Head Crushing

"I'm crushing your head, I'm crushing your head!"

— Mr. Tyzik, Kids in the Hall

You have your opponent at your mercy. In this position, you have a variety of ways you could end their life. You could take a gun and shoot their head into the pavement, you could take a knife and gut them like a fish. You could crush them under a car (or any other large vehicle, really).

Or, you could decide to squash their head flat. Either under your boot, with something heavy, using machinery, or with your bare hands if you're strong enough and really want to make a statement out of it.

A painful and messy way to die, sure. Also very effective. The brain is the most vital organ. Destroying it is a guarantee of instant death, and crushing it into mushy little bits will most definitely do that.

Can be considered a Sister Trope to Squashed Flat, since that's when this happens to the whole body. This is when it's just the head. Often the result of Head in a Vise, and can be a follow-up to Facepalm Of Doom or being Bludgeoned to Death. Compare Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain (for when those are the two ways to kill a zombie), Chunky Salsa Rule (for when someone's head being ground up can be a surefire way of killing them off for real) and Your Head Asplode (for heads blowing up). When a foot is involved in the head-crushing, it may be a Finishing Stomp.

Since this is a Death Trope, expect unmarked spoilers to be here. And it's also one of the more gruesome ones, so please, No Real Life Examples.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In one of the original The Crash Dummies PSAs, Vince took off his own head and put it in a press machine to demonstrate "your head when you don't wear a seatbelt". The press burst his head into little bits that were still able to talk.

Anime & Manga

• Beauty and the Beast of Paradise Lost: While Laetitia and Belle are walking into the woods, a woman comes running towards them and asks for help, with the fake beast on her heels. He captures her but, when he sees Laetitia, he realizes she is more beautiful than his prey and crushes the woman’s head with a hand.
• In the last episode of Blood-C, Tokizane gets his head brutally stomped by the Elder Bairns who then proceeds to devour his entire body.
• Digimon Tamers:
  • Cyberdramon lifts Majiramon into the air with one hand and crushes his head with the other.
  • Makuramon meets his end when Beelzebumon grabs his head and crushes it in order to absorb his data.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Ultimately what happens to Pride when Edward invades his body and decimates his Philosopher's Stone. Ed puts his hand right over Selim's face as the stone's souls are dispersed, with the final scene showing Selim's head being crushed as his body withers to dust. Amazingly, Pride survives this, although he's left as a powerless fetus-like baby.
• Gamaran Shura: Big Bad Tadaie Hiramatsu, the younger brother of the current Tokugawa Shogun and a genius in martial arts, is currently so powerful his introduction has him smashing open the head of an assassin just by slamming him into the ground at full speed. This serves to show just how powerful he is.
• Magical Girl Apocalypse: In the first volume, one of Kii's classmates, Arimura, gets his head crushed flat on his shoulders by a resurrected classmate who brings his fist down on it.
• Rurouni Kenshin: Anji's flashback on his origin story ends with him tracking down the men who burnt his monastery and the children inside to ashes and crushing his head like a tomato between his gigantic hands while shouting "Namu Amida Butsu" (the Jodo Sect Buddhist prayer).

