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He hits you with his fingertips at five different pressure points on your body. And then he lets you walk away. But once you’ve taken five steps, your heart explodes in your body, and you fall to the floor, dead. — Bill, Kill Bill, describing the legendary Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.
The Final Battle has begun. The two opponents square off, and one of them hits the other with a series of mighty blows that would fell a mountain. But what's this? Nothing seems to be happening! That's when your opponent tells you that You Are Already Dead, right before your head explodes, your body separates in two, or you disintegrate into a fine mist. If you're lucky, only one of those happens. Sometimes, you may also discover that you were Made of Explodium.
A common trope in martial arts series, this involves some form of Finishing Move that does not take effect immediately. When used with martial arts, it may involve Pressure Point attacks or some form of Ki Attacks. Assassins may use Universal Poison to achieve a similar effect.
When used with swords there are a number of common variations, often shown with a Diagonal Cut. In sword duels, the two sides charge each other and attack. There will be a pause as the two pose, then one (or both) will fall down. Another one is for a Master Swordsman to perform a series of lightning-fast slashes, and then slowly and dramatically sheath their sword (with an audible *click*) before their attacks take effect.
This trope is not necessarily limited to martial arts, either. In more modern settings, gunshot wounds can often have this effect, since getting shot typically feels like getting punched hard and it is not uncommon for victims to take some time to realize it. This can be exploited for dramatic effect in war movies, where fatally wounded soldiers wander the battlefield before succumbing.
Compare Delayed Reaction for the comedy version. May lead to Died Standing Up. See Determinator or Heroic Second Wind for when it doesn't work. Can overlap with Badass Boast. A subtrope of Time Delayed Death. Not to be confused with Dead All Along or Dead To Begin With.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- This happens to assassin Evelyn Cream in Miracleman when he's decapitated by a monster dog but doesn't realize it until the end of the issue.
Film
- Kill Bill has this with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, described in the page quote above.
- Used for dramatic effect in Saving Private Ryan during the Normandy scene, where severely injured soldiers in the throes of shellshock wander the battlefield before succumbing.
- In Ghost Ship, a thin wire rips through everyone on the dance-floor of the ship, instantly cutting them all in half; and yet they remain standing perfectly upright... and slowly all fall apart (when in actuality they'd obviously fall immediately).
- In one of the Pink Panther movies, a ninja-master gives a demonstration where he strikes a rock, and nothing happens; then he leaves, and the entire room collapses.
- Wagons East: During the gunfight at the end of the movie, Julian and Slade have a stand off during which Slade is shot but doesn't notice until Julian points it out to him.
- Darth Maul takes a second to realize he's been cut in half at the end of the climactic fight scene in The Phantom Menace.
- I killed you ten minutes ago.
- In Kiss of the Dragon, Jet Li hits the bad guy with the titular attack, paralyzing him. Jet Li then has time to describe what is about to happen, right before starting the process of death by yanking the needle out and walking out of the room. The bad guy then starts to have extreme pain and blood starts leaking out of every possible opening until he dies.
- In the obscure horror film Skinned Deep, the Surgeon General takes a swing at a kid with his knife. Nothing seems to happen, and the kid remarks that he missed. Cue kid splitting in half.
- Barbossa takes a few moments to realize that Jack didn't waste that last shot.
- The guy who challenged Kyuzo to a duel first with sticks, then with swords in The Seven Samurai. Kikuchiyo's death could also qualify.
- Spock's Heroic Sacrifice to repair the Enterprise in Wrath Of Khan.
Kirk:"He's dying!"
Literature
- In Sergey Lukyanenko's Line of Delirium, this is the favorite tactic of the Bulrathi when fighting humans during the Vague War. They would strike the liver with a special move then let the prisoner go. The victim would feel perfectly fine for several days before the liver would suddenly fail, and the person would die. The main character ends up on the receiving end of this strike at the beginning, during his Training from Hell, but gets better. He later accidentally hits a guy the same way during an interrogation, but reasons that the guy probably deserves it.
