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"I do not wish to live a life with no tomorrow, for a life spent merely for the sake of living is no better than that of a filthy cur. There is only one thing I wish for: to meet that one chosen person in that one chosen battle, and to die remembering who I once was."
At some point in the past, a character had a traumatic experience, or found themselves dishonoured, or committed a crime they could not repay or lost everything worth living for. For whatever reason, instead of just committing suicide, they went off seeking battles to fight, hoping to find an enemy who would kill them, and achieve an honourable, heroic or otherwise acceptable death.
Only they suck at dying.
They found they were far too good at the "fighting" part. And for whatever reason (usually honor), they don't hold back.
Consequently, they travel, seeking greater and greater enemies to fight, hoping to find a Worthy Opponent to finally kill them. Sometimes they'll fail to die so spectacularly and repeatedly that they acquire riches, renown, ranks or romance as a result of their exploits. This rarely, but sometimes, stops them.
They generally fulfill a role somewhere between the Blood Knight and The Atoner, depending on their outlook and cause. They may be an opponent to the main characters, seeking them as a warrior who can best them, or they may help the heroes in whatever immensely dangerous task needs doing. Ironically, the Death Seeker usually dies shortly after finding a reason to live.
Another variation is a warrior who, upon finding out that he is dying (from a disease or curse, for example), seeks a death in combat instead, seeing it as a more honorable or at least desirable end on the field of battle than lying on his deathbed.
Another variation is that unfortunate people realize Who Wants To Live Forever and they want to move on.
Another variation is a Shell Shocked Veteran, usually a commanding officer of some sort, suffering from a major case of Survivor Guilt.
Compare The Berserker. Contrast Please Kill Me If It Satisfies You (a character offers someone to take his life due to remorse) and Martyr Without A Cause. Martyrdom Cultures may regard such a character as a role model. Likely to cause a Threat Backfire to any death threat, for obvious reasons.
Examples
Anime
- Kambei in Samurai Seven, who is actually disappointed that he has managed to survive yet again even while most of his his subordinates have once again died.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh, after the Big Bad is defeated, the Pharaoh's spirit within the Millennium Puzzle can go to the afterlife... but only once he's been defeated in a duel.
- And Kaiser spends the entirety of Season Three of Yu-Gi-Oh GX looking for someone strong enough to kill him.
- In Yu Yu Hakusho, this is arguably, Younger Toguro's entire reason for getting Yusuke involved in the Dark Tounament.
- And Sensui's entire reason for opening the tunnel to Makai, through a big old Batman Gambit.
- Don't forget Raizen, Bui, Hiei and possibly Mukuro. Not sure if Gama counts, but he was willing to give "all for the team" and used his last few minutes to incapacitate Kurama rather than heal himself. Also the mind controlled humans at the beginning of the Tournament, forced to kill for Ichigaki and sick of it.
- Ovan in .hack//G.U. sees in Haseo the potential to defeat him and effectively manipulates into doing so. This way, they cause the Internet to "reset" and all people whom Ovan involuntarily sent into coma (including his own sister) awaken, though Ovan falls into coma himself.
- Suzaku Kururugi's exceptional piloting skills and willingness to put himself in mortal danger in Code Geass are revealed to be because he is a Death Seeker of the Redemption Equals Death variety: after he murdered his father, ex-Prime Minister Genbu Kururugi, and doomed Japan to Britannian tyranny because of that, he seeks to be punished for the crime he was never blamed for. This gets a whole lot trickier when Lelouch places a Geass on him instructing him to "Live!" with no duration or parameters. Thus, whenever he tries to do something suicidal, or even just accepts that death will be the result of his current situation, the Geass command forces him to take any action he possibly can to avoid dying. Given the nature of ''Code Geass'', this has predictably tragic results.
- It doesn't stop him from trying, though, which leads to Suzaku destroying pretty much the entire Tokyo settlement when he tried to let Kallen kill him while carrying a nuke. Nice Job Breaking It Hero on both sides.
