Impaled With Extreme Prejudice / Video Games

• AdventureQuest Worlds has the DragonSlayer class. One of its class abilities is Impale. What makes it worthy of this trope is that the ability can be done with a fish.
• In Amea, poor Garrick is impaled with a spear through his back, which leaves his body standing in the middle of the frozen plain.
• In Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica Croix Bartel's Limit Break has him doing this with maximum PENETRATION!!!
• Assassin's Creed
  • In Assassin's Creed II, the majority of Ezio's spear counter-kills involve spearing the enemies that come his way as an especially brutal way of finishing them off. You can also throw spears at the enemies for long-range impalement.
  • In Assassin's Creed III, musket bayonets serve a similar purpose. More appropriately to the trope, in the final Sequence, Connor chases the Final Boss into a burning, half-built ship. They both fall through a collapsing floor and Connor is impaled by a large pole. This injury impairs him for the rest of the game and, judging by the epilogue, he's still suffering from it years later.
• The bad ending of the Super Mario World romhack O Ninja Negro (the 2012 version) has this happen to Joi (the protagonist), just because you didn't find the secret exit of the Disc-One Final Dungeon.
• One of the kill animations in Among Us has the impostor stab the victim with a long, spear-like tongue.
• In Batman: Arkham City, Ra's Al Ghul. Not only does he get stabbed by his sword, he also gets impaled on the gates of Arkham City!
• BioShock:
  • In the first game, this is revealed to be the fate of Dr. Yi Suchong when you find his corpse on his desk impaled by a Big Daddy's drill. In this case it was a Karmic Death, as the Big Daddy killed him in response to him hurting its Little Sister. In the first game you only hear his death over an audio diary, but in BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode 2 you get to see it firsthand; the Big Daddy was the one Elizabeth just helped and the Little Sister that Suchong hit was one of the two unbonded Little Sisters that Elizabeth found next to the Big Daddy.
  • In BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1, the campaign ends as Booker/Comstock is impaled from behind by another Big Daddy.
• In Black Rock Shooter: The Game, the eponymous BRS impales White Rock Shooter through the lower back. It does absolutely nothing, and she then proceeds to walk off of the blade as if it never happened. But what else would be expected of the Final Boss?
• Karma bites Commandant Steele in the ass in Borderlands. The Vault she killed and betrayed people for turns out to be the prison for an Eldritch Abomination. The monster stabs her from behind and kills her before she can even engage the Vault Hunters. What should be gruesome aftermath instead becomes Bloody Hilarious Bloodless Carnage in the Claptrap's New Robot Revolution DLC, when Commandant Steele's corpse has been found, returns to life as a Claptrapped boss encounter, gets Unpaused, and finally freaks out upon discovering the evidence of the originally fatal impalement.

  "WHY IS THIS HOLE HERE?!"

• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has a dark Non-Standard Game Over scene where the Big Bad impales Catie, lifts her into the air with his sword, and taunts her while she slowly bleeds to death. You get this ending by attempting to show him mercy during the final duel.
• This happens in several of the deaths in Brain Dead 13.
• Lars Halford is killed by Lord Doviculus this way in Brütal Legend.
• In Bullet Witch, Alicia is able to summon a small field of bloody spears that burst up from the ground and impale all foes within the area of effect.
• In the first boss battle of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Gabriel impales a Warg on a nearby log. In another boss battle, he stabs the boss with his cross, then impales it on a spire and finishes it by impaling it through the heart and breaking off the tip of the stake on his cross. After all, he is Dracula, which was based on Vlad the Impaler.
  • Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 has you playing as Dracula, who regularly stabs enemies straight through the head / chest / etc. with his sword.
• Choo-Choo Charles: This is how Charles is killed in the end. After being lured to a bridge filled with explosives, Charles dies when the bridge blows up and he plummets into a canyon, where he's impaled through a wooden spike face first.
• This is a common tactic of the Tall Man in the Chzo Mythos games. That four-bladed scythe of his is bad enough, but impaling Mbouta through the face and out the back of his head with the blunt end of the shaft is worse. Even worse is when he murders Owen Somerset by stabbing him through the top of his head with the blunt end of the scythe again such that the other end comes out the...other end. It's every bit as gruesome as it sounds.