Comic Books

• In 2000 AD's Zombo story arc from 2011, "The Day Zombo Died," Obmoz bare-handedly crushes and squashes the skull of the President of Earth, who is a caricature of Donald Trump.
• Forever Evil: Mazahs crushes Deathstorm's skull between his hands while the latter is bound by Superwoman's Lasso of Submission.
• The Beauty: In one story, a man named Timo kills the gang he's a member of and finishes off its leader Paolo by stomping his head into paste.
• The Kingpin from Marvel Comics is known to be more than capable of doing this with his hands alone. In at least one instance, in Ultimate Spider-Man, he put a Spider-Man mask on Mr Big's head, then proceeded to crush his head while fantasizing about doing it to the real Spider-Man himself.
• Saga: Though The Will is very much a villain, there are lines he will not cross, as he demonstrates during his visit to the planet of Sextillion, where he crushes the head of a little girl's pimp to a pulp with his bare hands after finding out just how young she is.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers (Marvel) has Megatron do this to Brawl after the latter questions Megatron's obsession with killing Optimus Prime personally after the latter allows himself to die because of NPCs in a video game. Brawl has an Endurance rating of 9 and Megatron still crushes his head with pure hand strength alone. Brawl shows up a few issues later, no worse for wear.
  • Megatron does this again in Transformers: Generation 2, this time to Bludgeon. He crushes Bludgeon's skull-face, then rips his head clean off his shoulders. This doesn't actually kill Bludgeon, as he is a Pretender and the skull head is part of an external suit. Megatron is unconcerned by this turn of events and blows him up anyway. Bludgeon does not get better.
  • And yet again in The Beast Within. Megatron kills a downed Springer by stomping his head into a metallic pulp.
  • The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
    • A flashback has Overlord doing this to the Decepticon scientist who subjected him to an ununtrium infusion. Megatron beams with fatherly pride.
    Rossum: Congratulations, Megatron, it's a super-warrior.
    (head crush)
    Megatron: He takes after me.
    • After ripping Kaon's head off for showing weakness in front of their allies, Tarn crushes the offending head against Overlord's chest.
• At the end of Ultimatum, the Thing kills Dr. Doom this way (using only one hand). Except it's not Victor Von Doom, it's Sue and Johnny's mom who had started dressing up as Doom. It Makes Just As Much Sense In Context.

Fan Works

• In All For Luz this is Luz's main method of killing her enemies during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge with her Super-Strength. It's quick but brutal death by her literal hands.
• The Mountain and the Wolf:
  • The story starts during Game of Thrones' season 4 episode 8 "The Mountain and the Viper", when Wulfrik the Wanderer (going by the name of the Wolf) replaces Oberyn as Gregor Clegane's opponent. He doesn't quite crush Clegane's skull, as he needs it as a trophy; instead, he rams his thumbs through the bone, bursting Clegane's eyes from behind.
  • During the battle against Euron's men, one of the Wolf's berserkers starts beating his victim's head against the wooden railing, even after the Ironborn's skull is shattered. The Wolf has to break the berserker's arm to snap him out of it.
• In The Victors Project, Chaff wins the 45th Hunger Games by crushing the head of the District 1 boy with his one remaining hand.
• Vow of the King: One of the Unohana clones is punched into a wall hard enough for her head to splatter all over it.

Films — Animation

• Appleseed: The Action Prologue of the film briefly shows a combat cyborg crushing one of Deunan's squadmates' heads in its hands.
• Beowulf: Grendel crushes the head of a Screaming Woman with both hands during the first attack on Heorot. Despite the carnage that follows, this example counts as Black Comedy because he just wanted her to shut up (he's extremely sensitive to sounds because of a massively exposed eardrum sticking out from his left ear).
• Pocahontas narrowly averts the execution of John Smith by her father as a penalty for killing Kokoum. Chief Powhatan is poised to crush Smith's head with a large club when his daughter intervenes.
• Wreck-It Ralph: Zangief's specialty is crushing his opponents' heads with his thighs, a job he considers so important that he stays evil just so there is someone to do it.
  Zangief: If Zangief is good guy, who'll crush man's skull like sparrow's egg between thighs?