- However, he does use the Geass to his advantage at one point. When he fights an enemy with a Geass that allows them to see into the future, Suzaku uses the "Live!" effect to enhance his performance and move too fast for his opponent to keep up.
- C.C. is eventually revealed to be suicidal, but she's been trapped in an immortal body since the middle ages. She can survive getting shot in the head, being burned at the stake, and even being crushed by the intense water pressure at the bottom of the ocean. The entire reason she's gone around granting Geass powers to people like Mao and Lelouch is because she needs someone to become powerful enough to kill her.
- Lelouch becomes this after the apparent demise of Nunnally and the betrayal of the Black Knights at Schneizel's hands. Unlike the other two, he actually pulls it off in the end.
- Slight variant with Hohenheim from Full Metal Alchemist. He wants to die, and really really sucks at it, especially in the manga. He does know that he has some plot-like things to do first, but death is a definite goal for him, and he is likely trying to track down the Big Bad in order to find out how he can die, as well as to defeat the bad guys. He likely is a character who would not mind dying to escape his horrifying and very long past.
- Subverted hard when he is finally dying in the last chapter. After everything, he decides at the last moment he wants to live on but it's too late.
- May have been Reccoa's true motivation for turning traitor in Zeta Gundam, as having been a guerilla fighter for nine years had worn her resolve against tyranny down to nearly nothing. Of course, this is just the crazy opinion of one troper.
- Depending on how you see him, Alucard from Hellsing is waiting for the time when he will be killed by an opponent he deems worthy.
- The Major is another possible example, as Schrodinger infers that the Major's desire to create as much warfare as possible is an elaborate suicide plan (with the rest of Millenium being drawn along with him by his charisma). Given that he dies with a smile on his face when Integra kills him, it seems likely.
- When Seras and Integra are storming the Major's airship, they notice that the Nazis they're killing actually seem pleased by their deaths, and the Major confirms that they want to die. Seras angrily asks why they don't just commit suicide, causing the Major to reply that it isn't enough to die; they have to die doing something meaningful to them.
- In an episode of Princess Tutu, a "Ghost Knight" roams the town, escaped from a story where he killed his lover (who was an enemy spy) and remained honorable to his country until the end of the war, after which he found no meaning to his life. Fakir believed that the reason he was having dreams about him was because he was the one the Knight had chosen to kill him in battle...but it turns out he was carrying the heart shard of Pride, and the real reason Fakir was having dreams about him was because he was a descendant of Drosselmeyer.
- In Bleach, 5th Espada Nnoitra. More specifically, he's constantly fighting against strong opponents so that he can experience that rush sensation in the final moments just before dying. Which he does indeed get to experience, courtesy of Kenpachi.
- In Ga-Rei -Zero-, Yomi, fighting the emotion intensifying effects of the Sesshouseki, attempts to get Noriyuki to kill her since she has become a "taint of evil," as she puts it. However, he repeatedly refuses to, even as she becomes increasingly more sadistic in her attempts to provoke him to do so.
- In part 6 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Weather Report, after recovering his memories. He dies shortly afterward in a not quite successful suicide attack on the Big Bad.
- Shinji Ikari (and, to a lesser extent, Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion could fit this trope to a T, except by the little part that Shinji was fighting to seek his father's attention, and Asuka was too much of a Stepford Smiler to give up. At the end, only these two failed to die, presumably. Irony at its best.
- Until episode 18, anyway. After killing and/or maiming his best friend, depending on whether we're going by the anime or the manga, we see him in episode 19, no longer greatly concerned with what his father or anyone else thinks of him. The Crazy Awesome of the moment—and it is, if you haven't seen it—is muted at the end of the series when we reflect and realize that when he went out to fight, "fangs out and hair on fire," he was almost certainly trying to die.
- How can you forget Rei? Explicitly says she "Is a thing that wishes to die"? Check. Deliberately takes suicide missions? Check. Gets herself killed twice? Check. Fails hard at staying dead? Hoo boy.