• In Code Vein, each Blood Veil can perform drain attacks, many of which involve various forms of impalement. The truest expression of this trope, however, lies in the "Ivy" type blood veils; their Back Stab impales the opponent on a seven-foot-tall blade bursting from the ground and lifting their helpless body into the air, followed by the tip exploding into a starburst of blades, tearing their way outwards.
• In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Big Bad Kane is impaled on a spike by the protagonist at the climax. This being Kane, he doesn't stay that way.
• A potential lifestyle your character can adopt in Crusader Kings II. This tends to reduce other characters' opinions of you.
• In Dark Messiah, Arantir impales Sareth on a stone spike after their meeting in Asha's temple.
• The primary goal of the killers in Dead by Daylight is to incapacitate the survivors and impale them on a meat hook, so that the Entity can be able to finish the deed by impaling them with more spikes.
• One of the many ways Isaac Clarke can meet his grisly end at the hands of the Necromorphs in Dead Space. Specifically, the Hunter or Ubermorph variants will impale him on their giant blade arms, lift him in the air, stab him a couple more times with the other arm, slice his torso in half, and then finally finish him off with decapitation. While those two particular Necromorphs cannot be killed (the whole point is to run away from them so you don't meet that particular fate), in Dead Space 2 you can actually use a "Javelin Gun" to both decapitate and impale any other Necromorph, giving the bastard creatures a taste of their own medicine for a change.
• Demon's Souls has an example where a boss named Penetrator used his sword to impale the Fat Official that you have been chasing throughout the entire level. And he can do it to you too with the same results. You can also do this to the enemies too.
  • Dark Souls, Dragonslayer Onstein's most dangerous attack does this to the player while simultaneously shocking them with lightning. Abysswalker Artorias is seen doing this to a monster in one of the trailers for the Updated Re-release.
  • In Dark Souls II, a backstab with a spear or lance brutally impales the victim right through their torso and lifts them up before dropping them.
• In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jensen, can have blades come out of his mechanical arms during lethal takedowns, which he uses against his enemies in a manner that rivals Assassin's Creed in brutality. He can also take down two enemies at the same time for double Video Game Cruelty Potential.
  • The sequel allows Adam to shoot his blades from his arms, the trailer has a hapless mook getting impaled to the wall by a blade.
• It's a Running Gag in the Devil May Cry series. Not only does it happen in every game except the one that doesn't exist, Dante always responds the same way: by pulling himself up along the blade of the sword, through the hilt or by just simply yanking the sword back out.
  • In Devil May Cry, Dante gets impaled by his own sword Force Edge by Trish right at the start, and is introduced to his Empathic Weapon Alastor in this fashion.
  • In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, taking his own sword Rebellion through the chest is how Dante awakens his Devil Trigger powers.
  • In Devil May Cry 4, Nero is the one who gains the Devil Trigger, although it is not his own sword that impales him. Nero also manages to pin Dante to a statue of his father via Rebellion delivered at range with high velocity during their first major fight, but being a Made of Iron half-demon badass, this doesn't really faze Dante.
  • In Devil May Cry 5, this happens repeatedly.
    • Taking his own sword Yamato through the chest is how Vergil separated his demon and human halves into two separate beings: V and Urizen.
    • Taking his own sword Rebellion through the chest is how Dante awakens his Sin Devil Trigger powers.
    • During the Final Boss fight, using the Buster move on the boss will quickly result in Nero being impaled with the boss's sword. Nero promptly pulls the sword out of his body (taking no damage in the process) and returns the favor (taking out a significant chunk of the boss's health).
• Most spear skills in Disgaea 4 either begin or end with the opponent being run through. The most painful looking one of them has the character piledrive the target through their spear after planting it in the ground.
• Doom
  • In Doom II, impaled people can be seen in many places, some of which are still alive and wriggling.
  • In Doom Eternal, Doomguy skewers Davoth through the chest with the Doomblade as a Finishing Move.