Films — Live-Action

• American History X: Derek infamously ends his scuffle with a trio of car thieves by forcing the last one to bite the curb, before bringing down his boot onto his skull, practically pulverizing it.
• Axe Murdering with Hackley: During the climax of the movie, Hackley kills Rival by squeezing his head between his hands until blood splatters out of it.
• Beautiful People: After raping Elena, Brett kills her by hitting her over the head with a rock until it's flattened.
• The Bible In The Beginning: A jealous Cain attacks his brother Abel with a large rock, conking him on the head four times before Abel finally falls to the ground. There, Cain continues to pound his brother's head until he's long past dead. The brutality of this murder merits Cain a thundering "What hast thou done?" from the Almighty.
• Implied Trope in Blade Runner when Roy Batty kills Tyrell. Tyrell's head is in Batty's hands as he is killed.
• Camp Slaughter has one of the victims initially caught with a logging strap around their throat and around a tree. They manage to claw the strap up to head level, only to have the killer use a stick to twist the strap and continue applying pressure until the victim's skull cracks.
• Just barely averted in Casino. After Remo's restaurant is attacked and both mob-connected people and civilians are killed, Nicky captures one of the guys involved and tries to torture the guy into revealing who was behind the attack. For two days the guy refuses to talk... until Nicky sticks his head in a vice and tightens it enough to make one of his eyes pop out. That makes the guy finally break and Nicky has one of his mooks cut the guy's throat as a Mercy Kill.
• The Casino (not to be confused with the above movie) has the hero, Luo, killing mooks with everything he can get his hands upon, including a few whose heads he stomps repeatedly until their skulls cave in, complete with graphic Gorntastic effects.
• Con Air: Incorrigible criminal Cyrus Grissom ends up with his head positioned beneath a working pile driver, after a bizarre set of circumstances. He can only rage in futility as the large weight drops onto his face, liquifying his head.
• DC Extended Universe: In Zack Snyder's Justice League, Steppenwolf is beheaded by Wonder Woman. His still-living head lands right in front of Darkseid who crushes it under his foot.
• Dead & Buried: In one of the mob killings, the victim is killed by having a large rock dropped on their head.
• Drive (2011): The Driver and Irene are attacked in an elevator by an assailant with a concealed gun. When the draw fails, the Driver forces the attacker to the ground and repeatedly stomps on his head until it's reduced to nothing.
• The Emperor and His Brother: Chief Chou of the Lotus Clan is forced to execute his 12-year-old son in an Offing the Offspring moment, which he did by slamming a chi-empowered palm through the child's scalp. Cue the Sickening "Crunch!" of breaking bones and a skull being penetrated.
• Final Destination:
  • In Final Destination 3, Lewis is killed by having his head crushed between two falling weights.
  • Final Destination 5: After narrowly escaping a fire, Issac is killed when a Budai statue falls and crushes his head.
• Friday the 13th
  • Friday the 13th Part III: Rick gets his head crushed barehanded by Jason so hard one of his eyes pops out of its socket towards the audience in one of the silliest bits of 80s 3D filmmaking.
  • Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives: While investigating Crystal Lake, Officer Pappas encounters Jason and attempts to shoot him, but the bullets have no effect and Jason kills Pappas by crushing his skull. Pappas' efforts did buy enough time for one of the young children at the camp to flee, however.
  • Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood: While Ben is outside looking for his friend Michael, Jason catches him and crushes his skull with his bare hands. This scene was heavily censored in the theatrical version, cutting away as soon as he starts to bleed. The uncut scene shows the entire head-crushing complete with blood pouring from his eye sockets.
  • Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: Jason, possessing the body of a sleazy reporter, goes on a rampage in a diner to capture his infant niece so he can be reborn in her. His last kill is a brave waitress named Vicki who hits him with several shotgun blasts and keeps fighting even after being impaled. Jason finishes her off by crushing her head, her brains exiting the top of her skull like a popped zit.
• Guardians of the Galaxy: In his first scene, Ronan executes a Nova Corps prisoner by smashing his head with the gigantic hammer that serves as his badge of office.
• Halloween (2018): When Dr. Sartain is wounded and at Michael Myers' mercy, Sartain shouts at Michael to "Say something!", only for Michael to respond by crushing the Doctor's head under his foot.
• The kung fu film Heroes Two ends with the heroes, Hung Hsi-Kwan and Fang Shi-yu fighting the main villain's Elite Mook legion in a duel. Hung managed to kill one of them by forcing his fingers into the mook's temple, before the entire screen flashes red for a second with the sound of a cracking skull in the background, and then cutting back to the mook spewing blood from his forehead.
• House of the Dead: At the end of the movie, Ruby kills Castillo for good by crushing his severed head under her boot.
• The film adaptation of I Am a Hero has a jogger-zombie infiltrate the Gotemba Mall survivor compound and crush the head of the medic that discovers it before she can reveal its location, eating her right after.
