Four Is Death / Video Games

Four Is Death in Video Games

• Abyss Crossing: Mona's undead clone of Reina has 44444 HP, on top of looking like a Jiangshi. Mona created this clone to help him destroy the world and rebuild it into his ideal one.
• Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies:
  • Yellow 4 is the first story-significant enemy who gets shot down by the main character, thanks to her plane being in disrepair.
  • The opposing side in 04 give Mobius One two prominent nicknames. One is "the Grim Reaper"; so the player character in the fourth game is death.
  • In a meta example, this is the reason why the game is numbered 04 rather than just 4.
• Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown:
  • Mission 4, where you try to rescue former president Harling from deep inside enemy territory. It calls back to a similar mission in Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, but this time it doesn't end very well. Harling is dead and player character Trigger is blamed for it, sending him to...
  • ...the 444th Squadron, need we say more? Driving this home, characters insistently refer to this penal unit as "four-four-four" rather than "four-forty-four" or "The 444th". Spare Squadron, a ragtag bunch of convicts flying salvaged boneyard fighters, are considered expendable and sent on suicide missions too dangerous for regular forces, made to redeem themselves for their crimes or die trying. The latter is much, much more common than the former.
• In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the music that plays at 4 AM is very creepy and a potent source of Nightmare Fuel, to the point of inspiring several Creepypasta Dream Towns. Also, Club LOL's Japanese name, "Club 444", actually reads as "Club Shisho" (run by Dr. Shrunk, whose Japanese name is Shisho). But an alternative reading of the Japanese name, if read directly, can really mean "Club Death-Death-Death".
• In Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, the "names" of the dragons D-Constructs are simply numbers in Gratuitous Russian. "Odjn" (One) is linked to the hero. "Dva" (Two, mistranslated as "Dover") is the Superboss. And Chetyre (Four) is, of course, the Big Bad.
• Castlevania's Death generally has 444 or 4444 HP. Death-themed items play by this trope as well. The Book of Death in Portrait of Ruin has 44 ATK, while Death's Robe in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow boosts STR, CON and LUCK by 4 (and Int by 13!). Death's Ring is especially noteworthy, as it boosts 4 different stats by 44 each but turns you into a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
• Dark Savior loves this trope. The Golden Castle tells the story of the four slain daughters of the merchant who built the castle. While the game's five parallels each have their individual themes and goals, the fourth one revolves around Garian fighting for his very existence when it's threatened by the appearance of his Doppelgänger. Worse, his four bounty hunter friends have arrived on Jailer's Island to save him, and he must race against the clock through four castles to save them from four deadly criminals, and they will die if you don't reach them in time. It's also the only parallel that sees the destruction of Jailer's Island.
  • Demon's Souls: you're expected to obtain the four Archdemon souls by defeating Maiden Astraea, the Old Monk, the Dragon God, and the Storm King, before ascending to the Boletaria Castle tower to fight False King Allant. (This was probably unintentional; not only was there originally going to be a sixth world with its own Archdemon, you're quite welcome to fight Allant at any point after beating just one Archdemon; it's just really inadvisable because he's meant to be the hardest fight by far.)
  • Dark Souls 1: you must obtain the four Lord Souls by defeating Seath the Scaleless, Gravelord Nito, the Witch of Izalith, and the Four Kings, before ascending to the Kiln of the First Flame to fight Gwyn. The Four Kings count as an example in their own right. They and their kingdoms were all consumed by the Abyss.
  • Dark Souls 2: you must obtain the four Great Souls by defeating the Lost Sinner, the Old Iron King, the Duke's Dear, and the Rotten, before ascending to the Throne of Want to fight Queen Nashandra.
  • Dark Souls 3: you must obtain the four Cinders of a Lord by defeating the Abyss Watchers, Yhorm the Giant, Aldrich the Devourer, and the Twin Princes, before ascending to the Kiln of the First Flame to fight the Soul of Cinder.