• Dragon Age II.:
  • This is one of the Arishok's attacks. He lifts Hawke up into the air on the point of his sword and thrusts up and down several times. Good thing Hawke is Made of Iron; a real person or NPC would not get up from that if they survived at all (which Hawke may not if the attack comes at a bad time).
  • The Final Boss, Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard, also does this, with a mini-speech for you or the unfortunate party member they've grabbed (there's an And Your Little Dog, Too! vibe if it's your love interest). More importantly, Meredith will kill Bethany in the Templar endgame should Bethany have ended up a Circle Mage unless you stand in her way.
• Dragon Age: Origins:
  • Killing an enemy with a melee attack will sometimes result in a short death sequence that can involve this; notable against Ogres, where the character delivering the attack will climb up them and knock them prone before killing them by stabbing them through the roof of their mouth. Hilariously, the game doesn't actually track what kind of melee weapon is used, so it's entirely possible to do this using a two-handed war hammer.
  • Played for laughs when Brother Genitivi is asked if the ancient temple of Andraste's Ashes is really cursed, and the Maker will punish infidels who set foot inside it:
  Brother Genitivi: After all, no one wants to hear "Willie toiled for many a year to perfect the curious mechanisms that would send a sharpened spike up the arse of the unwary intruder."
• In Drakengard's fifth ending, Angelus ends up impaled on the tip of a Tokyo skyscraper after being shot down by Japanese fighter jets. Talk about your Downer Ending.
• Dwarf Fortress: Menacing spike traps are hilarious about this. If a spike trap is activated while someone is standing on it, something bad will happen to that person. It gets worse for them as the material of the spike gets nastier. For added hilarity, falling from a higher level onto an active menacing spike - say, because the bridge the goblins were standing on was retracted - it counts as a successful activation too.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • In the series' backstory, this was the fate of the Snow Prince, the legendary Falmer (Snow Elf) warrior who nearly single-handedly turned the tide of the Battle of the Moesring in Solstheim against the invading Atmorans, Precursors of the modern Nords, who were attempting to exterminate the Falmer. The Snow Prince killed many of the Atmoran heroes during the battle, however, the daughter of one of the slain warriors threw her mother's sword in grief, impaling the Snow Prince through the chest.
  • Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge, uses this as a favored means of executing those who've earned his ire, doing so with his Eldritch Combat Tentacles. In Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC, he does this to Storn, the Skaal chieftain and later to Miraak, his former champion who was attempting to Starscream him.
• Ghost Farm in Fallout 2 is surrounded with several rows of stakes with impaled corpses to scare off would-be intruders. Those are dummies, but it's hard to notice. Under certain circumstances the "bodies" may provoke Modoc people to slaughter everybody on the farm and then go beyond Despair Event Horizon and later get killed by their neighbors.
• In Fate/Grand Order:
  • This is how Vlad III's Noble Phantasm, "Kazikli Bey: Fortress of Impalement", works, skewering his enemy from below.
  • Leonardo da Vinci is murdered by Kirei Kotomine in the prologue for the game's third storyline, impaling her with his bare hand right before she reaches the escape vehicle.
• Fear & Hunger: Termina: If the player falls into one of the spike pit booby-traps in the Deep Woods, they'll be treated to a cutscene of their character being impaled on a massive metal spike at the bottom.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Not done to a villain per se, but in Final Fantasy VII, Big Bad Sephiroth impales a giant serpent on a tree. Too bad we don't get to see him do it; when the heroes find it, it is the Moment of Awesome that firmly established Sephiroth's badass status.
    • It's also another case of Faux Symbolism, as the image of the Crucified Serpent is important in Kabbalism, which is where Sephiroth's name comes from.
    • Don't forget Cloud himself, who has both given (his limit break Climhazzard) and received (from Sephiroth). He also ran Sephiroth through with the Buster Sword in the Mt. Nibel reactor. That Sephiroth got back up and continued fighting given the size of that sword, it would have cut him nearly in half; neatly showcases just how much Invincible Villain he is.
    • In Advent Children Complete, Cloud is impaled and suspended by Sephiroth's sword, in an explicit recreation on Sephiroth's part of the 'impale Cloud' scene in the Nibel Reactor years ago.
