Death By Irony / Video Games

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• Aliens vs. Predator 2: A guard walks off to take a quick smoke. His partner warns him - smoking will kill him. Seconds later Predator rips out a hatch to enter the facility that these guards are guarding. Said hatch lands on poor mook, crushing him to death. Sign on said hatch says: No Smoking.
• Arcanum: Kerghan's goal is to create a technological portal that will exploit the fragile balance between magic and technology and free him from the void. The game encourages you to destroy him with the Vendigroth Device, a technological weapon which utilises the same principle to turn his own magic against him.
• BioShock:
  • If the player chooses to kill Sander Cohen, then they can add as many delicious layers of irony as they want. After an entire level has been devoted to you running about Fort Frolic, murdering Cohen's ex-students, and using the photographs of their dead bodies to complete his self-proclaimed "Masterpiece", the player can kill Cohen and take a picture of his corpse to net the appropriately-named "Irony" achievement. But wait, there's more! For some sweet poetic justice, why not kill him with the crossbow he gave to you? Better still, load it up with Incendiary Bolts — because nothing says irony like burning to death in an underwater city.
  • Yi Suchong, one of the leading scientists in Rapture is found impaled on a drill from a Big Daddy. His corpse has an audiotape where he complains that nothing can make the Big Daddies connect with the Little Sisters, saying he even tried hypnosis and pheromones. Just then, two Little Sisters come in and interrupt him, he slaps one of them out of annoyance. They wanted to show him that a Big Daddy became attached to them and was following them around, the Big Daddy's protective instinct becomes active, and kills Suchong.
• A retroactive example: In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, playable character Nisha Kadam has skills to improve her pistol attacks and is generally shown in art/advertising with pistol in hand. In Borderlands 2, which came out before it, she's become the sadistic Sheriff of Lynchwood, and when the time comes to end her brutal reign in an optional mission, there's a bonus objective to kill her...with a pistol. Now, originally this was probably there just as a Shout-Out to Western movies (especially since another bonus objective is "don't shoot the deputy"), but with the release of the Pre-Sequel it got a lot more ironically appropriate.
• The Abbot in the 6th Chapter of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow suffers this after losing the relic in his tower, which could have saved so many needlessly sacrificed lives in the village from the vampires. He curses Gabriel and Zobek to hell for taking it from him, only to find himself THE one going to hell! Also counts as a Karmic Death. What's even more ironic about his last words is that Gabriel and Zobek do in fact go to hell, and Zobek was actually one of the bad guys who orchestrated the starting events of the game.
• Dead Rising:
  • There's a double whammy in the first one. Cletus, the owner of the gun shop, being driven insane by the outbreak, trusts humans even less than zombies. As Frank West and another survivor named James Ramsey walk into the store, Cletus threatens them that if they get closer, he'll shoot them with there shotgun. Despite the warning, James slowly walks up to Cletus, who follows through with the threat and kills him. After being fended off by Frank, Cletus runs out of the store, where he is eaten by James, the same person he killed, who is now a zombie, whom he trusted more than humans.
  • The Big Bad, Carlito, meets his end in an oddly poetic way: he started the Colorado zombie outbreak as revenge on America's meatpacking industry. In the end, he's stabbed by a butcher (who has no idea who Carlito is) and slowly bleeds out.
• Dead Rising 2 has most of its boss fights end with the Psychopath dying in an ironic way, often with Chuck providing a Bond One-Liner:
  • Leon Bell: Accidentally lights himself on fire from gas leaking from his bike while crying that he's "Number One".
  • Bibi Love: Tries to crowd-surf into a swarm of zombies, which she summoned to hear her sing. Can actually be saved.
  • Seymore Redding: Sliced open by a power saw after falling from a scaffold from which he hung innocent victims.
  • Antoine Thomas: Falls face-first into a deep fat frier he was using to cook human flesh.
  • Randy Tugman: Devoured by a zombie in a bridal dress after trying to force a young woman to marry him.
  • Reed Wallbeck: Stabbed to death by his abused and beleaguered assistant, Roger Withers.
  • Brandon Whitaker: Bit by a zombie he was trying to feed a victim to, opts to kill himself instead of turning.
  • Evan MacIntyre^note From Off the Record: Frozen solid and shattered by his weaponized liquid nitrogen.
• The final boss of Doom (2016) is finished off using the BFG-9000, the very same gun that she helped design back when she was Olivia Pierce.