• Devil May Cry 5: Mission 19, the final Duel to the Death confrontation between Dante and Vergil, takes place at 4:04 p.m, and the flashback of Eva hiding a child Dante inside a closet while their home is attacked takes place at 4:44 a.m. The former is Subverted thanks to Nero invoking the Everybody Lives trope, but the latter incident plays this trope straight as the final moments heard during the flashback had Eva screaming offscreen, while a newspaper excerpt confirmed Eva's corpse was charred when it was found.
• In the Shmup "Diadra Empty", flying dangerously close to one of the last bosses will give you a bonus called "Abyss Walker", worth 44,444 points.
• Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors: If Frieza's fittingly named Death Ball misses the opponent and hits the ground instead, the background music switches to ominous rumbling and the opponent has 44 seconds to KO him before the planet they're fighting on blows up, letting Frieza win by default.
• In Fate/EXTRA, the protagonist learns this applies to getting into the Holy Grail War: potential Masters had four days to figure out something was wrong with their school, investigate, and survive a qualifying battle. If they failed to succeed at this after four days, well... they weren't going ANYWHERE.
• Fate/Grand Order reveals that Primate Murder, long known by Nasuverse veterans as the ultimate killer of humans, is the fourth of humanity's seven great evils. Your Team Pet Fou(r) is its primordial form.
• Final Fantasy has a history of the fourth character not having a good fate.
  • Final Fantasy II gives its fourth slot to a rotating list of Guest star party members. Most leave the party dead, though the first just appears dead for most of the game.
  • Final Fantasy IV has Tellah as the fourth character, though Kain's disappearance disguises it a bit. He is the only one to die, in spite of the myriad close calls the rest of the cast outside the final party get into.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Aerith is the fourth party character here and dies by the hands of Sephiroth.
    • Also, Master Tonberry, a robed green lizard like thing carrying a butcher knife and lantern that will slowly advance on your party before one hit killing you with said knife, or attack with 'Everyone's Grudge' doing 1 damage for each enemy a character has killed in the game, had 44,444HP in *Final Fantasy VII.
• Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake feature Jedah, a villain who is completely invulnerable to attack except every fourth turn or every fourth time he is attacked, respectively.
• First Encounter Assault Recon:
  • The Player Character's teammates tend to die in circumstances involving the number 4. The Point Man's Delta Force escort is killed right at the start of Interval 04; in Extraction Point, SFOD-D Douglas Holiday dies at the end of the fourth level, and Jin Sun-Kwon is found dead in the single level of Interval 04; and Lt. Steve Chen gets killed midway through the first level of Interval 04 of Perseus Mandate.
  • Both levels in Interval 04 take place in a dead district of Fairport buried under an earthquake decades ago. Save for one single instance at the very end where you fight a Nightcrawler squad, the only enemies are supernatural apparitions, and scary events are abundant all the way to the end. Also, it takes place right after the Origin Facility explodes and turns Fairport into a Ghost City.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: There are four animatronic characters who are all out to kill you. The Phone Guy gets killed on the fourth night. The series itself stop numbering games at the fourth game.
  • Hints in the game suggest that in Five Nights at Freddy's 4, you're playing as a child on his death bed.
• In Ghost Trick, main character Sissel can use his powers to rewind time to exactly four minutes before a person's death in order to attempt to prevent it.
• God Hand's Dynamic Difficulty goes through four levels: 1, 2, 3, and Die.
• In Granblue Fantasy:
  • Feower/Quatre is the Eternal themed after the number four (as his name is even an easy indication from the Eternals' Numerical Theme Naming). His initial Charge Attack is named Memento Mori, which translates to "Remember, you will die" from Latin. Inverted after his 5★ upgrade, as it gets renamed to Memento Vita, or "Remember, you will live".
  • The summon Death, in exchange for knocking out the fourth character in your party, deals damage to all enemies and grants guaranteed multiple attacks to the rest of the party. Once Death is upgraded to 4★, this buff lasts for four turns.
