this usually means you're staring right at the ghost's face as he or she is about to touch you. The final boss in the second game must be destroyed this way.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: One way to stun the animatronics is to use the FazBlaster, which has unlimited uses. However, the animatronics must be shot in the head for the Fazblaster to stun them and Monty is immune because of his glasses.
• In The Last of Us and its sequel, headshots are preferred seeing as how they are a One-Hit Kill against human enemies and early stages of the infected (Runners and Stalkers). Headshots also provide additional damage to the later stages of the infected (Clickers and Bloaters) while human enemies wearing helmets require you to either shoot the helmet off or use a firearm with more piercing power.
• Resident Evil:
  • In the remake of the original Resident Evil, blowing off a zombie's head was one of the ways to prevent a zombie from resurrecting as a Crimson Head (as opposed to burning it or blowing off its kneecaps). The headshots were random when using a handgun, but pointing a shotgun at a zombie's head was much more reliable. Additionally, Chris Redfield is more likely to secure a headshot than Jill Valentine.
  • The Resident Evil 2 (Remake) has a random chance that shooting a zombie in the head would blow it off and make sure they were definitely dead. The chance is low with the handguns, but the more powerful shotgun or magnum increased the odds of securing a fatal headshot.
  • Resident Evil 4:
    • Unless you are using a particularly powerful weapon, it is nearly impossible to kill any Ganados without shooting them in the head, and even then in Professional mode, it will still take around nine headshots to kill them. The only other way you are encouraged to shoot them is in the legs, so you can run up and melee them in the head (unless they have a mask on, in which case it takes around 60 headshots to kill them).
    • With the exception of the Wii version, where Leon's hand is as steady as you hold the Wiimote, there is fairly realistic gun sway. If you point a gun at a Ganado's head for too long, they will anticipate the shot and start covering their faces or move out of the way.
    • Strangely, despite being able to take multiple bullets to the face, anytime an enemy is killed by an attack directed at its head, their noggin will graphically blow it up, complete with a nauseating splatting sound and chunks of head laying on the ground (strangely, this often doesn't kill them instantly). This includes everything from .50 magnum shots to 9mm bullets to the PC elbowing them in the face.
    • Subverted with the Regenerators and Iron Maidens, where shooting them in the head does almost nothing. Even if you use an extremely powerful weapon, or blow its head off, it'll just regrow in a couple seconds.
  • In Resident Evil 5, headshots are powerful enough to take heads clean off but enemies can take a few seconds to die resulting in still being hit or it can turn them into a more dangerous enemy.
• SCP: Secret Laboratory: Headshots deal double damage to human players and SCP-049-2 instances, making them preferred for quickly dispatching them. The Revolver is of particular note, being capable of killing humans with a single headshot.

Third-Person Shooter

• Gears of War cannot be forgotten, seeing as a head shot sometimes results in Marcus Fenix (at least in the Campaign) saying Boom Headshot. Or other witty things such as, "look Ma, no face" in Gears 2. Everyone has headshot quotes including Baird's "Sorry, was that your spine?" and the epic "So good I should charge admission."
• Jet Force Gemini: If you aim correctly even with the pistol, you can blow an enemy's head off. You even get rewards for collecting heads. You can get a sniper rifle later on to make this easier.
• Lost Planet makes this the only way to liberate weapons from human enemies. Also, the Machine Gun does double damage if bullets hit the head.
• Monday Night Combat: One of the upgrades for the Gunner class is a face-shield that drops down when it deploys, making headshots only as effective as regular shots. This is invoked by name as a ProTag and earned for scoring ten headshot kills in a Crossfire match.
• Rune. Remember the zombies in Quake? Rune's zombies are just like that, except since the game has a medieval fantasy setting, your only real options are fire and decapitation. Since normal blows just make them fall over for a few seconds (and you can't decapitate them while they're down,) you don't have access to fire weapons for many levels, and only a spinning jump-slash will reliably decapitate them (plus they're otherwise just harmless but annoying goombas,) zombies get really old REALLY fast.
• S4 League features critical hits, which generally only occur when a player's shot connects with an enemy's head. On the other hand, S4 League's entire setting revolves around unashamedly presenting itself as an online 'sport' played in virtual stadiums over the internet. Which it is.
• The Star Wars: Battlefront games give a bonus weapon and medal of "Marksman" to a sniper who gains 4 head shots within one life. Snipers can often become Goddamned Bats because of the head shots. The trooper's weapon doesn't instantly kill somebody if you shoot them in the head, but a head shot does more damage to an enemy than a body shot.
• Syphon Filter had this, too, even explicitly telling you that headshots in manual aim were more lethal. Especially needed when enemies started wearing flak jackets, which could take dozens of rounds to penetrate. Nothing says 'I hate you' like a headshot with the lethal taser.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron: In singleplayer, the two other bots/cons with you make comment about how good your aim is, or the char you're playing makes a smart-arse remark about it. In Multiplayer, it's worth a score bonus. Likely will remain the same in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.