- In fact, Rei explicitly stated in ep24 that she hates Gendo for not letting her die until she had fulfilled the purpose he had set.
- Lord, Gauron from Full Metal Panic IS this trope. Somewhere along the line, he somehow latches onto the idea that he wants Sousuke to kill him (and if that doesn't work, killing Sousuke and raping his body works just fine as well). His suicidal and extreme sadomasochistic tendencies are somewhat explained in the novels, where it's revealed that he had lethal cancer that would kill him sooner or later. The only irony is, it seems the more he throws himself into danger and suicidal situations, the longer he lives.
- The clone of Zest in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS was a "Doomed to die an ignoble death" version, and provoked Signum for a battle to the death after she made an assurance that his charge was safe with her squad and that the villains had been caught. While Agito hated her for it, she thanked her for giving him his last honor as a fellow knight.
- Balalaika of Black Lagoon, as seen in the quote above. Roberta also has elements of this in the latest arc of the manga.
- Deneve from Claymore was one of these until Helen knocked some sense into her.
- It's strongly implied (and outright stated by one worried character) in the latter half of Toward The Terra that Keith has become one of these, although the reasons are left somewhat ambiguous. He may overcome it after another character makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save him...but by then it's a bit late.
- Manji from Blade of the Immortal seems like a mix of death seeker and the atoner. He needs atonement to finally die. He has to do it by killing 1000 bad guys.
Comic Books
- Deadshot, an assassin in The DCU. His deathwish stems from an incident in his childhood; his wealthy parents hated each other, and mom tried to hire her sons to kill their father. The younger brother, Floyd, tried to prevent his older brother from doing so, but his brother kicked him out of the house. Floyd got his hands on a gun and stood on a tree branch, hoping to simply wound his brother, but the branch snapped and he missed. So he killed the brother he loved to save a father he hated. Eventually, Floyd became an assassin for hire, assuming the Deadshot identity. After multiple stints on the aptly named Suicide Squad and a few fights against other badass assassins, he's still alive.
- Of course, being a comic book character, dying is one thing, it's a whole other thing to remain dead.
- Which would be valid, if he had ever been killed. It's also confusing when he develops/implements equipment and contingencies that allow him to fake his death.
- Mr. Immortal of the Great Lakes Avengers. He discovered his powers after his girlfriend Terri killed herself and he tried to follow suit. After dozens of suicide attempts he finally realizes that he has superpowers (little slow on the uptake) and decides to fight crime. However, he is still prone to depression (especially after his new Love Interest Dinah Soar was killed), and occasionally goes on multiple suicide sprees. Since he now knows about his powers, it's unclear if he is actually looking for a loophole, or if it's just his way of blowing off steam.
- Specifically, Mr. Immortal's power is that shortly after death, he is resurrected.
- This describes Painkiller Jane to a T.
- Yorick of Y The Last Man is like this for the first few volumes, thanks to Survivor Guilt after The End Of The World As We Know It. It turns out that this is also Alter Tse'elon's motivation for everything she does in the series - she's trying to die in honorable combat with a man.
- Arguably, Morpheus from The Sandman. If he indeed was (his methodology makes it somewhat uncertain how much was planned and how much was not), he certainly went about doing it in an extremely roundabout way.
- Another "Endless" story concerned a superheroine whose body automatically protected itself from any attack. Now she is weary of life; naturally, the story features Death.
- The anthology "Endless Nights" had a soldier whose life was empty, until he encountered Death and actually helped her on a job by breaking down a magic gate so she could enter a castle and claim the inhabitants. Now, he enters battle with renewed vigor, in the hopes he will meet her again.
- Daredevil (not Matt Murdock) of Earth X is unkillable due to his regenerative powers. It's not clear how he became suicidal, but he becomes the center of a circus act in which the audience is invited to kill him if they can. Later he tries to get several Big Bads to kill him, culminating in his multiplying into many versions of himself when he is ripped apart. Late in the series he apparently finally gets his wish, but only after all of humanity has joined him in painful immortality (due to the death of Death).