• In the Tall Grass: If it wasn't obvious enough that touching the black rock in the grass has changed Ross into something... else, he emphasizes it by crushing Natalie's skull with his bare hands.
• The violent "fire extinguisher" scene from Irréversible crosses over into Pummeling the Corpse. Too bad he killed the wrong guy.
• Jack Reacher has deduced the culprits behind a sniper serial killing, and comes to their lair to confront them. Reacher conducts a hand-to-hand duel with The Dragon Charlie, prefaced with a Badass Boast that he'll stomp on Charlie's head. Which he does. *crunch*
• In the climax of Mandy, the hero crushes the villain's skull with his bare hands.
• Mortal Kombat: Jax, mentioned below in "Video Games", finally unlocks the full power of his Arcana (in his case, Magitek mechanical arms), and kills Reiko by clapping on either side of his head hard enough to crush it between his hands.
  Jax: Yeah, these motherfuckers work.
• The Red Lantern Sect's High Priestess in the fourth Once Upon a Time in China movie demonstrates her kung fu skills by grabbing a British soldier's head - helmet and all — and crushing his skull via her fingers.
• Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead: ACB mascot/chicken zombie/future!Arbie kills a priest by stomping on his head.
• Near the end of Rambo IV, Michael the missionary leader who spends the entirety of his screentime as a pacifist finally decides Violence Really Is the Answer in order to save Lewis' life, as he took down an enemy soldier about to shoot Lewis by grabbing a rock and bludgeoning the soldier's brains out.
• Re-Animator: Zombified Dean Halsey finishes off Dr. Hill by slowly squeezing his screaming, still-living head into a bloody pulp.
• The final battle of Romeo Must Die have Han (Jet Li) fighting Kai (Russell Wong), ending with Han landing a fatal, skull-breaking kick into Kai's skull which then leads to a domino-like shattering effect on each and every bone in Wong's spine, gloriously depicted as an X-ray sequence. It's a homage to a similar scene from The Street Fighter.
• A Serbian Film: In the film's infamous "Happy Serbian Family" scene, Marija, finally snapping after being raped by her brother-in-law Marko, retaliates firstly by lunging and biting out Marko's throat, and later grabs a nearby sculpture and uses it to smash Marko's forehead, splitting his cranium. Later on, as Milos realizes he's set up by his brother into raping his whole family, he then grabs the same sculpture and repeatedly smashes it on Marko's bloodied face (even though the brain matter is already everywhere since the skull has caved in completely) in a Desecrating the Dead moment.
• Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D.: Kabuki man kills one of the thugs, who were about to attack him, by constantly stomping on his head.
• Star Trek Into Darkness: John Harrison/Khan does this to Admiral Marcus with his bare hands to punish the Admiral for trying to use him as a weapon against the Klingons and then betraying him. His hands are suspiciously clean afterwards, though.
  Harrison/Khan: You... You should have let me sleep!
• Threatened in Strange Brew. Near the end, Brewmeister Smith tightly grabs Claude Elsinore's head and growls, "I could crush your head like a nut. But I won't! Because I need you." Claude survives, but it clearly hurts a lot.
• The Story Of Ricky has multiple examples, thanks to the film being a gornfest with the characters having Super-Strength and not afraid to actually use it for killing. Ricky notably defeats Oscar by smashing his skull in (intersect with an X-ray shot of his skull breaking) and later on Tarzan The Brute claps a random prisoner's head and mashes it like a melon.
• The Street Fighter: Terry's first on-screen kill in the entire movie is a henchman which he pounds on the scalp, intercut with an X-ray shot of the man's skull getting caved in and immediately followed by the victim throwing up blood.
• The Terminator: A desperate Sarah Connor manages to activate a hydraulic press, which crushes the relentless killing machine that's been pursuing her the whole time. While the evil robot's power supply is in its thorax, its "brain" is in its head, which is shown being Squashed Flat until its Red Eyes, Take Warning go dim to indicate that it has permanently deactivated.
• The Toxic Avenger: After running over a kid with his car for kicks, Melvin's bullies turn their car around and kill the boy by crushing his head under the car's wheels. They then take a picture of his corpse.
• Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Jetfire kills Scorponok by crushing his skull with a single punch.
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: Battletrap gets his head caved in by Optimus Primal with Battletrap's own mace.
• Undercover Brother:
  • Lance goes into a berserker state when three guards make the mistake of calling him a "sissy". He kills one of them by crushing his head.
  • Subverted while Undercover Brother is fighting several of The Man's mooks. After a mook screams out a Big "NO!", Undercover Brother is implied to crush the mook's skull offscreen by smashing down with his foot, resulting in a Sickening "Crunch!". However, the next shot reveals that he actually crushed a bag of the mook's potato chips. You can watch the scene here.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Marvin Acme is murdered by having a safe dropped on his head. When his body is taken away, it is clear that his head has been crushed.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past: A Sentinel kills Colossus by knocking him into the ground and punching his head flat.