• Hangaroo: Pick four incorrect letters in a round, and the kangaroo gets hanged.
• A good number of Harvest Moon games do evil things to you at precisely 4:44 when you perform a specific action. For example: looking at the TV in Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. This feature is often removed from the US version, and in some cases is related to more serious glitches caused by a bad removal! Maybe it is cursed. Also, if you go to your doghouse at 4.44am in Harvest Moon DS sends you into some sort of battle game with all the main bachelorettes.
• A Hat in Time: Despite being the third Chapter, Subcon Forest has examples of these:
  • In Act 1, the Snatcher will threaten Hat Kid to make her sign his contract, and if she refuses four times, he'll kill her.
  • Act 4 is one of the deadliest of the game, as Hat Kid is forbidden to use her powers when she infiltrates a manor haunted by Queen Vanessa, an extremely disturbed old witch who freezes her victims to death.
• Haunting Ground has four psychotic stalkers pursuing the main character trying to kill her.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven: Guido Mista's fear of the number 4, listed above in anime, is also present in both of his playable appearances: In both games he has a tracker of how many bullets he has and, if he has 4 bullets for more than a second he'll start losing heart gauge, a similar effect as when a downed character gets taunted.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In the original game, the Hades Cup is the fourth tournament at Olympus Coliseum. Aside from the fact that the Lord of the Dead is behind the tournament and part of it, the whole thing is harder and longer than the past three combined, having 50 matches instead of 10 with every tenth one being a boss battle. Hades himself is the fourth of these bosses.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Vexen, the fourth member of Organization XIII, is the first one to die, assassinated by Axel when he attempts to reveal Marluxia's trap—and more subtly, Roxas's existence—to Sora. Also, the fourth and final, in Sora's story, member you fight in Chain of Memories is Marluxia himself. Fitting, what with having a Sinister Scythe and all.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, the final battle of the hardest Coliseum tournament in the game is against Hades...but the penultimate battle is against four brutal opponents: Leon, Yuffie, Tifa, and Cloud, all at once. Good luck.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the No Heart Superboss can insert a secret command called Wrath of Darkness in your deck. Every time you use it, you'll be inflicted with a status effect—use it four times, you'll be inflicted with Doom, which will almost be an instant kill.
• In La-Mulana, the last of the four key seals which must be found is the Death Seal, whose symbol contains the game's numeral 4. However, the Sage of Death (who unlocks the path to the Death Seal) will likely be the first of the four sages the player has to talk to.
• In League of Legends, the character Jhin is heavily based on this motif, with nearly every aspect of the character being based on this, from the number of shots in his pistol, the number of his active abilities, to the number of shots in his abilities. He is also from an Asian-inspired region in the lore, furthering his connection to this trope, as well as being a "virtuoso" with lots of musical themes revolving around him.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV has Rean, in his fourth game as the protagonist, ends up dying at the end of the normal ending of the game. He's joined by both Crow and Millium.
• The Legend of Zelda usually brings in themes of death and darkness in the fourth dungeon of various installments:
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: The fourth palace, the Maze Island Palace which is found in a labyrinthine island in East Hyrule, is an eerie, purple-colored palace overrun by Wizzrobes and undead enemies.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: It takes four Silver Arrows to destroy Ganon.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
    • The fourth dungeon in the game overall is the Forest Temple, and you'll spend most of it hunting the four Poe Sisters who have sealed the way to the boss. Furthermore, the fourth sister splits into four clones to attack. Also, the temple's boss is Phantom Ganon, a ghastly construct modeled after one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.
    • The fourth dungeon that Adult Link goes through is the Shadow Temple, which deals with the undead and features torture equipment in several rooms. According to lore, this place is a reminder of the darkest chapters in the history of Hyrule. However, like all temples, its Sage aims to protect Hyrule and assists the others in the process to seal Ganon after his defeat.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The game is built on this trope:
    • Clock Town has four districts, there are four temples in the four areas outside of Clock Town where four giants are imprisoned and which require four separate songs to unlock, Link has four forms that he shape-shifts between throughout the game, and the game is set across four days. At the dawn of the fourth day, the moon will crash down and destroy everything unless all four giants are freed to stop it, or unless Link turns back time to dawn of the first day.