      Sephiroth: "Is this the pain, you felt before, Cloud? Let me remind you, this time you won't forget." (cue Sephiroth literally showing his single wing, before tossing Cloud to the air and unleashing Octaslash, giving Cloud extra stabbings in mid-air before being tossed to the ground. Ouch.)
    • And then there's what he did to Aeris at the Forgotten Capital, impaling her through the stomach and from behind with his Masamune sword.
    • In Dirge of Cerberus, Vincent Valentine impales Azul with his own BFG after their final encounter.
  • Done to the hero in Final Fantasy VIII: despite defeating Seifer and Edea, Squall is impaled by a giant magic icicle courtesy of the latter, and he plummets over the edge of her platform as he loses consciousness. He awakes in prison quite some time afterward, no worse for wear, and even he wonders where the hell his injury went.
    • Edea seems to love her extreme prejudice, because shortly before icing through Squall, she impales President Deling in front of a crowd to take over his whole nation. With her bare hand, no less.
  • In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, Layle does this to Bahamut, of all opponents, in a boss battle about three hours in. For bonus points, he skewers Bahamut with his own tail!
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy, particularly the prequel Duodecim, is in love with this trope. No less than five characters explicitly work impalement into their EX Bursts, more have attacks that explicitly evoke the idea (even if swords and spells are set to "stun"), and with the application of Fridge Logic, the movesets of the spear users pretty much consists entirely of variations on impaling the enemy.
• The Penetrator in FEAR can pin enemies to walls.
• Game of Thrones (Telltale) has this happen fairly often, notably to one of the player characters, the young Lord Ethan, who is shockingly stabbed through the throat by Ramsay Snow at the end of Episode 1. Gared can also choose to do this to Britt should the player choose to "Make Him Suffer": Gared will impale him through the chest with his sword and brutally twist it around his innards. Finally, Episode 5 gives us the death of the enormous pit fighter known only as The Beast, who is finished off by a spear thrown sideways through his upper arm and chest.
• In Gears of War the Mk-1 Lancer featured a bayonet that while effective against human opponents, proved woefully ineffective against the Locust, leading to the invention of the iconic "gun with a chainsaw." In the third game, after devastation of the planet forces COG and Locust alike to start recycling the old lancers, they can be utilized as an impromptu spear in a running charge in order to hoist an enemy into the air, where gravity finishes them off as they sink completely onto the blade.
• In Godzilla Unleashed, Destroyah can impale his enemies using his laser horn and then throw them behind him using his tail.
  • Likewise, Kiryu can use his energy sword to impale enemies and throw them.
  • Megalon not only impales his enemies with his drill-like hands, he even spins them around before throwing them.
• God of War enjoys this trope. Reversed and subverted in the first game where Ares throws a pillar which is flying many many miles into Pandora's Temple impaling Kratos. Kratos, however, finds his way out of Hades and pays Ares back with a massive sword right through Ares' chest. Said sword was a massive piece to a statue.
  • The Blade of Olympus is essentially the embodiment of this trope starting with the second game. First Kratos uses it to impale the magic out of the Colossus of Rhodes, then Zeus impales Kratos and kills him, at the end of the game Kratos tries to return the favor (which he eventually does in the third game). Also in bonus play, you can use it to impale everything else.
  • The first boss of the first game features this, as Kratos impales a hydra's heads on a broken ship mast in a series of quick-time events.
  • Basically if Kratos isn't murdering you by magic, fire, crushing, slashing, bare hands, or anything else, he's usually impaling you on something. Various spike traps exist to return the favor for careless players.
• In Halo 3, the Arbiter makes full use of this trope with his Energy Sword, stabbing the Prophet of Truth in and through the back, finally shutting up Truth's proclamations of self-holiness.
• Daniella in Haunting Ground (who is the second boss), dies via being impaled with a large broken shard of glass. She dies happy though, because even though it was only for a few moments, she finally was able to feel pain.