Literature

• Congo: The lost city of Zinj is guarded by gray gorillas who were trained by the city's human inhabitants to kill intruders by crushing their heads between stone paddles held in each hand. Hundreds of years after the human trainers died out, the gorillas are still training each other to perform this gruesomely effective duty.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Gregor Clegane kills Oberyn Martell in their duel by punching through his face.

Live-Action TV

• The 100: After overpowering McCreary, Clarke kills him by stomping on his head.
• The Boys (2019):
  • In episode 3, after Popclaw hears her boyfriend A-Train say that he's single and available, she injects herself with some Compound-V and starts training in a rage. When her landlord comes to collect the rent, she invites him to have sex, and while sitting on his face, she crushes his skull, killing him.
  • In episode 8, Homelander takes over the raid of an ISIS drug plant from a Special Forces unit, and uses his Eye Beams to behead, dismember, and slice in half everyone inside, and the last remaining gunman, Homelander burns his legs off, and smiles while crushing the gunman's head under his boot.
• Breaking Bad: In "Peekaboo", Spooge's girlfriend — after being repeatedly called a "skank" by Spooge — kills him by tipping over the ATM he was trying to break into onto his head.
• In Season 1 of Daredevil (2015), Fisk is extremely upset when a Russian mobster accidentally interrupts his date. As punishment, he beats the man and crushes his head in the door of a limo repeatedly until the man is practically decapitated.
• Doctor Who: In the new series, Daleks have demonstrated the ability to implode skulls with their often-mocked plungers. In "Dalek", it's done simply as a means of killing someone. In "Doomsday", it's a means of extracting knowledge (fatally).
• Game of Thrones: Gregor Clegane kills Oberyn Martell in "The Mountain and the Viper" by crushing the man's head like a grape in his bare hands, starting by shoving his thumbs into his eyes.
  "Elia Martell. I killed her children. Then I raped her. Then I smashed her head in, like this!"
• In House of the Dragon, Ser Criston Cole beats the living shit out of Ser Joffrey Lonmouth's head on the ground, crushing his face beyond recognition and with much gorn.
• Kids in the Hall: Parodied in the Mr. Tyzik sketches, wherein the titular character would make comments about people he sees on the street, and would then hold his hand up to his eye to make it look like the person's head was between his fingers. He would then press his thumb and index finger together to mime the act of crushing their head while saying that he was "crushing your head".
• MADtv (1995): In the "Raging Rudolph" animation, Yukon Cornelius kills an elf by putting his head in a vice and squeezing it until it cracks.
• Monk: In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus", Monk tries to help Sharona overcome her fear of elephants, by taking her to see the circus elephant Dede. To show her Dede is harmless, her trainer Heinz puts his head under the elephant's foot. It backfires horribly, because the murderer had placed a walkie-talkie behind Dede's ear. She commands the elephant to put her foot down, crushing Heinz's skull in front of Monk and Sharona and exacerbating the poor woman's fear exponentially.
• Twin Peaks: In Part 8 of The Return, one of the woodsmen kills a receptionist and a disk jockey at a radio station with a one-handed head-crushing before reciting a cryptic mantra over the air.