    • The theme is taken furthest in the fourth area, Ikana Canyon. You have to fraternize with skeletons, mummies, and ghosts to navigate the area, and it carries an overall bleak atmosphere everywhere but the temple, which being themed around light and sky, represents death in a different way. You also need four masks in this area^note The Garo Mask to gain entrance and gather information from the lingering Garo spirits; the Captain's Hat to speak with Stalchildren and obtain the Song of Storms from Beneath the Graveyard; the Gibdo Mask to speak with Gibdos and navigate Beneath the Well to the Ancient Castle of Ikana; and the Giant's Mask that allows Link to grow to tremendous size in the Stone Tower boss's lair (and absolutely nowhere else; it's not strictly required to beat Twinmold, but not using it is a Self-Imposed Challenge), you defeat four undead denizens before entering the Stone Tower (Keeta, Flat, Sharp, and Igos du Ikana), and the song you use to navigate the Stone Tower and reach the temple lets you create four statues. Furthermore, the Poe Collector presides over two areas with four optional bosses each: the aforementioned Poe Sisters in one and the first mini-boss of each temple in the other.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, there are six coral reefs, known as One-, Two-, Three-, Four-, Five- and Six-Eyed Reefs. Four-Eyed Reef is the closest to Forsaken Fortress, which serves as the base of operations of the Big Bad. In addition, Forsaken Fortress itself is the fourth dungeon in the game completion-wise^note it's the first appearance-wise, and its surroundings are under a curse that leaves it in perpetual nighttime; even Tetra and her pirate crew hesitate to approach it, and Lenzo the photographer advises Link against getting there as well. Lastly, out of all fragments in which the Triforce of Courage was split, the fourth is retrieved after finding the chart that lies inside the dreaded, undead-themed Ghost Ship.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
    • The Arbiter's Grounds, which serves as the game's fourth dungeon, is an ancient gibbet located in the desert where the worst criminals of Hyrule are housed and executed; it is overrun by spectral beings (from four larger-than-usual Poes to the Mini-Boss, Death Sword), skeletal monsters (Bubbles, Stalfos and the giant skeletal dragon, Stallord, who serves as the Boss) and living mummies. In addition, the dungeon reuses the same concept as Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple: the aforementioned four Poes seal the way to the boss, as well as the item needed to defeat it (the Spinner), and Link has to hunt down and defeat them to reopen the gate, with the last one having the ability to split into four clones. The dungeon is also home to the Mirror of Twilight, which serves as the portal leading to the Twilight Realm, where many of its inmates were exiled, including Ganondorf.
    • Both the Fused Shadows and the Mirror of Twilight, artifacts on the decidedly dark side, are split into four pieces. Midna's helmet is one-fourth of the Fused Shadows and she enlists Link's help to seek out the remaining three to take back her kingdom from Zant, originally used by three of the four Light Spirits to seal away the Dark Interlopers during the Interloper War, now guarded by the first three bosses of the game, but are then stolen by Zant. As far as the Mirror of Twilight, when Link and Midna finish exploring the Arbiter's Grounds and reach the Mirror Chamber, they find only one-fourth of the mirror intact, having been fragmented by Zant and preventing them from entering the Twilight Realm^note only the real leader of the Twili, Midna herself, can utterly shatter the Mirror of Twilight, and the fact that Zant could only break it into shards was proof of his false kingship, prompting another adventure to recover the remaining three shards so they can finally enter the Twilight Realm, face down Zant and reclaim the stolen Fused Shadows.