- Several such attacks are described in the book against aliens. The Bulrathi themselves have a gland that, when punched hard, causes them to die of intense pleasure. There are also the unexplained "reflexive points" that can also be used to kill within seconds. The Bulrathi, being obsessed with hand-to-hand combat, also develop a technique for taking down a Silicoid (a hovering column of rock) with singing and a single punch. The main character is the first human to use this technique.
- Gar Quithnick from Roger Zelazny's Forever After practices Tian-shi-sheqi, a martial art that demands that death be a summation of life, rather than a mere cessation. To that end, he employs the kuo-tak strike to set up a sort of psychic resonance that kills the victim upon experiencing a certain stimulus. With it, he causes a predator to die the instant it pounces, tells a deposed despot that he will die the moment he considers himself greater than another man (though he can still live a long life of humility), and even turns one enemy into a MacGuffin Delivery Service.
- David Langford's fractal basilisks infect the human mind with an image it cannot process, producing this effect. In the short story "BLIT," a vandal is Hoist by His Own Petard when he accidentally looks at a stencil of "The Parrot" while using protective goggles (the cops who arrest him die instantly). The effect doesn't kick in later, and can only be countered with strong drink to ensure short-term memory loss.
- Jack Vance's Demon Princes series has cluthe, a microbiological agent delivered by needle (usually fitted to a protective glove) which has a progressive paralytic effect. Essentially an extremely accelerated case of tetanus, except that you're dead in minutes instead of hours to days. The onset seems to be able to be varied, from instantaneous to something like twelve or more hours later. One usage is so similar in many respects to that of Kiss of the Dragon quoted above, with the hero delivering the dose to the villain in the exact same fashion (a needle to the back of the neck), that this troper suspects the scriptwriter has read the appropriate novel and changed the effect to avoid plagiarism issues.
Live Action Television
- In Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, Kamdor, one of several major Big Bads, and Black Ranger Will charge at each other, and strike in passing. Will falls, and Kamdor, thinking he's won, turns to leave... and then goes kaflooey. Will pulls himself to his feet a little later.
- In Kamen Rider Den-O I'm Born, Den-O Sword form and Kamen Rider Gaoh have one final showdown. After the two have an exchange of slashes, Gaoh suddenly starts being reduced to sand after a few moments.
- In Ultraman Tiga, Tiga and Evil Tiga have a midair attack exchange. Tiga falls to his knees, causing Evil Tiga to turn and laugh before suddenly clutching his chest in pain and falling to the ground. While it doesn't kill him in the series, it gives Tiga the oppertunity to finish him. In Ultraman Fighting Evolution 3, this is how he kills him.
Stand-up Comedy
- On David Cross' CD, Shut Up You (lift flap for dirty word) Baby! he launches into a long tirade mimicking the puffed-up threats rednecks make when they're about to start a fight:
"I just take my eyelash, man, and then you fuckin' put it in your eye, and you're fuckin' dead, man, you're dead for an hour, you don't even know it, man. You'll be walkin' around, thinkin' you alive, but you been dead for an hour, man."
Tabletop Games
- In 3E Dungeons & Dragons, this is basically what the Quivering Palm ability of the Monk does. Once per week, a high-level Monk can declare an unarmed strike to be a Quivering Palm attack. Any time within the next several (at least fifteen) days, the monk can simply will the target to drop dead (although he gets a saving throw to survive).
- In the Feng Shui fan supplement Out For Blood, the fu power "Harmonious Fist" from the Path of the Harmonious Chord, a fu path for those adept in both Martial Arts and Sorcery, allows its user to launch a Martial Arts attack that doesn't deliver its damage until you make a Sorcery check, and among other things can be used to deliver many strikes that only take effect when the Sorcery check is made to activate them all. Omae wa mou shindeiru indeed.
- The Ninjas And Super-Spies RPG from Palladium Books contains the dreaded Dim Mak technique. Only a few Martial arts allow you to learn it and one must be of the most evil (Diabolic) of alignment. A successful infliction of this technique destroys ones ability to recover the positive chi required for healing leading to one to slowly waste away and die from the incurable breakdown of the body over the following weeks. It can even be delivered with a finger poke where the victim never knows what happened and an advanced version can even work (with more difficulty) through phone lines!