• In Dragon Ball FighterZ, winning the match with a hard strike when certain characters and stages are involved will trigger a special cutscene, almost always recreating a scene from the original series. In the day version of the Desert stage, if Nappa defeats Yamcha, one of the former's Saibamen will grab the latter and self-destruct, killing Yamcha in the exact way he died in the series (complete with his iconic death pose). But if Yamcha defeats Nappa, he'll use a Kamehameha to send the Saibaman back to Nappa, killing both and leaving Nappa's corpse in the iconic "dead Yamcha" pose.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • In one quest, you meet a Dunmer trapped in a spider web. After killing the Giant Spider involved, he asks you to cut him loose in exchange for a MacGuffin. After you do, he shouts "You Fool!" and runs deeper into the dungeon. Should the player choose not to pursue and kill him, he wakes up draugr that kill him, or failing that, steps on a pressure plate and gets splattered by a booby trap. Players who know that he's going to betray them can also keep swinging after he's loose, often killing him before he even has the chance to run. He did say "cut me down," after all.
  • Ulfric Stormcloak supposedly started the Civil War by killing the High King with the Thu'um. If you join the Imperial Legion, at the end of the questline, when Ulfric lies at your mercy, you can execute him and end the war with your own Thu'um.
• Electronic Super Joy: The Big Bad stole your butt. You kill him by butt-stomping him.
• Fable: The Guildmaster of the Heroes Guild trains heroes to pursue great destinies, unburdened by notions of good or evil. The protagonist, his star pupil, can choose to kill him as a mere stepping stone to the climactic battle with Jack of Blades.
• Fallout 2:
  • Myron is a smug, obnoxious teenage brat who keeps bragging about inventing Jet, the most addictive and lethal drug around. The fact that he killed a hundred slaves to get the formula right doesn't bother him at all, nevermind the fact that it kills tons of people on a daily basis. Even if he isn't killed by the many horrible things out in the wastes, or by the player, then karma still manages to get the last laugh on him: the epilogue reveals that he gets stabbed to death by a Jet addict in a bar and he's more or less completely forgotten about in a month.
  • In New Reno, all of the mob bosses have a method to quietly assassinate them, each humorously ironic. Big Jesus Mordino is the biggest drug supplier in the wasteland but suffers a severe heart condition that makes any kind of stimulant fatal to him. John Bishop is a ruthless, paranoid man, even going so far as to rig his own safe with explosives, who uses private contractors to quietly assassinate his enemies' leadership. One of his potential victims offers you double what you're currently being paid to return the favor, and the easiest way to do so is to change the combination on his safe. Louis Salvatore had the Jet inhaler of one of the Wright sons poisoned, and the player has the opportunity to swap his oxygen tank for a poisoned one. Orville Wright is a devoted family man, whose crime family actually is his family, and you can give one of his children a loaded gun and tell them to wave it in daddy's face.
• In Fallout 4, the Institute is a faction of amoral scientists who kidnap and replace innocent people with Ridiculously Human Robots. If the player sides with the Brotherhood of Steel, they help rebuild Liberty Prime and sic him on them, with the irony of the death of a bunch of roboticists being the result of a robot lampshaded by residents of Goodneighbor.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • There are a variety of ironic ways to kill Caesar, and since he is Wicked Cultured, he'll be able to really appreciate the irony too.
    • Stab him with a knife, like how the real Caesar was killed. There is even a challenge for doing so!
    • Shoot him with 12 gauge coin shot (shotgun shells loaded with Legion denarii, his own faction's money). Alas, there is no challenge called "Render Unto Caesar What Is Caesar's".
    • Shoot him with A Light Shining In Darkness, the gun used by Joshua Graham, Caesar's former Dragon who he (tried to have) executed for failing him.
    • Kill him as a female Courier, since the Legion is a very Straw Misogynist faction that thinks women are only good for being baby factories and little else. Although whether Caesar himself believes that is unclear since he's a pretty big hypocrite regarding some of the other beliefs he instilled in his Legion (for example, "medical technology is bad because it lets the weak survive" got thrown right out the window as soon as he found out he had a brain tumor, and he keeps an Auto-Doc around in secret to treat it).
    • For that matter, said brain tumor could have been entirely preventable had the Legion not held the above belief about medicine. If you just leave him alone and do nothing, he will end up dying from it after the end of the game, and by the Legion's own beliefs, he would deserve it.