    • Averted with King Bulblin, a secondary villain serving the main antagonist and leader of the orc-like Bulblins that menace you throughout the game. You fight him a total of four times, and even knocking him off his giant boar mount and into a deep ravine, twice, only breaks off one of his horns and he comes back for a rematch. Finally, as the miniboss of the very last dungeon in the game, you defeat him once and for all... because he finally concedes that Link is the stronger warrior and willingly surrenders, giving Link the key he needs to continue. He gives up on supporting the forces of evil in Hyrule because he follows the strongest side, which he now understands is you; the credits imply that he and the rest of the Bulblins live peacefully with the other of the peoples of Hyrule from then on.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: The fourth dungeon is the Ghost Ship, which steals the life force of any unfortunate victim who approaches it, and the dungeon's boss is a quartet of ghastly demons.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The fourth dungeon is the Ancient Cistern, a sacred location which is themed around life and death. Whereas the main floor features a vibrant design and atmosphere, the basement is a grim necropolis that features Cursed Bokoblins and deadly pools of toxic fluid.
• Leisure Suit Larry has no 4; skips right to 5. According to Al Lowe what started as a flippant comment about finishing the original trilogy turned into a marketing coup. Sequels include in-game references to the "lost" game as "Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies." It’s even used as a plot point in Space Quest 4.
• ''Libraryof Ruina" features the Shi Association of Fixers, who are assassins. Each Association is named after a number in a certain language, the Shi are 4 in Japanese.
• Maldita Castilla locks you into a bad ending if you use four continues.
  YOU USED 4 CREDITS, KEEP CONTINUING AT THE COST OF YOUR SOUL!
• Makeruna! Makendou Z features four demon queens during the second half of the game: Honmanimou (a big-breasted cow woman), Honmadecker (a prison wardeness, who upon defeat turns out to be Doro's wife, now back to her senses), Honmadengunner (a cyborg), and Honmayaner (an archer woman). Main villain Dr. Mud also tried to enslave Makenkah (whose real name was Kaimyouji Eizan) as a fourth cyborg general of his, the other three being Dinosaur, Chuuko, and Shou. Even further, this game is the fourth installment of the Makendou series (if you count the OAV), and seems slightly darker and edgier than the previous two games, ending with the school building collapsing (with who knows how many people inside).
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man Battle Network 6 features EraseMan.EXE (aptly named KillerMan.EXE in the original Japanese version), an assassin Navi whose design draws on shinigami. When Mega Man fuses with EraseMan, he gains the ability to instantly kill viruses when the digit 4 is in their HP. As for Navis, they get an HP-sapping bug that eventually does them in.
  • The first game has Wily acquire four superprograms to create the Life Virus. Later on, Battle Network 4 has the impending impact of a meteor that will wipe out Planet Earth — which turns out to be an insanely powerful and near-omnipresent robot called Duo.
• Subverted in the Monster Hunter series. The maximum number of players on a single hunt is four. This is justified in-universe by a tradition that it's unlucky for five hunters to go out together (a fatal incident involving a Lao-Shan Lung hunting quest prior to the events of the original game led the Guild to officially prohibit hunts performed by groups of over four).
• In Nanashi no Game, Riko at one point gets trapped on a creepy subway where every car is Car #4. She dies at the end of that chapter. In addition, the company that created the game is located on the fourth floor of the building it's in — and it's been closed for four years, which you find out from the fourth e-mail you receive on the fourth day.
• The Fantasy Pantheon in Nexus Clash has nine members, with three each for Good, Evil and the Unaligned. It had four for each alignment at some point, but on all three cases the fourth deity is dead or missing. In addition, the pantheon's death god Hashaa is represented in art by a four-star constellation.
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle has Margaret, who is the 4th ranked assassin of the UAA, wields two gun/scythe hybrids and even has boss music that alludes to this trope.
• Pac-Man has four ghostly monsters that stalk the protagonist.