Theatre
Video Games
- Gen from Street Fighter Alpha 2, whose martial art style is classified as an "assassination fist" like Kenshiro's, has a Super Combo called Shitenshuu or the "Death Point Attack". When Gen performs the Lv. 3 version on his opponent, it will cause a timer to appear above their head, which will cause an instant K.O. Unlike other examples, the effect can be canceled if the opponent manage to strike Gen before the countdown reaches zero. His other Super Combo, Zan Ei is a lesser version of this. He dashes forward hitting his opponent once, but after the pass, the opponent receives multiple mysterious hits.
- The Fist of the North Star fighting game gives Kenshiro two attacks with "the line." One is his Fatal KO, the Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken. The other attack is the Zankai Ken, a Super that gives the opponent three seconds before being defeated. Just like in the original series, however, this attack doesn't work on Souther.
- Dragon Age: Origins has the Walking Bomb spell, which causes whatever it is cast on to explode after a set amount of time. Its upgrade, Virulent Walking Bomb, turns anyone else in the blast radius into bombs themselves.
- The Final Fantasy series has the various spells and attacks that inflict the Doom status effect. This places a timer above the victim's head, counting down to zero. When the timer hits zero, the character dies.
- Some enemies have a doom-like ability that is un-dispellable. Essentially, you're already dead, you've just been given a short grace period.
- This also appears in the Kingdom Hearts series.
- One of the Metal Gear Solid comics shows a High Frequency Blade-d guard's head slowly sliding apart in mid-sentence.
- In Diablo III, one of Monk class' skills, Exploding Palm, causes the target to explode if it is killed by Damage Over Time. Omae wa mou shindeiru, indeed.
- Taokaka's Astral Heat has her (intending) to finish the opponent after saying this, word for word. Considering the nature of Blaz Blue, it is very likely that it's a Shout Out.
- Hakumen even has an achievement named this in Continuum Shift. Its objective is to deal 10,000 damage in one combo, which is such an absurdly high amount that if you're not dead, you're probably one good poke from dead (unless the opponent is also Hakumen or Tager, who are the only characters that can withstand such a combo at whopping 12,000 and 13,000 health respectively).
- In Shinobi for the PS2, Hotsuma can attack multiple enemies in a chain, and after the chain attack is completed, they all fall to pieces.
- Mortal Kombat: Deception: One of Li-Mei's fatalities involves this.
- Vergil's Signature Move in Devil May Cry 3 is Diagonal Cutting his opponent, then waiting several seconds before sheathing his sword (with an audible CLICK), and only then the enemy goes asunder.
- The original Ninja Gaiden for the NES opened with this happening to Ryu Hayabusa's father in a Cut Scene.
- One of the Nekomata's attacks in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten is a dead ringer for the Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken. After delivering multiple blows, the opponent becomes irate and walks up. Cue the explosion about halfway there.
- At the beginning of Shadow's story in Sonic '06, Shadow briefly pulls this with several robots by simply running through/by them.
- The No Moment sword tech and Fist fighting tech in SaGa Frontier.
- Reiji and Xiaomu in Super Robot Taisen Endless Frontier when they perform their Shinra Banshou overdrive. After Reiji wails on the enemy with his guns and swords, Xiaomu finishes with a slash from her sword staff. As soon as she clicks it into her staff, the enemy gushes out blood in the air.
- In a really wrong way, the game Prototype makes it impossible to let someone go after grabbing them without killing them. So they are pretty much dead once you get your hands on them.
- In Prototype 2 gives us the BioBomb. Where you insert into an victim a variation of the virus that incubates for a short time, enough to leave the scene, before exploding them into a mass of tentacles impaling everything near him.
- Evie's Drain attacks in Vindictus have this effect, particularly the Mark of Death and Bloody Thread attacks. You can hit an enemy with a smash and then hit them with the Drain attack, which you can then explode later for extra damage.
- Shen from League of Legends has almost this exact Quote for his /taunt. "Your already dead, you just haven't caught up yet.
