Deadly Games in Literature.
By Author:
- Richard Bachman (a pen name for Stephen King) has a couple of examples:
- Both the book and the movie The Running Man are centered on a deadly game, though the game itself is very, very different between the two. (The book presages the Reality TV form of the trope; the film version is American Gladiators with death.)
- The earlier The Long Walk has an example with less one-on-one confrontation, where a despotic government has one hundred boys chosen to endure a grueling walking contest, where whoever breaks the rules (thrice in the case of things like losing speed, just once for those who leave the road) "buys a ticket" out.
- Robert Sheckley was probably a Trope Codifier. "The Prize of Peril" was one of the earliest examples, inspiring many later versions. The short story posits that shows where people literally risk their lives have become extremely popular, and one of the most popular involves the contestant being hunted by criminals who have been given permission to kill. Viewers can call in to offer advice and help to the contestant—or to his hunters! Even earlier is his short story "The Seventh Victim", adapted into film as "The Tenth Victim" (and subsequently novelized as such by the same author).
By Title:
- The short story "All the King's Horses" by Kurt Vonnegut centers on a group of 16 POWs and family members. The group's captor forces them to play chess for their lives, with themselves as the white pieces; every "piece" captured during the game is immediately dragged away and executed.
- "Arena", a short story by Fredric Brown (the basis for the Star Trek: The Original Series episode of the same name), has advanced aliens take representatives of two warring species and pit them one on one to decide the outcome of the war. The ending of the story is quite different from the Star Trek version.
- This is more or less the point of the book Battle Royale and the film and manga based on it, in which randomly selected junior-high-school classes are singled out by The Government, brought to an isolated island, and forced to fight each other to the death. However, this is less of a game than a government procedure.
- In the Anthony Horowitz short story "Bet Your Life", there is a reality quiz show where contestants have to answer trivia questions. If they get one wrong, they are killed in a rather gruesome way. The "winner" is ultimately killed at the end by contestants on another show whose task is to steal a million pounds — so they just shoot him and take his prize money.
- The Big Question, a book written by Chuck Barris, is about a game show where a group of people are asked questions about their chosen area of expertise, and when it comes down to one contestant, they're asked the titular Big Question; if they get it wrong, they are killed via lethal injection. The premiere is heavily rigged, because nobody's going to watch it if they don't immediately prove they'll actually kill someone. The questions are favored towards a little old lady named Vera Bundle, and after missing the final question (an unanswerable open-ended one about the length of the Great Wall of China), she's killed. The show sparks widespread outrage and is canceled two weeks later.
- In Food Of The Gods by Cassandra Khaw, Rupert Wong occasionally enters Cooking Duels hosted by ghouls where the loser gets butchered for the next meal.
- The Fragility of Bodies: Garcia and his cartel specialize in this, proving bizarre "games" where the participants are the impoverished citizens of the slums, with rich and powerful people placing bets on which will survive. The plot revolves around Intrepid Reporter Verónica exposing their crimes.
- Friday the 13th: The Jason Strain has several Condemned Contestants put on a Southern island, with the winner getting a reduced sentence and transfer to a cushy minimum-security facility. Along with Jason (a "special guest") the roster includes the framed main character, a mass murderer, a white supremacist, two serial killers, an Angel of Death nurse, a black widow, a serial rapist, a mob boss, and three street gang members. However, the Extreme Elimination 2 plotline is later randomly dumped in favor of a zombie-centric one.
- Garrett, P.I.: Deconstructed in Wicked Bronze Ambition with the Tournament of Swords, a secret competition in which hidden Operators compel twelve young members of the sorcerous Hill families to fight to the death. Even Garrett can see how ridiculous it is; none of the six previous Tournaments came off as intended, as the contestants' families always united to subvert the process and hunt down the Operators instead of risking their children's lives on a one-in-twelve shot at victory.
- In the Geronimo Stilton book Watch Your Whiskers, Geronimo!, the main character goes on a late-night game show called The Mousetrap, where contestants are strapped to a large mouse trap that snaps shut whenever they give a wrong answer. Since this is a children's series, the worst that will happen is Geronimo might lose his tail, which is still a pretty bad outcome, as far as Geronimo's concerned.
- Kim Newman has an Epistolary Novel-styled short story called "Going to Series". The backstage memos of a company gearing up to produce a show called It's A Madhouse! are laid out in such a way that you can tell that a Deadly Game is exactly what the organizers are hoping will happen, and see the lengths they are prepared to go to in order to ensure killer ratings. It was written and published before Big Brother or Survivor first aired. Newman later consulted for a few days on a Channel 4 show called Regency House Party and showed the story to the production team; he claims "they endorsed its surprising accuracy".
- Goosebumps has one of the most bizarre examples ever: The Beast from the East, in which human children play a twisted game of "tag" against giant alien bear monsters, where the loser gets eaten. Rules include (but are not limited to):
- Stepping on a "Free lunch square" means you're an instant snack. (You can escape if a cloud happens to cast shade.)
- Touching a "Penalty Rock" gets you locked in a hanging cage, and you can only get out by eating a tarantula.
