Cruel And Unusual Death / Webcomics

Webcomics with their own pages:

• Unsounded

Individual examples:

• The boy from Bad Faith has a religon obsessed mother who is constantly praying to God to make the boy handsome (he's obese, and receiving treatment for it at a weight loss clinic), and it results in the boy's fat compressing into his body, to the point where his body can't handle it and implodes in the middle of a medical scan.
• Bad Moon Rising shows Cruel and Unusual Deaths to be the norm when it comes to the Headmasters of Sokolov Academy.
• Genocide Man: A subdued version via the Genocide Men's needle guns. The neurotoxin seems to cause instant death, but it's actually a paralytic that kills via suffocation after several very awful minutes.
• Girl Genius:
  • Criminals in Beetlesburg are placed in giant sealed glass jars where they slowly starve to death as a public execution. Their bodies are then left on display as a deterrent to others.
  • When Colette goes after Count Beausoleil and his many bodies in a Death Montage for killing her father most of his deaths are fairly unusual and painful, such as getting his head sawn in half, being blended, being melted, and other creative killings. The kicker is that despite her hard work he ultimately survives as his main body is outside of Paris and beyond her reach at the time.
• Goblins has quite a few of these. Examples (all contain spoilers) include this, this, and this.
• In El Goonish Shive, Grace plays Fallout: New Vegas and gets so incensed by Caesar's Legion's propensity for this trope that she abandons her Pacifist Run in order to annihilate them.
• Homestuck has had quite a few unpleasant deaths during Act 5 Act 2, but Neophyte Redglare's takes the cake. She either a.) didn't know about or b.) severely underestimated Mindfang's mind control abilities. As a result, Mindfang manipulates the angry mob at her trial into lynching Redglare and hanging her with one of her own nooses. Given that the story is written from Mindfang's point of view, it is highly unlikely Redglare survived the encounter.
  • Both Kanaya and Feferi get clean holes blown into their stomachs by Eridan's science wand. Kanaya gets better. Feferi doesn't.
  • Eridan then finds himself on the other end of this. Cornered and disarmed by an enraged Kanaya, he's reduced to silent pathetic pleading which only ends in him being horizontally sawn in half.
  • Both deaths of Sollux involve him profusely bleeding from all of his orifices: first time he is subjected to a galaxy-spanning Brown Note by Gl'bgolyb, then later on he overworks his psionics to the point where it overloads his brain and kills him on the spot.
  • The GAME OVER timeline supplies these in abundance. Gamzee is hacked in two with a chainsaw by Kanaya... vertically. Kanaya herself is disintegrated by a psychic Wave-Motion Gun. Jade is crushed by her own house falling on her. Aranea is disposed of via Neck Snap and then thrown into the fires of a burning planet. Terezi is beaten to within an inch of her life, then psychically compelled to stab herself in the gut with her own Cane Sword, and later succumbs to her wounds. Jake jumps in front of a blade intended for Jane... who is then impaled on said blade anyway. The list goes on and on... there is a reason it is called "GAME OVER".
• Looking for Group's very own Heroic Sociopath, Richard, revels in this trope. This appears to be mainly because Richard, being an ageless, undead warlock, as well as a sadist without equal, needed something to keep him going throught the centuries, but also due to his inability to distinguish "going too far", and "going much, MUCH further than merely 'too far'".
  Guard: General! Our scouts have returned.
  General: Report.
  Guard: The invaders march upon the city faster than anticipated. On foot and wings. Word has also reached us of a disaster that has befallen Bertu. Every last citizen; slain. At times, in very peculiar and imaginative fashions.
  Richard: You like my work?
• From The Order of the Stick, one word: Implosion.
  • What Redcloak does to Tsukiko just a few strips later is even worse: she’s life-drained by her own beloved wights and then devoured. Perhaps most jarring is that while there's a Gory Discretion Shot for the audience's benefit, Redcloak forces himself to watch, dispassionately, as she pleads.
    • Xykon kills Dorukan in similiar way in Start of Darkness and considering how his body looked at the end of lethal series of Energy Drains makes you glad what Redcloak did happened mostly off-panel.
  • Nale brutally kills Malack by taking advantage of his vampire weakness to sunlight: He dispels his Protection from Sunlight when he knows he can't cast it again, right in the middle of the sunlit desert. Malack bursts into unholy flame and is reduced to ash, screaming in vain for Nergal to save him.
  • Nale gets his a few comics later. After expressing to Tarquin that he wants nothing more than his own life, without any interference, with no more 'fatherly' games, without any handouts, Tarquin finally accedes and gives it to him — and immediately takes it by stabbing him through the heart, his final words to Nale a bitter reminder that he would never have been free.
    Tarquin: What did you think the price for killing my best friend was going to be? Really, Nale, you would have been dead years ago if it weren't for my protection.
• Every death during the "KITTEN" arcs from Sluggy Freelance.
  • They can be ironic ...,Or artistic ..., Or ironic again ..., Or messy ..., Or very messy ..., Or very, very messy ..., Or just plain wrong ...
  • The murderous mini-lop Bun-Bun's ongoing vendetta against Santa Claus once manifested in someone helping him with a James Bond-inspired array of misleading gadgetry that lost his interest somewhere anything at all being disguised as a breast pump. A few strips into his foray it turns out he locked the Gadgeteer Genius in question in a closet and ran off with the missile launcher. Except.
    Alien Mook 1: So, this is the rabbit that tried to kill Santa Claus with a breast-pump, huh?
    Alien Mook 2: Great gravy! What a horrible way that would have been to go!
• The Asperpedia Four in Sonichu. After a trial that takes alot of liberties withe law, Alec, Evan, Mao and Sean are sentenced to death. Alec is strapped to an electric chair, as each of the main characters tell him to go to hell as he is reduced to ash without a sponge to direct the currents to his brain. Sean is killed by firing squad and his entire body is riddled with bullet holes. Mao is torn apart by Chris's psychic powers, and worst of all, Evan is chained up and brutally tortured to death, by an eight year old girl, nonetheless. And this is after Chris criticised Asperchu for its excessive violence. The event was later retconned into the four being exiled.
• Trevor (2020): Colin is gutted & torn in half by Trevor as he yells at Purdy to RUN.
• xkcd strip #1097 "A Hypochondriac's Nightmare" features a man being sucked into a jet engine after spending a lot of time worrying about a rash on his arm.
• In the world of Zombie Ranch, someone dying from the zombie bite itself is considered one of the worst, most painful ways to go, and a horrible act of cruelty to let occur. At least one outlaw gang is known to use this as a ritual punishment.
• The Zombie Hunters has three variants of zombies that are especially notable in this respect.
  • Spitter zombies spit acid at people instead of biting them. Unlike with a zombie bite, their acid zombifies somebody instantly.
  • Berserker zombies are almost as intelligent as the living, are insanely strong, and insanely sadistic. They are known for torturing their victims.
  • Basilisk zombies have a glowing red eye effect that paralyzes anyone who sees it. Anyone affected by it will be forced to lay there, fully conscious, while it slowly eats them.

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