Webcomics
Web Original
- Episode 18 of Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged gives us this example:
Seiryu: Hm. Seems you're pretty fast... but not fast enough. Hiei: Oh really? You have no idea how fast I am. Seiryu: Oh yeah, smartass? Then how fast are you? Hiei: You really want to know? Seiryu: Enlighten me. Hiei: You sure you want to know? Seiryu: Yes I'm sure! Hiei: Positive? Seiryu: Positive! Hiei: Absolutely sure? Seiryu: Yes, goddammit! Hiei: You've been dead for twenty seconds. < Beat> Seiryu: AhhhhAHHHHHH!!!
- This happens twice to Axem Yellow in Super Mario Bros. Z, first it took him several seconds to realize that, after an attempted attack on Mecha Sonic, his axe had fallen apart. Later, Mecha Sonic spin-dashes him. Five seconds later, he splits in half. Both halves explode.
- Avatar: The Abridged Series did a Fist of the North Star parody, complete with the line.
- Atop the Fourth Wall gave us Pollo's Heroic Sacrifice to repair Comicron-1's engines after Mecha Kara's latest attempt at domination. This was a direct Shout Out to Spock's death in Wrath Of Khan.
Real Life
- Frequently in boxing and kickboxing, a strike to the point of the liver has a delayed reaction. The struck fighter often feels nothing at all for two or three seconds - and then collapses.
- Also a common response to a Groin Attack when in a pressure situation; In the right circumstances, you won't realize you have been hit there by a kick hard enough to inflict Kung-Shui until some time has passed. Typically, it's just a few seconds, but sometimes it can stretch to a full minute before the opponent falls to ground, writhing in pain. So remember, martial artists: Better go for the throat or the eyes instead. No lag.
- Though not necessarily a fatal instance, an adrenaline rush running as a result of or alongside some physical incident can have the side effect of deferring pain. As a result, one could be experiencing anything from a sprained ankle to much worse and not realize it, carry out various tasks, and only experience the intense pain of the incident itself much later.
- Crush Syndrome.
- Can happen with heart attack or sudden cardiac arrest victims.
- Secondary drowning.
- Take a high enough dose of hard radiation and you're guaranteed to die rather suddenly...in about three days.
- There's even what's known as the walking ghost phase after the exposure there are no direct symptoms and you feel fine for up to a day. What is happening is it takes time for things to die, and are normally replaced, but those replacements aren't happening now, as your bone marrow is dead.
- Being fatally shot doesn't always kill people outright. Considering being shot feels kinda like being punched really hard, it's entirely possible you wouldn't realise you were dead until it all went black....
- Subverted with United Airlines Flight 232. Due to a catastrophic back engine failure on the flight, all three hydraulic systems (each one a backup to the others) failed. This meant that the airplane had NO conventional directional control whatsoever. In any airplane, this is pretty much a death sentence. In practicality, everyone aboard the aircraft was already dead. The pilots were the only ones who knew it. However, after a bit, the pilots (with the aid of an experienced pilot who was a passenger on the flight) realized they had reasonable control of the airplane using only engine power. By throttling up the engines, they could ascend. By throttling back the engines, they could descend. By making one engine produce more thrust than the other, they could turn. They managed to land at a small airport in Sioux City. Strangely, the city administrators started planning for exactly this type of emergency situation about two years before the indident happened. In the end, the plane crashed off the side of the runway. True, 111 people died. But 185 people survived. To put that in perspective, ALL 296 people on board should have died.
- 14 years later, the crew of a DHL A300 cargo flight out of Baghdad. Again, all three hydraulic systems failed, as well as the fuel lines. Amazingly, the crew managed to pull off the same tricks as Flight 232. This time, they managed to land it safely at a military base. Their biggest worry afterwards is that they were surrounded by a minefield and had to wait with the potentially dangerous and very flammable airplane until the military could safely guide them out.
- Shallow water blackout. Don't hyperventilate before breath-hold diving.
- If your hard drive starts clicking, it's already dead.
- Cerebral edema, which sometimes develops in the wake of a head injury, can cause compression of the medulla oblongata and abrupt cessation of breathing. This is why doctors don't let patients who've suffered a blow to the head leave the ER and go home by themselves, as undetected brain swelling can cause the victim to drop in their tracks without warning.
Huh? The page ends? Does this mean that I — HIDEBU!!
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