  • If you let Benny go free the first time you encounter him, you find him at Caesar's Fort, tied up. If you bring a pistol, you can shoot him in the head while he's kneeling before you — exactly what he did to you at the start of the game. Extra points if you pickpocket Maria, his own gun, off of him and shoot him with that (there's a challenge for that too).
  • You can get the Omerta bosses, who are planning on siding with Caesar's Legion to betray Vegas and slaughter civilians, to backstab and kill each other.
  • One that's acknowledged as this trope even in-universe is when completing the "Eye for an Eye" quest requiring you to go to Cottonwood Cove, a slaver camp controlled by Caesar's Legion. At first, you're just there to plant a bug to monitor the Legion's movements, but you're given the option to wipe out the slavers already present there. While you can go in and kill them all yourself, the best reward comes from locating and opening a truck full of radioactive waste barrels that drop down from a high cliff near the cove, irradiating the entire area. The irony is, a short distance to the west of the cove is Camp Searchlight, where Vulpes Inculta orchestrated the detonation of a dirty bomb to destroy the NCR garrison there. One of its surviving members, Astor is the one who gives you the aforementioned quest, and he is especially happy when he realizes you killed the Legion slavers the same way they killed his friends.
  • The Brotherhood of Steel are a faction of heavily armed isolationists who think everyone but them is too stupid to be trusted with advanced technology, so they steal as much of it as they can from the "ignorant" wastelanders and hoard it all to themselves. Now, if an ignorant wastelander — say, yourself — happened to be skilled enough with technology (high Science skill) to hack the terminal that controls their turrets, and then set them to target Brotherhood members instead...
  • In the Dead Money expansion, you can seal Elijah permanently in the vault he so desperately wanted to get into. The vault was actually deliberately designed to do this to someone else who wanted to get into the vault but never actually made it that far. You can also take the blatantly obvious Schmuck Bait and seal yourself in, causing a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Fatal Frame: Backstory character Yae Munakata hung herself. Just like how her twin sister Sae Kurosawa died.
• In Final Fantasy VIII, if Guardian Force Odin appears during the player's last fight with Seifer and rushes in to deliver his signature deathblow, the screen flashes as usual to depict the Single-Stroke Battle—except Odin is revealed to have been sliced in half himself by Seifer. Later in the fight, Gilgamesh appears and uses Odin's discarded sword to OHKO Seifer in return, further adding to the irony.
• Fire Emblem has a few deaths that drip in irony.
  • Duke Lekain from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a smarmy snake of a man who's not above using trickery and deceit to get what he wants, to the point he binds Daein to slavery at the hands of a naive Prince Pelleas. If you manage to save Pelleas from a Senseless Sacrifice, he joins the party and you can use him to kill Lekain.
    • Even better: if you choose Naesala to fight Lekain, Lekain boasts that harming him will result in Kilvas being destroyed, being fully convinced that he's untouchable. Naesala had this covered a long time ago - by serving as the direct bodyguard of Empress Sanaki - a rank higher than Lekain's rank - Naesala effectively overruled Lekain's Blood Pact through Loophole Abuse and being a Magnificent Bastard. Cue a massive Oh, Crap! from Lekain.
      Naesala: The curse of the blood pact applies if the master's orders aren't obeyed, but by law of Begnion, you're overruled. So, Lekain, right here, right now... I'm going to tear you apart, as I've been wanting to do for years.
      Lekain: Urk!
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, Iago gets a great Karmic Death in Conquest: having been The Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard to the point of making Tzeentch proud, he dies betrayed by the Avatar and his Nohrian siblings. In other words, he's brought down by treachery and deceit.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones has a few in Erika's route.
    • Valter killed Glen and laughed about it in front of Cormag, Glen's brother, and later Cormag can be the one to kill him.
    • Caellach killed Joshua's mother and is a former friend of his and can be killed by him.