- Batgirl III's guilt over reducing a living, thinking creature to a large mass of inert meat with her bare hand at eight years old drove her to seek her own demise protecting others. It can be summed up when Lady Shiva demanded a duel to the death in a years time as payment for helping her regain the body-reading skills she lost when a telepath enabled her to speak:
Cassandra: <thinking> I will never take another life, not even hers... so I will pretend to go all out, and then I'll die. I don't have to do this, I can still use Batman's method, I can still be... mediocre for a lifetime... or perfect... for a year.
Shiva: "Well?"
- Word Of God says Rorschach from Watchmen is a Death Seeker. He finds it.
- Hank Henshaw, aka the Cyborg superman has become one of these recently, tired of the tragedy in his life and his near invulnerability. It got to the point where he joined the Sinestro Corps just because they agreed to kill him once their work was done. He eventually did die, much to his delight. Unfortunately for him, his minions resurrected him at the first oppurtunity.
- So much so that when he was revived, the first thing he did was shed a tear over being alive.
Cyborg Superman (attacking Green Lanterns): Lethal force has been authorized, Green Lanterns. Please, use it.
- Eilif the Lost was the last survivor of a Viking Lost Colony in Antarctica. Old and growing infirm, he tried to goad Thor into killing him. "I would have fought a god, my lord. What Viking could have asked for a more glorious death?"
- Zbeng! has a character named Stav - an extremely depressed, pessimistic Goth girl, who constantly tries to commit suicide. She does seem good driving others to it, but herself, she is lucky enough to constantly win the lottery despite never buying tickets (she doesn't tend to collect the winnings).
- Dashiell "Dash" Bad Horse from Scalped has an unconscious deathwish. He constantly throws himself in dangerous gunfights with psychopaths and always alone. It's hinted that he suffers from ptsd (child abuse,fighting in kosovo and witnessing a massacre), suicidal behaviour (flashback to a young dashiell cry and put a gun to his temple, second time he does the same thing when he could've prevented the murder of a young boy) and from deep seated anger (his fists are bruised most of the time and we see him slamming his fists against his own truck).
- Tony Stark, to a horribly painful degree. And, no, it didn't start during/after Civil War, either, though that certainly made it worse. It started when he was struck with survivor's guilt over the death of Yin Sen — that's right, it started with his origin story — and just kind of went downhill at breakneck speed from there. Unfortunately, Marvel isn't kind enough to just let him die at this point, whether by way of suicide or death by supervillain — though this may be justified by the fact that apparently, no one at Marvel has bothered to crack open a psychology textbook to figure out that someone like Tony Stark should probably not still be alive of his own free will. Considering Tony's history of barely caring if he lives or dies, as well as his absolute self-loathing, it's hard to believe that he's still breathing. Hell, if nothing else, it's a goddamned miracle that he hasn't become an outright supervillain, gone batshit crazy, or worse. Usually, when a character hits rock bottom, the general procedure is to have them go out in a blaze of glory. Instead, Marvel handed him a shovel.
- He did become a supervillain and died briefly. It was called "The Crossing" and he was replaced by a teenaged version of himself. No one liked it. Adult Tony came back and it's been been Retconned that he wasn't himself, Teen tony got Brother Chucked, and it's more or less ignored now.
- This troper has to call this an extreme case of YMMV. The guy's called IRON MAN. You can break iron, melt it down, oxidize it, alloy it, make it into a matching set of garden furniture - but the one thing you can't do is make it stop being iron. When his parents died in a car crash, the first thing he did after the funeral was buy the car company and give their entire break system paradigm a major overhaul. If his alcoholism affected his character in any way, it's that he shies away from ignoring a problem... and as a consequence, tends to over-fix things.