Vehicular Combat

• BattleTech: The maximum limit on head armor is the same (that is, quite low) for everybody regardless of size category. Weapons that can do enough focused damage to take out the head in a single shot are given a very high value compared to other weapons in the Battle Value system, used to calculate the overall effectiveness of a mech.
• Interstate '76 centered on armed cars doing battle with each other. In addition to the usual complement of machine guns, rockets, and the like, the player carried a handgun that could shoot at a ninety-degree angle to the direction of travel. Kills with the handgun were preferable because they not only killed the opponent instantly but left the opponent's vehicle intact to be scavenged at the end of the mission.
• MechWarrior:
  • Amusingly, the games (the computer games, at least) allow you to score headshots on Humongous Mecha. The head is a discreet section of the mech with its own armor and generally has very little protection. It's tiny, but an instant kill if you do manage to destroy it.
  • In the MechCommander video games, shooting a mech in the head tended to kill the pilot as well. If the mech was destroyed any other way, the pilot would usually eject the head as an escape pod and survive.
  • Some mechs have notoriously large cockpit hitboxes in their respective games. Specifically, MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries when regarding the Jenner, the Catapult, and the UrbanMech. It was not uncommon for players to hit the heads of these models of mechs without actually trying to, and killing the target in a few clustered headshots instead of slugging it out with them. Don't get any ideas that it's easy though, because unlike humans, the actual 'head' on mechs may not correspond exactly to where one would assume the head is and the randomness of the hit chances due to Hitbox Dissonance thanks to the games' design makes headshots an exercise in luck. Headshots are difficult enough that Mechwarrior Online considers getting a single headshot kill to be an achievement, whereas most other combat achievements require doing a particular strategy or technique at least fifty times.
• In the Transformers game for the PlayStation 2, there is a specific Mini-Con upgrade that allows for Sniper rifle Head shots that are OHKO's for a great many units, though it does take 3 Headshots for the Heavy units, and a couple of Enemies have no head, being non-humanoid Mecha.
• The Twisted Metal reboot introduces the Sniper Rifle as a weapon pickup. The longer you keep an aim on the target, the greater the damage will be dealt. However, if you take aim long enough and let the weapon fully charge, you shoot the driver's head instead and destroy any enemy's vehicle instantly, regardless of how tough or how much health it has left. The catch is that the charging time is freakin' long, plus hard to take aim in a fast-paced game. The Sawed-Off Shotgun sidearm and the Shotgun pickup have this effect as well. Shooting at the target's windscreen earns you the Point-Blank bonus which deals massive damage. It's essentially headshoting a car.

Visual Novels

• At the climax of Double Homework, Dr. Mosely/Zeta kills Dennis with a bullet to the head.
• This occurs a couple of times in Higurashi: When They Cry. In the Massacre chapter, Takano does this most notably to Satoko (because she had Satoko completely at her mercy). This also occurs in one of the Bad Endings of the console adaptations of the Beyond Midnight chapter. Granted that our only testimony on this is the receiver of the headshot, but in one of the bad endings the Yakuza appears to do this to Arakawa.