    • Cormag himself can suffer this as he's tricked by Valter into believing that Erika killed Glen; he can even die attacking Erika, who was somewhat of a friend to Glen, under false information by his brother's real killer.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the first boss, Kostas, attacks Edelgard in a cutscene after you defeat him, seemingly unaware that she was the one who hired him to attack the other two lords in the first place. Later, in her Flame Emperor persona, Edelgard chews Kostas out and leaves him to be killed by Byleth's students, which depending on your route can include Edelgard herself. Heck, with the correct route Edelgard can be the one who actually lands the killing blow.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • In Five Nights at Freddy's 2, the only hope of survival against the animatronics for Jeremy Fitzgerald (and Fritz Smith) is hiding in an empty Freddy Fazbear head. If they catch him, they kill him by stuffing him into a not-empty animatronic suit, and the Game Over screen shows Freddy himself doing the job.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 3 show that the child murderer William Afton, who lured at least five children away and killed them used a Spring-Bonnie animatronic/suit hybrid and an unseen Safe Room to commit his crimes. The Night 5 minigame shows what happened years after the fact - returning to the long-dead pizzeria to dismantle the animatronics, he is cornered in the Safe Room by the spirits of his victims and tries to hide in the same Spring-Bonnie suit. However, time, a leaky ceiling, and his laughter aren't too kind to the suit's already hazardous springlocks, which break - releasing the animatronic parts and tearing William's body apart from within, killing him in the very same Safe Room and costume (and perhaps by the very same method) he had used to kill others. And he's later shown to be haunting the animatronic that his corpse is trapped inside of, just like his victims had done.
• In FreeSpace, the Shivans is the first who discovered Subspace, and made the Shielding system, the latter doesn't work while in the former. something that the SD Lucifier learned the hard way.
• In Full Throttle, Adrian Ripburger murders Malcolm Corley by beating him to death with his cane. Ben later talks to a Corley employee who tells him the company slogan is "Can't beat a Corley" and comments on the irony. Karma comes to replace the irony when he's hanging on to a license plate with the same logo trying not to fall to his death, and the plate just snaps off — the last thing he sees before the plunge is "CAN'T BEAT A CORLEY".
• Happens to both of the Combine Hunter-Choppers encountered in Half-Life 2. The first one stalks and hounds you through the Canals, tormenting you with a Heavy Pulse Gun mounted on its underside. However, a group of Rebels have managed to scavenge one of the very same Pulse Guns used by the Chopper, which is given to you to use against the Helicopter. The Pulse Gun tears the Helicopter apart, forcing it to retreat and leave you alone for a little while. Soon after you duel the Chopper 1 on 1, using the very same weapon it's been using against you the whole time. Then in Half-Life 2: Episode 2, another Hunter-Chopper again chases you to a Rebel Base, the chopper begins peppering the base with spherical mines, which are set to go off about 5 seconds after hitting the ground. You defeat the Helicopter by tossing these mines back at it until it's significantly damaged, loses control and spins out, then crashes into a hillside.
• The fate of all Noble Team members in Halo: Reach, listed below:
  • Jorge loved Reach but didn't die on it. He was also the heavy weapons expert, and died in a massive explosion.
  • Kat was the brains of the team and the intel officer, but got shot in the head due to a lack of situational awareness, after a surprise glassing nearby partially blinded her^note Which is why she initially misses the elevator button. This caused her and Six a slight delay compared to the other half of Noble team's elevator, which may have gotten her killed.. And she may have forgotten to turn on her shields. Oh, and she repaired the transmitter that Carter used to send the signal that almost certainly drew their enemies to them. She even says she'd be able to trace the non-secure signal.
  • Carter was essentially the team captain and went down with the Pelican dropship he was piloting. His rank was Commander.
  • Emile was the CQC expert who loved sharp things and died by being stabbed, while he was using a railgun to deliver anti-air fire. The blow didn't immediately kill him, and he took the responsible Elite with him.
  • Jun was a stealth expert and he went MIA.
  • Noble Six was a lone wolf and died alone on Reach.
• The Prophet of Truth in Halo starts the Human-Covenant War to prevent the collapse of the Covenant and the Prophets losing their power if they ever discovered humanity's relationship to the Forerunners. Said war would start a chain of events that would cause the dissolution of the Covenant and the near extinction of the Prophets and result in Truth's death. Adding to that, in The Cole Protocol, it's revealed that Truth was the one who spared Thel 'Vadam's life after Thel's fellow Sanghelli friend attempted to kill Truth. Thel would become the Arbiter and eventually be the one to finish what his friend began.
• The Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy allows you to kill your targets in truly ironic ways.
  • You can kill Dalia Margolis with the same poison that she handed you mere moments earlier.
  • Francesca de Santis can be lured down to her lab and killed with the virus she was tasked with creating.
  • Jordan Cross killed his girlfriend by pushing her off of a balcony to her death. There's two scripted events where you can return the favor, one of which happens immediately after Jordan kills your other target by pushing him out of a window.