Music

• Megadeth: "Head Crusher" is the first single from their album Endgame, and is about a medieval torture device of the same name. The song's lyrics are about a prisoner being taken to a head crusher to torture him as a means to interrogate him for information as well as the effects a head crusher would have on a body once inflicted.
• "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny": Upon Chuck Norris descending from the heavens and delivering a mighty Groin Attack to Indiana Jones, Batman attempts to disguise himself by undressing into Bruce Wayne. Chuck sees through this disguise and crushes Batman's head between his thighs.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III:
  • After the Eldritch Starship crashes at the end of the tutorial, you find the mind flayer who kidnapped you all and implanted you with its parasites, now clinging to life in the wreckage. If you choose to finish it off, you splatter its head beneath your foot.
  • Ketheric Thorm's Establishing Character Moment has him smashing a goblin's head with his fists after shrugging off a couple of lethal blows with a halberd from the same goblin.
  • If she's present for his Boss Battle, Dame Aylin delivers the killing blow on Ketheric himself this way by viciously stomping on his head. Repeatedly. While cursing the living daylights out of his mangled corpse.
• In Bloody Battle, by using a Hammer or a Sledgehammer, you will be able to execute people by crushing their heads.
• Darksiders: War does this to the Watcher after Uriel breaks the Seventh Seal, thereby freeing War of the leash the Watcher held him by. To make it more impressive, he does it with one hand- specifically, his massive metal hand.
• In Dead Island, the player can gain the ability to finish off knocked-down enemies with a head stomp, and can later upgrade the ability to more quickly finish off enemies by jumping on their head with both feet.
• In Doom and Doom Eternal several Glory Kills involve smashing an unlucky demon's head into paste, either from above with his boot or the demon's head being between the Doom Slayer's fist and a hard surface.
• In Dying Light, the player can gain the ability to finish off knocked-down enemies with a head kick.
• The Evil Within: One of the bosses in the game Laura Victoriano can kill the main protagonist Sebastian Castellanos by pulling him onto the floor and pinning him down while two of her arms repeatedly hit him in the face eventually crushing his head.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses: In chapter 11 of the Azure Moon route, Dimitri finds out the identity of the Flame Emperor, a revelation that he doesn't take well at all. After that, he goes on a murderous spree and slaughters the Flame Emperor's Mooks. One of them finds his end as Dimitri crushes his head with one hand.
• Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise: Three words — Hokuto Kouretsu Ha (aka, Hokuto Steel Shredding Clench). If Kenshiro isn't using this to mortally wound Uighur during their bout, then he'll certainly crush any unlucky villain's head with this.
• Friday the 13th: The Game: Jason has a few head crusher kills in his arsenal and one of the loading screens has him performing one on a screaming victim.
• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number: Several of the playable characters can kill fallen enemies by crushing their heads underfoot. These characters include Mark, Manny Pardo, Jake, Martin Brown, whose stomp execution is faster than many of the other characters, and the Son, who grinds his foot into the remains of the enemy's head out of spite.