  • Daniella frequently kills Fiona this way if she manages to catch her with her kill moves; she'll grab Fiona's arm and laugh maniacally, and if you don't manage to get free or have Hewie attack her, she'll impale Fiona in the groin with that lovely glass shard (or fire poker) of hers.
  • Daniella can also dish this out with one of the many dead ends.
• Hexen has mummified corpses staked through their stomachs by spears as decorations in several levels.
• There's an Indie FPS game called Impaler where this trope is a selling point - your main, special weapon is designed to target the floor and pulling the trigger fires a bouncing projectile into the floor, where moments later a powerful fleshy spike shoots out, skewering enemies in mid-air. It's as gory and as impressive as it sounds.
• In Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, one of Information Guy's many deaths involves this: after being rejected by the Petty Thugs' sorting hole, he's dropped onto a stalagmite.
• In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning this can occur, among other things, when you do your fate reckoning, effectively creating a huge spike from the very threads of fate and jamming your victim onto it, thus killing them.
• Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards: How Kirby dispatches people with the Needle power. Needle + Needle turns Kirby into a giant Swiss Army knife whose tools include a drawing compass, a cactus, a syringe, a pencil, a bee stinger, and a nail. This fusion returns as Cluster Needle in Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance:
  • Happens when Kain impales Moebius with the Reaver. It helps that Moebius completely doesn't see the attack coming, as he previously thought Kain to be dead (and permanently this time), and his staff, which has the power to incapacitate vampires, no longer works on Kain at this point.
  • After Moebius dies from that, his soul goes on to the Spectral Realm where Raziel is waiting unseen behind him and impales his very soul with the Reaver yet again! At which point, Raziel then takes over Moebius' body to return to the physical realm and is impaled once again by Kain all according to plan.
  • This is also one of the most useful tactics for killing vampires in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver: Because Nosgothic vampires regenerate their wounds, one of the few ways to kill a vampire for good is to impale them with staffs and spikes...but removing the instrument causes the vampire to spring right back to life. This mechanic is also worked into one of the game's boss fights, where Raziel finds the corpse of one of his vampire brothers, lying on his throne with three spears shoved through his chest, and has to remove them to bring him back to life so he can kill him for good.
  • In fact, this is the very first thing we see in the entire series. Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, the first game, opens with a group of holy warriors impaling vampires on a forest of stakes in a way that would make Vlad Tepes proud. Kain himself gets impaled with a sword one minute into his story, having it driven through his back while lying prone, effectively pinning him to the ground. He shows up in hell with it still stuck through him, though the necromancer Mortanius kindly removes it prior to resurrecting him.
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Most of the entries in the Zelda series are known for a lighthearted, cartoony sort of violence, and Wind Waker doubly so with its cel-shaded style that makes it seem like a kiddie game. But in a first for the series, here Link defeats Ganondorf by running the Master Sword right through his face.
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
  • After his defeat in the Palace of Twilight, Midna impales Zant with her ponytail.
  • The Ending Blow which consists of a jumping stab into your downed opponent impaling them with your sword, this is a move that defeats Ganondorf in the Final Battle (using the Master Sword. If that wasn't enough Ganondorf is still standing upright with Master Sword sticking through his torso, it's not until Zant (Ganondorf's connection to the Twilight realm) snaps his own neck that Ganon succumbs to his wound and dies.
• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, being a distant sequel to The Wind Waker, directly Link's fight with Ganondorf when Link and Zelda kill Malladus by ramming the Lokomo Sword straight through his forehead.
• Lyle in Cube Sector: the final boss is impaled on a spike in his base, in hilarious fashion.
• One of the most common mook deaths in MadWorld. For an added spice, corpses impaled on handy meat hooks, wall spikes, and the like (collectively called "Rose Bushes" by the game) are the only ones that do not fade out over time, allowing you to... redecorate. The one drawback is that anything you've shoved through their bodies (like street signs and lampposts) gets stuck on the wall with them.
  • The Shogun boss ends up with one of these as well.
• In Mass Effect, the Geth impale their (not always dead) victims on spikes called Dragon's Teeth: terrifying machines that turn those impaled on them into mechanical zombies called Husks. The Geth are actually using Reaper tech.