  • There's plenty of opportunities for you to kill the bomb-making Sean Rose with explosives.
  • Rico Delgado can be fed to the hippo he used to dispose of the corpses of his enemies.
  • Both Vanya Shaw and Dawood Rangan hired the same assassin to take out the other. With your help, that assassin can kill both of them.
  • Alexa Carlisle can be buried alive in the grave she ordered for her fake funeral.
• Heroes of Might and Magic IV: Mardor, captain of the town guard of Vitross, attempts to burn necromancer Gauldoth to death when the latter is wrongfully accused of being a child murderer. Gauldoth flees the town and returns several months later with an army which he uses to besiege and capture the town. One of his first acts as lord of Vitross is to have Mardor burned at the stake.
• Hollow Knight: According to the Elderbug, Dirtmouth's gravedigger died when he fell into an open grave and couldn't climb out.
• Hype: The Time Quest: Before the fight against Mhasse on top of the monastery's belfry, said fat monk threatens the Hype will be descending from the tower a lot faster than he came up it. He is defeated... when Hype sends him plummeting down the monastery's belfry. Subverted, as Mhasse doesn't die, by he is put out of commission nonetheless.
• Killer7: The original six members of the Smith Syndicate were killed by Emir Parkreiner (aka Garcian Smith) in ways that go against their character traits and abilities:
  • Kevin Smith can turn invisible and sneak past enemies in-game. He died when Emir saw through his bellhop disguise.
  • Con Smith has super senses to make up for his blindness and is the fastest of the group. He died because he didn't hear Emir enter his room (possibly because he was listening to music at full volume) and was too slow to react.
  • MASK de Smith, who normally has the appearance of a superhero-like masked wrestler, was killed when he was most vulnerable: in the shower, and not wearing his mask.
  • KAEDE Smith can break down barriers for her other teammates by slitting her wrists. She died when she tried to put a barrier between herself and Emir while neglecting to tell the other members about the threat.
  • Coyote Smith is able to pick locks and jump to hard-to-reach areas with ease. He died when he attempted to barricade himself in his room, but Emir was able to shoot him from a blind spot.
  • Finally, Dan Smith is a big talker with a very powerful gun. He died when he attempted to bluff his way through a confrontation with Emir, but didn't take the shot when he had a chance.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: Near the end, the Jedi Masters you spent the game reassembling at Dantooine decide that everything that's happened is your fault and therefore you must be cut off from the Force entirely. Kreia promptly steps in and drains them of the Force to save you — and, due to their being old men who have depended on the Force for their entire lives, the shock of losing their connection to it immediately kills them.
• Last Scenario: Augustus, the scheming and treasonous noble that betrayed and murdered his way into absolute power got stabbed in the back, both figuratively and literally, by Felgorn, the one person he actually trusted.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II has Crow dying due to a stab to the heart, much like what he did to kill Osborne; by shooting his heart. And then it turns out that Osborne survived.
  • Cold Steel IV gets another one with Ishmelga, the cursed entity who made a deal with Osborne to save Rean's life because his heart got stabbed by a wooden splinter, is killed by Rean at the end of the game.
• The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: Ignitus, the Guardian of Fire, dies in the wall of fire left in the wake of the Destroyer, whilst escorting Spyro and Cynder through it.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, in a case of Fridge Horror and sick irony, the Blight Ganons are designed to outclass the Champions that they killed, having very similar fighting styles, weapons and abilities to counter the Champions' special powers.
  • Waterblight has a long reaching spear just like Mipha's Lightscale Trident that can reach most of the water and platforms around it, but also uses constant ice projectiles to prevent Mipha from using Mipha's Grace to heal herself.
  • Thunderblight uses a sword and shield to match Urbosa's Scimitar of the Seven and Dawnbreaker and likely made use of its speed to overwhelm her. It is able to summon metal spikes that attract lightning to counter Urbosa's Fury.
  • Fireblight is a slow yet heavy hitter similar to Daruk's fighting style with his Boulder Breaker, and it has a twisted variant of Daruk's Protection allowing it to charge a powerful attack.
  • Windblight is a flying ranged fighter like Revali and can fire multiple times like Revali's Great Eagle Bow. It can create cyclones to surround it, countering Revali's Gale and any high altitude advantage against it.
• In Mass Effect 2, you take Morinth the serial sex-murderer back to her apartment as a trap; shortly before you (can choose to) kill her, and she thinks she'll get what she wants, she remarks about chess:
  Morinth: I love any game where your opponent can believe he's about to win—just before you kill him.