- Kaine, the imperfect clone of Spider-Man. He's not the typical death seeker as he sometimes changes his mind or even runs from a fatal fight. In the grim hunt back stories it's revealed he's too much of a coward to commit suicide yet when he has a pre cog vision about his own death at the hands of Kraven the Hunter he still challenges him.He finally got what he wanted by duping the kravinoff hunters into thinking he was Spider-Man. They sacrificed him to revive Kraven the hunter. Afterwards Kaine is resurrected with tarantula features and is to finish the job spiderman couldn't: hunt down/kill kraven to restore the natural order of things.
- Dara Brighton in The Sword insists that she is already dead after the murder of her family. She just wants to hunt down and kill the demigods responsible for said murders before she actually dies. She does and she does.
Film
- In the various Prophecy movies, fallen angel Gabriel's unwillingly-revived henchpeople fall into this category: when one them gets (re-)fatally shot by a protagonist, his last comment is a sincere "Thanks pal, you're a sport!"
- Arguably, Doc Holliday in Tombstone.
- Arguably? Doc Holiday's entire thing was "Whelp... got the consumption.... might as well shoot at people."
- Also Bodhi in Point Break, to an extent.
- John Ryder from "The Hitcher"As the plot uncovers, he repeatedly asks Jim Halsey to kill him in cold blood (after their first encounter when Jim picked up Ryder as an unsuspecting hitchhiker). When Jim fails to do so, John proceeds to go on a path of carnage ... I don't want to give too much of the movie away ...
- Give it away? That is the entire movie. The remake, anyway.
- Following his son accidentally shooting himself with Jack's gun, Jack O'Neil undertakes what he figures is probably a suicide mission in Stargate.
- Dances With Wolves
- The Last Samurai
- Lethal Weapon
- Louis, in the film version of Interview With The Vampire, becomes this when his young wife dies in childbirth and the baby doesn't survive either. His willingness to die leaves him open to Lestat's machinations. Note that this is a complete change from the original novel, in which Louis was unmarried.
Literature
- Felix, from the 1984 science fiction novel Armor by John Steakley. In his case, he's explicitly nigh-unkillable (not a good thing, in the circumstances) as a result of his personal background; at the end of the novel, a former acquaintance who's come to find him, on being informed that he was last seen clinging to the outside of a badly damaged spacecraft with insufficient fuel to reach the next planet, merely nods and says that they'll keep looking until they find somebody who actually saw him die.
- One of the characters in Peter David's black comedy fantasy novel Sir Apropos Of Nothing was a Death Seeker whose reckless deeds resulted in him becoming the most highly respected knight in all the land. At that point he realised that he actually quite liked being alive, hung up his sword and retired behind a mantle of obfuscating senility.
- Colbey, the main character of the Renshai novels, is a follower of the Norse gods, and must die in battle to reach Valhalla. (Dying while refusing to fight all-out doesn't count, and would get him damned to Hel.) He's in his eighties by the end of book 1, the oldest person his tribe has ever had, and the best swordsman in history. He's even given the title "Deathseeker" by some. Eventually, it's discovered that he became "semi-mortal" in his sixties (meaning he can't grow any older) and eventually becomes a god. He still rejoices in a challenging fight centuries later, mind you...
- Himei starts out as this in Sailor Nothing, before The Power Of Friendship gives her something to live for. The premier example, however, is Dark General Argon. Because of his nature as The Heartless he's unable to kill himself directly, so he instead ensures that the the protagonist will unleash her Unstoppable Rage on him — in some of the worst ways possible.
- Brox (Broxigar First Name Basis) of the War of the Ancients Warcraft novels trilogy fits this trope perfectly, after being the sole survivor of his squad. He actually gets his wish in the end by performing a Heroic Sacrifice
- Sir Lancelot in Excalibur. He's more of a defeat seeker than a death seeker though, having traveled around looking for a King who was good enough to beat him and thereby win his fealty. He claims he was Cursed With Awesome.
- Eowyn in The Lord Of The Rings, whose courageous ride to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields has also been described as a lovesick suicide attempt.
- According to Aragorn, the very object of her unrequited love, her disappointment was just the final straw - personal frustrations and grief having already robbed her of much hope. And then of course there's the apparent hopelessness of the global situation - the entire army rides into battle shouting "DEATH!" after all.