  • In Mass Effect 2, if you don't upgrade the Normandy's weapons systems, Thane is impaled by a bulkhead during the trip to the Collector station. If you never recruited him, Garrus is impaled instead. Ow.
  • In the third game, this is the fate that awaits you if you are foolish enough to remain within arm's reach of a Banshee. Arm through the chest. That's gotta hurt. Phantoms also do this, using a sword. For added insult, getting killed like this in multiplayer prevents you from being revived until the end of the round.
  • Also, Kai Leng does this to his victims, stabbing them to death with his sword. Unfortunately for him, he also does it to one of Shepard's friends. Shepard responds in kind.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: Rundas, the ice Hunter, dies by impalement on several of his own icicles.
  • Metroid Dread: When the schematic of the E.M.M.I. is shown, we get to see that the metal plates surrounding its eye lens are concealing four retractile spikes that can extend into a a very sharp needle. If Samus is caught by an E.M.M.I. and she fails to counter it, she gets pinned and its eye opens before it stabs her through the chest.
• Mortal Kombat
  • The whole franchise is fond of this Trope, mostly for Stage Fatalities. The first game had The Pit, an arena where the winner could uppercut his opponent, causing him or her to plummet into the spike-filled room below. The second game had The Kombat Tomb, where the correct combination could let the player knock his/her opponent into the spikes on the ceiling. In fact, it seems every game had at least one death-by-impalement stage, and a few characters even did it themselves with their own Fatalities:
  • Baraka is a most prominent example, using a pair of retractable fist-blades.
  • Jade did it in at least two games, knocking her opponent high into the air and then impaling him or her on her staff
  • Shang Tsung had one in the third game where he conjured up a bed of spikes and hurled his opponent onto it.)
  • There's even one Deathtrap, the Falling Cliffs, where it's possible for both players to be taken out by the trap and impaled at the same time due to the setup. (If this happens, whoever had taken the least amount of damage before it happened wins the round, or Player 1, if both had Life Bars at 100%.)
• In Mount & Blade, when moving forward above a certain speed on horseback, with a polearm readied, you can hit enemies for couched lance damage, that deals upwards of 400 points of damage, that can with practice can kill both horse and rider. Merely swinging a weapon in the same sort of circumstances deals 50-150 points of damage.
• Enemies hit with the trident or lightning bolt in Mr. Shifty get impaled and continue flying across the room with the weapon.
• In No More Heroes, Henry's instant-kill move is this in spades. He impales the player through the chest, hurls them a good hundred feet into the air, slashes them to gain even more height, leaps into the air above them, hurls them back to the ground, then slams down with all his strength while impaling the player again, this time with enough force behind it to leave a crater in the concrete below.
• In the sequel to No One Lives Forever, Cate Archer entire the katana-wielding kunoichi Isako at the end of the first level. After a short dialogue, Isako runs Archer through with her katana. However, sometime later, Archer is shown recovering nicely in a bed at UNITY headquarters. Apparently, UNITY agents were able to recover her quickly and save her, despite her supposedly being stabbed through the heart. Oh, well.
• This is how Eddie Gluskin of the Outlast Whistleblower DLC eventually dies after chasing you throughout the asylum, hellbent on getting revenge for rebuffing his efforts to mutilate your body to make you into his ideal woman and wife that he desperately tries to find. He tries to hang you from the ceiling with the rest of the inmates he's killed, but your struggling leads him to drop the rope and get pulled up instead, and a spike of rebar lodges itself through his abdomen.
• Painkiller has the Stake Launcher, which pins baddies to walls with entire trees.
• In People Playground, you can use spears or big spikes to impale humans, and you can even pin them to the wall or floor. The impaled victims will take a time to bleed out. If you want to finish them quick, you can fry them by electrifying the weapon with some batteries.
• Pilgrim (RPG Maker): One way for Akemi to die in Storey 4 is getting impaled by giant spikes hidden in holes in the ground.
• This is yet another one of the ways Alex Mercer can kill things in [PROTOTYPE]. Run people through with claws, cause spikes to erupt beneath them to eviscerate them, explode into tentacles that rip through everything in a city block, it's all good. The Supreme Hunter, sharing some of Alex's abilities, can do the same to him.