• This is how we are (re)introduced to Trevor Phillips in Grand Theft Auto V. When a meth-addled Johnny Klebitz (verbally) confronts Trevor over screwing over with his girl, the latter decides to throttle him to the ground and kills him by repeatedly stomping on the poor guy's head until its reduced to a graphic splatter.
• Gears of War: Throughout the franchise, one of the most common and iconic finishing moves on a down enemy is to roadie-run up and curb stomp their head into mush.
• God of War (PS4): One of Kratos's new finishing moves that he can use against Draugr and Hel-Walkers is grabbing their feet and throwing their heads to the ground before stamping them to a pulp, producing a lovely spray of orange or blue blood.
• In Madworld, this is one of Jack’s main moves.
• Mortal Kombat is laden with fatalities like these, appearing as early as the arcade games.
  • Jax's Head Clap fatality has him clap his hand against his opponent's head, crushing it to pieces.
  • Darrius will do this to himself as his Hara-Kiri, a self-fatality to avoid his opponent's fatality.
  • Tremor's "Stalag-Might" has him impale his opponent with three stalagtites and then finishes them off by turning his arms into hammers and smashing them between their head.
  • Erron Black has a fatality involving stomping on a head (while it's being dissolved by acid).
• Resident Evil:
  • The original PS1 Trilogy would let the player character sacrifice a small bit of health for an instant kill by letting a crippled ankle biter get a hold of them. Starting with Resident Evil 2, the player can button mash to kill the zombie quicker and save more health. The tradition continued as seen below:
  • In Resident Evil 0 and the Resident Evil (Remake), if downed zombies latch onto the Player Character, the character will, upon getting loose from their grip, crush the zombie's head under their foot.
  • Resident Evil 2 (Remake): Mr. X punches his way through a wall to grab Ben Bertolucci by his head, and then crushes it in his hand. He can do the same to the player if he grabs them and they have no way to free themselves.
  • Resident Evil 3 (Remake): One of the Nemesis's kill animations has him crush Jill Valentine's head by stomping on it with his foot and leaving only bloody fragments behind as what's left.
• Saints Row: The Third: After losing Murderbrawl XXXI to his old wrestling partner Angel (with help from the 3rd Street Saints), Eddie "Killbane" Pryor, whether or not he's unmasked, takes out his frustration on the unfortunate mooks that dragged him away from the ring. One such underling is met with this fate by Pryor himself.
• Saw II: Flesh & Blood: When Michael finds Joseph, Joseph is in a device that would crush various body parts one by one in vices. The last body part of Joseph's to be crushed is his skull if you don't solve the puzzle in time.
• Shadow Hearts: Yuri's Establishing Character Moment involves him catching a Wind Shear, an invisible monster that just slaughtered a train car worth of soldiers while Parrying Bullets, by its head and effortlessly crushing it.
• Until Dawn: This is a possible death for Josh; the Wendingo ambushes him from underwater, grabs him by the head, and crushes his skull between its palms.
• In Yandere Simulator, one way you can defeat your rivals is by crushing them. You increase your strength stat first, then you fill a bucket with weights. Thirdly, you put a note in the person's locker signalling that they need to meet you at the front of the school. Then you go to the rooftop and drop the bucket over their unsuspecting head.