- To paraphrase Gandalf and Aragorn, she had to look after Theoden as he succumbed to Grima's lies and part-truths, all the while listening to them herself, and it seemed like she would never do anything else but watch as the House of Eorl sunk deeper into dishonor. Even after Aragorn heals her, she wants to go out and die.
- Max Pesaro in the The Gardella Vampire Chronicles, thanks to : Dead Little Sister (and father). He continues to fight against vampires, even when he shouldn't.
- Lieutenent Dan in the book (and movie) Forrest Gump was a Death Seeker because it was a family tradition to die in battle. Makes one wonder how they kept the family line going, since no offspring by him had been established.
- The movie establishes that a member of his family died in every American war. Presumably, he (and the ancestors who were killed in action) had plenty of brothers.
- A'lan Mandragoran (Lan) from the Wheel of Time series. Fortunately or unfortunately for him, depending on your perspective, getting married changes his outlook.
- Rand al'Thor could be seen as this. He intends to stay alive juuuust long enough to get to the Final Battle, then die while winning it.
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts book this happens to some of the soldiers, particularly Gol Kolea.
- Part of the initial premise of Timothy Findley's novel Pilgrim is that the main character is unable to die, no matter how many ostensibly successful suicide attempts he goes through.
- In Phylis Ann Karr's Arthurian novel ''Idylls of the Queen'', Mordred fits the role pretty well—he spends the majority of the novel expecting (and hoping) the narrator Kay will kill him (His theory of the murder he and Kay are attempting to solve is that it was an attempt on his life by Kay and Guinevere)and pisses a couple people off hoping they'll murder him because of the prophecy that he'll bring Arthur's kingdom down. A better example in his backstory, right after a hermit gives him the prophecy and tells him who his father is, he rides on into the tourney he was headed to and nearly succeeds. Most people think those injuries addled his brains.
- The Tharks in Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter Of Mars series: "the cause of the Thark's great and sudden love of life I could not fathom, for it is oftener that they seek death than life—these strange, cruel, loveless, unhappy people." It's pretty effective, since 98 percent of them die in various violent ways.
- Albus Dumbledore of the Harry Potter series shows this trope at some point in between Order of the Phoenix and The Half Blood Prince, when he becomes cursed to die by the ring containing the resurrection stone. To end the misery of dying slowly and to spare Draco Malfoy, Who he learned had been tasked by Voldemort to kill him, Dumbledore asks snape to kill him in a Overly Elaborate plot to also get Snape closer to voldemort and to continue protecting Harry.
- Francis Crawford of Lymond throughout Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. He veers between attempts at Heroic Sacrifice and plain old Driven To Suicide.
- There is a story by Robert Sheckley about a planet with humanoid aliens who believe that only violent death leads to heaven. Some deaths are dispensed by the priests, but many people (despite a strict taboo) arrange some accidents (like sawing a thorny tree so that it will fall upon you). They die smiling.
- In the sixth book of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, And Another Thing... Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged reveals that this is the motivation behind his constant insulting of others.
- In Ursula Vernon's Black Dogs, the elven Sinai blames herself for the capture, rape and death of her cousin, at the hands of the evil sorceror Vade. She accepts increasingly dangerous and suicidal missions from the elven nation, and her behavior is so well known that in the elves' native tongue she is known as The Dead Wolf.
- In the Andrew Vachss Burke book Terminal, it is mentioned at the end that this was the first time Burke was not praying in some way for death.
- Charles, the vampire villain of Elaine Bergstrom's SHATTERED GLASS. Since her vampires, who belong to a naturally evolved nonhuman species, have such a strong self-preservation drive that they literally cannot commit suicide, Charles commits an escalating series of gory murders to induce his brother, Stephen, the "good" vampire of the novel, to kill him in a vampire version of SuicidebyCop.