• All over the place in Quake; traps with spikes are quite common, though the limitations of the engine tend to cause Ludicrous Gibs when a monster is impaled since it works like a crusher.
• Quake IV
  • In the first mission, Corporal Pierce is introduced and viscerally impaled within the span of a few seconds to introduce the Strogg Beserker.
  • Bidwell meets his end this way when he is impaled by the leg of a Strogg Harvester.
• Two examples in The Reconstruction: One is the Cryomancer, who is actually impaled by one of his own icicles.
  • The second example is Dehl's father, who, unlike the Cryomancer, is graphically impaled in an aversion of Bloodless Carnage. Also, a case of Hoist by His Own Petard, as he's impaled by falling into a sword he left lying around.
• In (Re-)Kinder, Hiroto can die by being impaled onto a lamppost. Extra horrifying in the Bad Ending, where his thoughts reveal that he was fully conscious while it happened.
• Resident Evil
  • Fittingly enough, Wesker in the original Resident Evil is on the receiving end of Tyrant's very large, prong-based hand, resulting in him looking very much like a tomato salad. Wearing sunglasses. This can also happen to you.
  • Tyrant T-00 aka "Mr. X" gets impaled from behind by the G-Creature Birkin's claws while attacking Claire and Sherry in the Resident Evil 2 (Remake), Birkin even rips a chunk out of his chest.
    • Poor Leon is never safe from this, as the One-Winged Angel version of Mr. X in the Final Battle has an uppercut with his claws that shish kebabs Leon's torse.
    • The final form of Birkin can drag Leon or Claire into its Sarlacc-esque mouth which has More Teeth than the Osmond Family impaling and devouring them. Though either Leon and Claire return the favor with a broken pipe through eyeball.
  • In Resident Evil 4, several of the many deaths of Leon involve impalements, such as one of Mendez's One-Hit Kill attacks, Garradors' Wolverine Claws, a Spikes of Doom pit trap where you have to Press X to Not Die, the Iron Maidens, and Krauser's Plaga claw. Saddler impales Luis Sera with his Plagas tentacle.
  • Resident Evil 5: Wesker impales Ozwell Spencer on his arm, and he can do the same to you. Post-Uroboros, he can impale you on a massive drill arm.
  • The ultimate fate of Simmons in Resident Evil 6, especially impactful after several long fights against him.
• RuneScape:
  • Zaros, the dark god, meets his end by getting impaled with the Staff of Armadyl. His impaler, Zamorak, then takes his place as the god of chaos. Zaros later returns with the help of the Player Character.
  • Lucien meets a similar fate at the hands of the Dragonkin in the quest Ritual of the Mahjarrat.
  • Depending on your choice, you can also do this to Nomad at the end of Nomad's Elegy.
• In the final chapter of Ryse: Son of Rome, Emperor Nero warns Marius that he can't be killed with any sword other than his own, lest he anger the gods. After Nero stabs Marius in the back and brings him to death's door, a wounded Marius slaughters his way through the remains of Nero's Praetorian Guard, and then finishes by shoving the emperor onto the sword of a giant statue of himself, killing him.
• Silent Hill:
  • Silent Hill 2: One of Pyramid Head's preferred methods of execution. Ironically, the final time you encounter him, when you fight two Pyramid Heads, they eventually kill themselves by each impaling themselves with their own spear. (Assuming you avoid their attacks long enough.)
  • Silent Hill 3: The Closers frequently kill Heather by impaling her with their arm spikes. If Heather's health is low, they will lift her up bodily, position their spike in between Heather's legs and impale her in the crotch, killing her.
  • Silent Hill: Homecoming: Should Alex overpower Judge Holloway during their struggle while the latter tries to kill Alex with a power drill, the scene will end with Alex pushing the drill into his would-be killer's jaw, resulting in said would-be killer's death.
• Kachi is impaled at the beginning of Stage 1 in Sin and Punishment 2. She then proceeds to pull herself off the spike, dust herself off and tell Isa rather passively that she's fine. (She really is fine, and the wound promptly goes away.)