• In Persona 3, October 4th is a very, very bad day; not only is it the anniversary of Ken's mother's death, it's the day when Ken plans to murder Shinjiro in revenge; he doesn't go through with it, but then Takaya attempts to murder Ken, only for Shinjiro to take the bullets instead and die. Additionally, The Reaper has 4,444 hit points.
• In Persona 5, the fourth Palace is a pyramid in the middle of a barren desert, showing that the suicidal shut-in it belongs to sees her house as her tomb.
• In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, the Evil Spirit Club is an exhibit made by the 2nd year Class 4 at Yasogami High - except that there's only three 2nd year classes at that school. The school does have a haunted house exhibit (which you visit with Ayame if you're part of the school band), but it isn't done by Class 2-4.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Red and Blue: Lavender Town is associated with death because of the ghost-filled Pokémon Tower, is known as Shion Town in Japan. Shi and Yon are two readings for the kanji 四.
  • Pokémon Gold and Silver:
    • Morty, the fourth Gym Leader in Johto, is a Ghost-type specialist who has four Pokémon on his team.
    • Karen, the fourth member of the Elite Four, is a Dark-type specialist^note while it is not associated to death as much as Ghost-type, its dishonorable nature, some of Karen's Pokémon (Murkrow and Houndoom) subtly invoke death in their inspirations, and in both her matches, she has one Ghost-type to balance her team: in a regular playthrough, her fourth Pokémon is a Gengar, and in her rematch in the remake, her fourth is a Spiritomb.
  • In Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, the Incredible Machine atop Altru Tower normally has three power levels, the highest of which allows it to hypnotize Pokémon from a radius of 500 miles. The Big Bad, after he unleashes Darkrai, pushes the Incredible Machine one level further: Level "Dark", which supposedly has more than enough power for him to assert complete control over the legendary Shadow Pokémon...or so he thinks. And there's the Go-Rock Quad from the original Pokémon Ranger game.
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl does it subtly. Platinum introduced a fourth Admin into the astronomy-themed Team Galactic. His name? Pluto (Charon in English), the planet/moon named after the god of death or his ferryman. Additionally, Sendoff Spring, where you can find Turnback Cave which leads to Giratina and the Distortion World, is described on the Town Map as "The fourth lake of Sinnoh that was kept secret."
• Punch-Out!!: In the Wii version, one of the challenges in Exhibition Mode requires you to defeat Japanese boxer Piston Hondo after blocking 44 jabs.
• In Puzzle & Dragons Z, allowing an enemy Anubis to take its turn will cause it to use the Banish to Hell skill, which inflicts a fixed 44444 damage. The first time you encounter it, it guarantees a One-Hit Kill.
• Resident Evil:
  • In Resident Evil 2, an unlockable minigame, the 4th Survivor features an Umbrella Soldier codenamed Hunk. In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis's epilogue files, it's revealed that Hunk is nicknamed "Mister Death", and has a habit of being the only member of his squad to survive.
  • Hunk comes back as one of the four characters in the Mercenaries mode of Resident Evil 4. Consequentially, the fourth stage has the deadliest enemy in the game, which can spawn twice in a run; completing said stage also unlocks Albert Wesker, the Big Bad of the majority of the RE games (though not in that game itself).
  • The Keeper's Diary in the first game. Since it's his own personal Apocalyptic Log, the inexplicable "4" at the top of the last entry may have been a mistranslation. Since the keeper attacks you before you get a chance to read the diary, it can mean death for you, too.
  • In the REmake, you only get to see the last few pages of Lisa Trevor's journal while picking it up in the cabin near the cemetery. When combined with the remaining pages that you later find elsewhere, they form an Apocalyptic Log, which slowly deteriorates into illiterate writing as the dates proceed, as a Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma, until it ends with the same inexplicable numeral "4" at the top of the last entry as in the Keeper's Diary. Since Lisa attacks you as you are about to leave the cabin after reading the last page of her journal, it can also mean death for you.