Live Action TV
Music
- The song Across the Rainbow Bridge by Swedish melodic death metal band Amon Amarth is written from the perspective of an aging Norse warrior setting out to find an honourable death and so enter Valhalla.
Tabletop Games
- The name comes from Death Seekers of the Lion Clan in Legend Of The Five Rings''.
- The Damned of the Crab Clan are the 'diseased' variation. They are victems of the corruption they fight, and seek to do more damage to their enemy than they would giving into the Taint.
- In Warhammer Fantasy, the rigidity of Dwarven honour codes results in Troll Slayers: entire communities of Death Seekers. These are unfortunate Dwarves who have failed at some task or are unable to fulfill an oath, for which death is their only solace. However, it's dishonorable for a Dwarf to just off himself, so they dye their hair, cut it into an intimidating shape, and go into battle unarmored against the biggest, meanest opponent they can find. There's nothing like facing down a regiment of orange-mohawked berserkers with death wishes and big axes to grind (on your skull).
- The Gotrek And Felix novels, in particular, tell the story of Felix Jaeger, a young poet who finds himself honor bound to accompany a Slayer and record his heroic doom. Unfortunately for Felix, Gotrek Grunnisson just happens to be the worst Slayer in history, on account of him being the most Bad Ass Dwarf, if not being, on the planet. He has killed everything from incarnations of rage and blood to dragons the length of football fields. Even if anything could kill Gotrek, Felix has no illusions about the fact that it would kill him soon after.
- The next step in a Troll Slayer's career is Demon Slayer, a Troll Slayer who couldn't find a big enough and mean enough troll.
- The Slayer army list from Storm of Chaos gave the Dwarf player almost as many victory points for having his troops killed by S5+ monsters as the opponent did from killing them.
- Another example in Warhammer Fantasy: Count Mordred the Damned is a Chaos Champion who is cursed to forever constantly mutate within his armour and forever be brought back from the dead by the Chaos Gods even if he should die. As such, he doesn't have much of a chance of ever finding real rest in death, but it's what he hopes for against all hope.
- The Flagellants of the Empire in same setting take it on themselves to die in the most painful way possible in order to save the world from evil.
- The Blood Angels chapter of Space Marines in Warhammer 40000 have the Genetic Memory of their Primarch's death built into their blood, a curse they call the Black Rage. This manifests in occasional outbreaks of Unstoppable Rage, but in its worst form the Space Marine goes almost completely berserk, hallucinating the last moments of their Primarch and forgetting their own identities. Such unfortunates are grouped into the Death Company and thrown into near-hopeless battles in search of death - and since the curse gives them the ability to potentially shrug off fatal wounds and tear stuff apart with their brute strength, they often end up winning.
- 40k also gives use the Sisters Repentia, Sisters of Battle who are in disgrace can take the oath of redemption, forsaking their armour and normal weapons in favour of rags and a really big chainsaw. They're not expected to survive, but those that do can rejoin the normal squads.
- Lone Wolves from the Space Wolves list. You are actually penalised if they survive to the end, and they have a pretty good statline making it a bit tricky to get them killed (especially since they're immune to the Chunky Salsa Rule). On the other hand, your opponent can see what a Lone Wolf can do, and will probably try and kill them for you so that they don't dismember half of his battle line.
- Although in the fluff, death is not the only way to regain the lost honour of their packs. They deliberately seek out the largest opponents not only to seek an honorable death, but also to use it as an opportunity to regain the honor of his pack. Rarely this succeeds, but sometimes they do return victorious and the avenging of the pack fulfilled. These usually get initated into their respective Wolf Guards. This manifests in an extra re-roll against some of the stronger units on the tabletop, encouraging players to target these units with the Lone Wolf.
- The non-canon Chapter the Fighting Tigers of Veda
 have a similar system with the Grey Tigers, complete with a short story about the redemption of Sudra Patel.
- One of the example villains in the old edition of GURPS Supers was a disgraced sumo wrestler who couldn't commit seppuku due to his Nigh Invulnerability. Thus, he sought out other supers to goad them into killing him. His sympathetic backstory, and his history of tracking down and defeating violent supers, make him more of an Anti Villain.