Web Animation

• Counterspell: Upon beating the heroes, Bruiser finishes the White Mage off by stomping on her head.
• DEATH BATTLE!:
  • Doomsday starts off his Death Battle against the Hulk by grabbing a random civilian in the city he just landed in and crushing his head with one hand.
  • Android 18 finishes off Captain Marvel by sending her crashing into the ground and then immediately stomping on her head. The nearby dragon ball gets blood splattered all over it.
  • The Shredder, after karate-chopping the Silver Samurai's own katana (which he threw into Keniuchio's head) in order to remove his head, catches it and crushes it with one hand in gory detail whilst glaring right at the viewer.
    Shredder: Playtime. Is. Over.
  • At the end of "Genos vs. War Machine", War Machine finishes Genos off by stomping his head under his foot. Since Genos' head was all that was left of him at that point, Genos was, for all intents and purposes, completely destroyed.
  • At the conclusion of "Red Hood and the Winter Soldier", Bucky finishes off Jason by grabbing him by the head while he's disoriented from Bucky's gun exploding and crushes his skull with his cybernetic arm.
  • "Thor vs. Vegeta" ends with Thor grabbing Vegeta by the face, then calling Mjölnir back to him. Mjölnir flies into the hand holding Vegeta's head, which is promptly, slowly crushed.
  • At the end of "Omni-Man vs. Homelander", after viscerally ripping out his opponent's jaw, Omni-Man kills Homelander by crushing both his skull and his heart into paste between his bare hands. At the same time.
    Omni-Man: [holding the still-beating heart of his enemy in hand] Remember what I promised you? [shoves heart into his broken jaw] Now swallow!
    Homelander: [unintelligible screams of pain and agony]
  • "Black Adam vs. Apocalypse" ends with Black Adam attempting to say his magic words, only for it to fail due to his Living Lightning drained by Apocalypse, who follows up by stomping on his head multiple times, mutilating his face gorily. It doesn't finish off Teth-Adam, but that's because En Sabah Nur wants him to watch Kahndaq being destroyed before actually killing him.
• Half Life: Side Story: Gaiden: HUNT DOWN FREE MAN: After defeating the Combines boss, Moint Pan finishes him off by stomping on his head and "crushes his head real hard almost under his boot".^note Yes, the typos and bad grammar are intentional. It's that kind of video.
• Happy Tree Friends: In the episode "Icy You", after having his lips ripped off and being popped like a balloon, what ultimately does Nutty in is when the convenience store's automatic doors close on his head, crushing it into Ludicrous Gibs.

Webcomics

• In Our Shadow: In the climactic battle at the end of Book 2, Lady Brushfire leaps from her wrecked mech, tears open the cockpit of Quartz's mech, and crushes his head in one hand. Justified as she's a red kangaroo and he's a rat. The epilogue shows that Brushfire kept Quartz's cracked skull as a trophy.
• Sluggy Freelance: During a supervillian meeting, Crushestro pulls one off on the Time Czar in a Gory Discretion Shot. The others find it less impressive after making a Bond One-Liner about having "too much time on [his] hands".
• Unsounded: Quigley uses spells to gorily flatten the heads of three of the mooks that had cornered Captain Toma.

Web Videos

• Danny Gonzalez: In his review of How to Build a Better Boy, he has a sketch about Albert going to the principal's office for various disruptions, one of which involved crushing a bully's head between his legs.
• In the Dragon Ball Z Abridged version of Revenge of Cooler, one of Big Bad Cooler's henchmen refers to having done this before, asking his fellow henchmen in the Quirky Mini Boss Squad "Hey boys, remember when I said I once popped a man's skull with me bare hands?" As he asks them that, he begins squeezing Gohan's head, and judging by Gohan's eyes, it is quite painful. Fortunately Piccolo arrives in time to intervene and saves Gohan.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: In the episode "Cops & Roger", Roger kills Chaz by elbow dropping onto his head from the top of a rope, crushing it and killing him. It then becomes a disgusting, but hilarious Overly Long Gag as the blow is shown again and again, in slow motion, with beautifully animated details like Chaz's eyes popping out of his skull from the force.
  Roger: That was unexpected.
• Darkwing Duck: Negaduck has captured most of the Justice Ducks, and has them pinned in place, awaiting slow execution by various means. Morgana McCawber has her head in a large vise, which is slowly squeezing closed. Fortunately, this deathtrap gets disabled before it could do irreversible damage; only her peculiar hairstyle is affected.
• Invincible:
  • Red Rush is killed by Omni-Man, who squeezes the former's head until it breaks.
  • This is also the fate of the soldier who's saved by Invincible after the soldier's parachute fails to open. He meets his demise this way at the hands of Omni-Man.
• The Legend of Vox Machina:
  • Kerrion Stonefell, a disgusting toad carrying a massive hammer, does this to an unnamed woman who fights in the revolution alongside Vox Machina. His hammer crushes the top half of her skull and most of her brain, exposing what remains before she collapses.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Threatened. Spidey tries to stop an advancing Rhino by sending a cascade of bowling balls his way, but Rhino simply crushes them underfoot. He then stops with his foot hovering over Spidey's skull and says "Remember what I did to them bowling balls?"

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