- Getting bitten by a snake actually gives you points.
- In The Hunger Games, as can be inferred by the title, this is the main plot. 24 teenagers aged 12 to 18 are drafted to compete in a televised fight to the death. The titular Games started out as a government intimidation tactic by the hand of the wealthy Capitol, to repress the rebellion efforts of the outlying Districts. The Capitol spun this as a form of entertainment for the Capitol, and it eventually evolved into a game, complete with interviews, spotlights and publicity. The basic plot is more or less similar to Battle Royale (but it's a coincidence, as the author only learned of the Japanese one as she delivered it to the publisher). And the Games are televised and popularized and seen as big entertainment by the public, whereas in Battle Royale, it's a secretive program to suppress the nation's youth.
- In "A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" by Charles Birkin, Nazi officers running a concentration camp challenge some of the Jewish prisoners to a "game". The prisoners have to score points by throwing steel balls at dummies representing the enemies of Nazi Germany, and the winner will be given a job in the kitchens where they will be able to steal scraps to give to their families. However, the dummies turn out to be the severed and papered-over heads of the prisoners' loved ones, now horribly disfigured from the steel balls. One prisoner tries to attack the guards and is shot in the crotch and left to die in agony since they refuse to "waste" a bullet by putting him out of his misery. The others are just taken outside and shot so they can't talk.
- Magical Girl Raising Project starts off as a Magical Girl-themed phone game where some players are secretly given the power to transform into their avatars. Then the Mentor Mascot informs them that there isn't enough magic to go around, so from now on they'll collect "magical candies" by doing good deeds, and the player with the lowest total at the end of each week will be eliminated. Naturally, elimination turns out to mean death. What's more, the players soon realize that even if you have the lowest points, you can escape elimination if another player dies first. This really only applies to the first two arcs, however, as later arcs focus on events that aren't killing games — this still doesn't stop a lot of people from dying, though.
- Playground: A perverted socialite forces 8 kids to take part in deadly games that are based on playground equipment.
- The Ur-Example is probably The Most Dangerous Game (1924), a short story by Richard Connell subsequently adapted as an eponymous film. It is the Trope Namer of Hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
- The Pendragon Adventure does this with its seventh book, the Quillan Games, in which Bobby has to participate in the titular games. If he doesn't win, he dies.
- The short science fiction story "Survivor", by Walter F. Moudy, is set during the 2050 Olympic War Games between the US and Russia. The games are designed to make clear the horrors of war to the public, and are therefore televised. 100 soldiers on each side, with rifles, machine guns and mortars, are placed in a large camera-laced arena with battlefield terrain such as forests, hills and a lake, and must fight it out until all of one side is killed. The titular survivors are hailed as heroes, and the loser pays restitution to the winner. The broadcasters use color commentary, closeups, and special tech, much like sports. "Here's Private John Smith of Columbus, Ohio, a graduate of Johnson High School, running towards base — ooh, he just got shot! Let's watch on slow-motion — yes, you can see the bullet going into his throat, and our super-microphone confirms that his heart is no longer beating. Any comments, Jim?" "Well, it's obvious the Russians have slipped a sniper team in on the left flank, Bob, and that could be bad for Squad Two..." The creepy part is what happens to the "Survivor". His reward is to be not bound by any of the laws of his country, but he's still protected by them. The story ends with one of the viewers hearing his daughter will be another casualty of war.
- Tadgifauna has a variant. The titular creatures are genetically engineered and raised to fight to the death in the Tadgifauna Tournament once every two years. Each Tadgifaun is assigned a teenage trainer to raise them in preparation for this, and give them orders during the fight. The trainers' lives aren't on the line, but the Tadgifauana's lives certainly are, as fights are to the death.
- Government-sanctioned ones on Neshi's homeworld in The Wandering, usually consisting of a convict and a very heavily armed robot. It is during Neshi attending one of the matches that he meets up with someone who passes along some important information leading to the mysterious Jerusalemites.
- War No. 81-Q, written in 1928 by Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul Linebarger), has a pair of countries rent a battlefield and a fleet of airships each and have them fight to the death instead of having a real war. There are lots of spectators on the ground, and a radio play-by-play, making this one of the oldest examples of the trope.
- The Witch of Knightcharm: Emily's new magic school has an 'orientation' event for new students which turns out to be this. All the new recruits must complete a massive obstacle course filled with magical death traps, and only the students who win their heats are guaranteed to actually earn a place in the incoming class. Naturally, some students decide it makes more sense to just kill off the rest of their heats so that they can be a winner by default and guarantee that they can become a full-fledged student.
- The Zombie Survival Guide mentions a game played in certain parts of the French Empire in the 17th century, "Devil Dance". One man is dropped into a pit, armed with a small knife (roughly the size of a paring knife, going by the quoted letter). On the other side is a zombie. The "player" must kill the zombie without getting bitten (in this universe zombies work on a "one bite and you're screwed" basis). Above the pit, the rich and powerful place bets on whether the man will survive, or, more likely, how long it takes the zombie to kill him. Most of the "players" are beggars pulled in off the street; most of the zombies are former players.