• This is a favorite in Soulcalibur, but Inferno is especially vicious with this with two of his exclusive moves. One uses one of Cervantes' attacks, but if it connects, he launches spirally upward with the opponent impaled with his weapons and then comes back spinning down and slams them into the ground with it. In the following game, he chucks the opponent high into the air, and as they're falling back down, thrusts his sword right into the opponent's back and slams them down. With the right weapons, either of these moves, at full health, is a near-instant kill.
  • Laser-Guided Karma seems to be at work since Siegfried impales Soul Edge twice in the eye, the second time also running Soul Calibur through Nightmare's torso.
• The video game for Spider-Man 3 was less discreet about Venom's demise. Follows a Disney Villain Death.
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate:
  • In Ridley's reveal trailer, the robotic Mega Man gets impaled by the dragon's tail in a Shadow Discretion Shot. This same move becomes Ridley's down special in the game proper, and deals some of the highest amounts of damage in the game, with a minimum of 40% damage dealt when hit with the attack's sweet spot. Considering the numerous Shout-Out(s) to Alien in Metroid, this is likely a reference to the robotic Bishop getting impaled by the Alien Queen. Both Big Bads in the game's story mode also end up being impaled at some point or another: one in one of the two Downer Endings, the other during the Final Boss battle against both at once.
  • In Sephiroth's reveal trailer, he seems to have impaled Mario on his sword in a silhouetted shot (in a direct reference to Advent Children as seen above), but it turns out he's only holding him up by his overall strap.
• Syndrome: One body can be seen impaled through the heart on a rather long piece of piping.
• In Tales of Monkey Island, Guybrush does this to LeChuck with a botched spell that only manages to turn him human. But all of a sudden LeChuck turns good and becomes an ally. However, LeChuck later reveals that he was faking it and does it to Guybrush himself, managing to kill him in the same way that he killed Morgan LeFlay.
• A rare ranged example: you can do this to people in Team Fortress 2 if you're a Sniper using The Huntsman (a bow), which can pin people to walls.
• Many many many many examples in Tomb Raider. Among them:
  • At the beginning of the game, Lara falls on a piece of exposed rebar which punches all the way through her side. She survives, but the injury continues to hamper her throughout the game. At one point the wound is so badly aggravated she can't even climb low barriers.
  • During the river rapids sections, messing up will lead to Lara being impaled through the throat on a piece of debris.
  • And during the parachute sequence, the same thing can happen through her belly on a tree branch.
  • Should Lara be killed by certain bad guys, they will impale her on a pike, raise her up on the end and then bang the pike on the ground, where she will slowly slide down, blade through her abdomen.
• In Touhou Project, impaling someone with Gungnir is Remillia Scarlet's signature attack. In the fighting games, this attack can be made uninterruptible and unblockable. Well, she does claim descent from a certain Vlad.
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron: Optimus and Megatron's final battle is a swordfight. Optimus runs Megatron through, and Megatron uses this as a chance to get close to Prime to start beating on his head.
• In Valkyrie Profile, this is Lenneth's Finishing Move. Three spears stab her enemy and hold it in the air, while she summons an additional stupidly huge fourth spear that turns into a fricken dragon before she throws it. Tsubaki's finisher is a Shout-Out to this.
• In The Walking Dead (Telltale), Ben gets impaled after the balcony he was standing on collapses.
• War of the Monsters uses this for pipes and radio towers, able to be tossed over huge distances. Those hit by one then have to mash a button to yank it out, which is amusing for Kineticlops since it hits him in his eye.
• In World's End, Vadim is impaled on stalagmite after falling from Hellcar in underground tunnel.
• Towards the end of Xenoblade Chronicles X, Luxaar is stabbed through the back with a javelin by Lao. This isn't what actually kills him as he keeps talking until he and Lao both fall into a large amount of human DNA which disolves Luxaar and turns him and Lao into a horrifying chimera.
  Lao: You deal with a traitor, you really shouldn't be surprised when you get stabbed in the BACK! *twists javelin*