Wide Open Sandbox

• Headshots seem to do more damage in Bully too, when using the slingshot at least. A fully-charged shot to the head will drop almost any student.
• Dwarf Fortress: While it is certainly possible to kill things by severing their heads, in practice not only are called shots to the head with a ranged or thrown weapon considerably harder to achieve, but arrows and crossbow bolts will bounce off even a low-grade helmet. Melee attacks to the head, on the other hand, are significantly more reliable.
• In The Godfather headshots are a One-Hit Kill, allowing you to go through enemies more efficiently. Given that Tommygun and shotgun users show up quite early and you don't become Made of Iron until quite a bit later, this is important. You can even go through mob wars using just your .38 pea-shooter by taking cover and making precision headshots. Bonus assassination missions sometimes asked for headshots; this meant even more cash.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • This started creeping into the console version of starting with Grand Theft Auto III, which gave you an M16-type that could be freely aimed while other weapons either fired wherever you faced or targeted centre of mass(though the M16's insane rate of fire and damage output means that it will kill enemies very quickly regardless of where you aim). Both 3 and Vice City also had sniper rifles (although those would be instant kill even if you shot them in the foot). San Andreas let you aim any weapon manually, so even your lousy 9mm starter pistol can get headshots in. Any high-powered gun, such as the .50 cal Desert Eagle, any Shotgun, any Assault Rifle, or any Sniper Rifle, causes heads to pop.
  • Reaches its peak in Grand Theft Auto IV. Auto-target aims at center of mass while holding the auto-target button allows you to move the crosshair slightly. It becomes laughably easy to get headshots in this way, making many of the game's missions incredibly easy.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony requires you to score a certain number of headshots each mission (which requires a shootout) to get the 100% score. "Chinese Takeout" in fact requires every kill to be a headshot.
  • Similar to TBOGT, Grand Theft Auto V also uses headshots as a recurring gold medal objective.
    • In the Prologue, the very first kill you make in the game, a security guard holding a gun to Michael's head, has to be a headshot, otherwise the mission will fail.
    • In "Predator", the player has to kill all three targets, the surviving O'Neil Brothers, with a headshot.
    • In "Meltdown", Michael has to save Amanda and Tracey by killing their captors with a headshot.
    • In "The Wrap Up", FIB Agent Steve Haines kills his subordinate Andreas Sanchez with a near-point blank gunshot to the face when the latter reveals that he was a double agent working against Haines; note this was after Haines was shot in the leg by a tactical FIB agent. Later in the same mission, Trevor takes down a Merryweather attack helicopter by killing its pilot with a sniper headshot.
    • "The Third Way" requires you to kill Steve Haines with a headshot.
    • In the hunting activity exclusive to Trevor, you can shoot your prey in the head; however, most animals die with one shot regardless of where they're shot, and getting heart shots (center of mass) on bucks earns more money and points.
• Mount & Blade featured the ability to score headshots and deal critical damage with any projectile, including stones, arrows, crossbow bolts, throwing knives, throwing axes, and javelins. Now consider that sharp projectiles sometimes remain visible in an enemy's corpse...
• Red Dead Redemption:
  • As no one is really wearing armor in the game, it rewards this with increased damage. This generally turns rifle hits into one-shot kills, and being able to activate Dead Eye mode makes it all the easier to line up a shot to the head. The player is also rewarded with rather graphic damage models showing large holes blown in the victim's head, something that is not done for hits on any other part of the body.
  • A must in the Expansion Pack Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. Playing its campy zombie inspiration straight, John must shoot the Undead in the head to put them down for good. That, reducing them to a fine red paste, setting them on fire, or dousing them with holy water are all viable ways to end an Undead menace, but the headshot tends to be the go-to choice for players.
• In Red Dead Redemption II, headshots are still as gruesome as ever-scoring a hit with a shotgun or explosive bullets will cause the head to explode. In Chapter 3, Sean MacGuire is Killed Mid-Sentence by a surprise gunshot to the head by the Gray family. A little later, Arthur Morgan writes in his journal that Lenny Summers was killed by a gunshot to the head during the failed Saint Denis bank heist. And at the end of Chapter 6, if Arthur helps John Marston escape with low honor, Micah Bell shoots Arthur in the face as he calls Micah a fool.
• Scarface: The World Is Yours encouraged bold gameplay by rewarding you more Balls (which allowed you to build your Blind Rage/temporary invincibility meter more quickly). Using pistols gives a 4x bonus, as does using manual targeting (the auto-target aims for center of mass but can be tweaked to aim for specific body parts). And targeting some body parts gives you more Balls than others (fits the trope because the head is a high-value target—it and the nuts have the highest value).
• In Total Overdose, head shots give the most style points and are the only way to rack up combos for multiple kills. The most points are awarded for delivering a headshot while airborne, twisting 360 degrees, and getting another headshot before hitting the ground...even more if done leaping from a speeding vehicle.

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