- Chrononauts: Lost Identities features Isaac, a playable character who prevents various tragedies, including his own death at Columbine. One of his win conditions includes allowing the massacre to happen, so Isaac can let himself die.
Video Games
Web Comics
Web Original
- Vesa Turunen of Survival Of The Fittest version two, while not starting out like this, eventually turned into one near the end of the game due to Character Derailment and the handler who took him over basically turning his mindset into that of a Viking.
- Hank J. Wimbleton of Madness Combat is suggested to be like this, in that he once tries to reject an attempt to revive him.
Western Animation
- An episode of Samurai Jack featured a Norseman who was cursed with eternal life by the Big Bad. He set himself up behind an elaborate death course to weed out anyone who had no chance of ever defeating him, and waited for someone to bring him death. As in the Colbey example, he had to fight all-out to get the afterlife he desired... but Jack did manage to best him.
- Macbeth (yes, that Macbeth) of Gargoyles, with a couple of twists: due to a Deal With The Devil (sort of), he and fellow antagonist Demona have been granted immortality and eternal youth until one kills the other, but once that happens, both will die. Since Macbeth is tired of life, and Demona wishes to continue living, they often come into conflict with each other, forcing the usually-homicidal Demona into an awkward fighting position.
- Dinobot in Beast Wars has a few traits of this. Wish granted.
- While they weren't exactly looking to die, in the Popeye short "Hospitaliky", Popeye and Bluto compete with one another to get injured and have Olive Oyl nurse them to health, who in this short works at a hospital. Any one of the stunts they try to pull could easily have killed them, such as purposely crashing a motorcycle, laying down in the middle of a busy intersection, and laying down on train tracks, however they keep miraculously surviving unscathed, to their own annoyance.
Fan Fiction
- For The Legend of Zelda, in Kasuto of Kataan's "Eternity", the villain is attempting to kill herself with a special spell which would happen to kill several million bystanders after realizing that immortality is actually a curse since the world is boring after living for a really long time. She had already tried every other conventional method and failed.
- Being the author of this story, I'm flattered that I'm listed on this site. But to contribute, this story was a Shoutout and Homage to X-Files season 6 episode 10 "Tithonus".
Real Life
- As stated a couple of times above, this was the faith of the Vikings of old - the only way into the Warriors' Heaven of Valhalla was to fall in battle - to die the 'straw-death' (dying in bed) was the worst thing that could happen to a viking, ensuring him a one-way trip to Hel (while not hellish in the Christian sense, it was a cold land where fish was the only thing on the menu and the lady in charged looked like Harvey Dent on a bad day. So, Finland.)
- In theory. In practice, even those Norsemen who actually saw a battle at some point in their lives weren't at especially high risk of dying heroically in it, so loopholes to the requirement were developed/discovered, like giving those on their deathbeds spear wounds. Death-Seekerdom doesn't actually work that well as the basis for a real-world religion (thank goodness).
- In any case, a systematic cosmology probably didn't occur until several decades after even most Norse considered it fantasy. Somehow the idea of Norse scholars carefully debating the nature of the gods sounds hard to believe.
- In her memoir The Past is Myself, Christabel Bielenberg recounts a chilling encounter with an SS officer who, in despair at the atrocities in which he had participated, was determined to die in battle as the war neared its end: "...He told me of how he had tried to be killed, but his comrades had fallen around him and each time, by some miracle, he had lived. The ones with the photographs in their wallets, the frightened ones, and the ones with dreams of the future, they were the ones who got killed, he said. Only those who didn't care, got the Iron Crosses. Now he was going to the front, to his unit if he could reach it, otherwise anywhere, anywhere, did I hear, where he would be allowed to die."
- Siegfried Sassoon, the poet, during the First World War. Along the way he picked up an MC, and the title of "best war poet to survive the war". Detailed in the novel Regeneration.
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