• Shade: Wrath of Angels have the backstory where four ancient angels who oversees balance between humans and demons have their peace disturbed by their fourth member, the power-hungry Dark Angel, destroying all except the Angel of Faith who serves as your benefactor when the Dark Angel abducted the entire population of a small town, your brother included. Then it turns out the Angel of Faith is actually the Dark Angel, using you to collect the souls for her; in the final battle the other three lawful angels suddenly arrives to assist you.
• In Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, the fourth island that Shantae travels to is Mud Bog Island, which contains the Village of Lost Souls.
• Silent Hill
  • In Silent Hill, an elevator in an Abandoned Hospital that previously had only three floors suddenly gains a fourth floor button. Travelling to this "fourth floor" triggers a trip to the town's hellish Dark World.
  • In Silent Hill 2, the fourth time that James meets Eddie and Angela, they die.
• Invoked in Sleeping Dogs (2012), when Wei and Old Salty Crab use a triad boss' superstitious beliefs and adherence to feng shui by vandalizing his home, in particular smashing all but four decorative vases and setting the clock to read 4:44. The "Year of the Snake" DLC also has a cultist car rigged with a bomb that has "44" in its license plate, which causes the police dispatcher to audibly wonder "who ever heard of a license plate with two fours in it?".
• In Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, one of the safes has the code being 4... 4....... 4... Bentley says he "had to overcome some personal demons to calculate this one".
• A variant in the early Splinter Cell games, where Five is Death, in defense of Four. In-universe terminology refers to four general freedoms (of speech, of religion, from want, and from fear), with the "Fifth Freedom" being used as a Deadly Euphemism for doing whatever is necessary to defend the other four.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door:
    • Mario's quest for the fourth Crystal Star takes him to the Creepy Steeple located in the dark and grim Twilight Town, which is home to a troublemaking, shapeshifting ghost named Doopliss, who had been turning the town's residents into pigs for his personal amusement, and then, would steal Mario's identity and teammates and reduce him to shadow form.
    • Cabin 004 of the Excess Express, which is next door to Mario's cabin, is where Ghost T. resides in. He died in there.
  • In Super Paper Mario, the Flower People's civilization went into the Dark Ages in their year 444. You have to pay 4 coins for the ferryman to ferry you across River Twygz.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy, the rolling ball stages are full of massive iron dice blocks threatening to knock you into the abyss. Every side on these dice blocks read four.
• In Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero and Import Tuner Challenge, the number for the final boss is "400", connecting the number "4" to the unlucky and demonic number.
• Touhou Project Superboss Raiko Horikawa numbers her magical attacks: First Drum, Second Drum, etc. Her fourth attack is "Death Drum".
• In the Japanese escape-the-room game U-Sensor 2, you have to find a way out of a deserted office building in which it's rumored that there was a murder on the fourth floor in spite of the elevator not having a button available for that floor. It turns out that a vengeful ghost haunts that seemingly nonexistent floor and will kill you if you don't prevent the elevator from stopping at the fourth floor during the endgame. If you get the Bad Ending where the ghost kills you, your character sprite will be shown turning around exactly four times in the elevator before the ghost catches him.
• Rare Western example: in Ultima II, while travelling through space, hyperwarping to coordinates 4-4-4 will send your spaceship crashing into the Sun resulting in instant death.
• The World Ends with You has Mitsuki Konishi, aka Tigris Cantus, who likewise has 4444 HP.
• In NEO: The World Ends with You, the foretold Inversion of Shibuya takes place at 4:44:44 PM on the Final Day of the third week. Seventh day minus third week is four, for that extra-fatal kick.
• World of Warcraft: Sylvanas Windrunner, the leader of the undead Forsaken race, became the Horde's fourth warchief in Legion.
• In the 2011 version of You Don't Know Jack, the segue into the fourth question features a bunch of dancing 4s. In one game, one of the 4s is shot and killed, and subsequent episodes feature a crime scene, the remaining 4s dancing sadly without the other 4, and finally, a graveyard where the 4's funeral is being held.

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