  • Of course, this can apply to the player, too. If you go in thinking you can out-Paragon/Renegade her without 100% in the appropriate track, things go... poorly.
  • And if Morinth is allowed to live through ME2, then, in Mass Effect 3, she winds up ditching you to resume her life of indulging in her appetites as an Ardat-Yakshi. The very genes she claims make her the "true destiny" of the Asari then draw the Reapers right to her and they turn her into a Banshee, resulting in the PC blowing her brains out in the final mission.
  • The DLC mission pack "Lair of the Shadow Broker" reveals that this is a favored trope for Garrus (during his Archangel days, at least). Examples:
    Har Urek (saboteur): Suffocation (environmental suit malfunction)
    Gus Williams (weapons smuggler): Headshot (smuggled weapon)
    Thralog Mirki'it (red sand dealer): Chemical overdose (red sand, direct contact with all four eyes)
    Zel'Aenik nar Helash (viral specialist, serial killer): Cough
    • Garrus also says he would have harvested the organs of Dr. Saleon (a Mad Scientist who grew organs inside volunteers and later sold them, with horrific consequences for the failed subjects), but says that he'll have to settle for just shooting him.
  • Also from ME2: A Batarian bartender on Omega hates humans, and poisons any drink he serves a human. Shepard orders a drink, but due to his/her Cerberus cybernetic implants, s/he survives, and goes back to confront the bartender, who, not recognizing Shepard, pours him/her a free (obviously poisoned) drink. The renegade option? Make the bartender drink it, threatening to blind him one eye at a time if he refuses. No, good is definitely not nice.
  • This can happen to Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3, depending on your choices in the series. During the attempted Cerberus coup on the Citadel, Kai Leng kills Thane^note provided he didn't die during the suicide mission in the previous game by stabbing him in the chest with his sword. Then, at the end of the assault on the Cerberus base, Shepard kills Kai Leng by stabbing him in the chest with his/her omni-blade. For bonus points, only two of the six player classes use the standard omni-blade in gameplay. So the other four classes use the omni-blade once in the entire game just to invoke this trope.
    Shepard: That was for Thane, you son-of-a-bitch!
• In Mega Man 2, Metal Man is easily one hit KOed by the Metal Blade (it takes two hits on Hard difficulty). Not that it'll help much in the first fight.
• Metal Gear Solid
  • Sniper Wolf is out-sniped by Snake. If you use Stinger missiles instead, that's even more irony.
  • Vulcan Raven, an Alaskan native and spiritual shaman, dies in a warehouse freezer, wielding a minigun, as part of a plan to activate an even more high-tech weapon.
  • Grey Fox is a man who sought death at the hands of Snake, and only felt happy in battle, dies saving Snake. The melee specialist is smushed by a Metal Gear, which is a ranged weapons platform. But only because Snake didn't want to hit GF while shooting Metal Gear.
  • Liquid Snake is a man obsessed with his genes and his father, and he dies because of a targeted assassination virus.
• Volgin, the Psycho Electro of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, gets killed by lightning. Naked Snake lampshades the irony of the situation. For an extra dose of Irony, the entire game Volgin used the phrase "Kuwabara Kuwabara" (A Japanese saying that was believed to ward off lightning) every time it rained. Right before his death, he hears thunder go off and instead of saying the phrase, taunts the storm with "Who's afraid of a little thunder?"
  • Before The Fear's boss fight, he poisons Snake with a crossbow bolt. The player can throw spoiled food on the ground to poison The Fear.
  • The Fury is a former astro—sorry, cosmonaut who dies in a confined underground space.
  • The End is a legendary, stealthy sniper who draws strength from nature. The best ways to beat him are a) out-sniping him, and b) sneaking up on him and shooting him at close range. He also gets tired easily, because of his nature as an old man. His weapon is a tranquilizer rifle, and you can catch him napping.
  • Invoked by The Boss, who has her final battle with Snake in a field filled with flowers. The player can beat her at CQC, wear the black Sneaking Suit to contast her white one, and/or use white camo to hide in the flowers. She's also the only required kill in the entire game, and Snake kills her with her own gun. She actually wanted her protege to surpass her in highly dramatic fashion.
• Interestingly, Scorpion now has the original Sub-Zero's Spine Rip fatality as his own in Mortal Kombat: Deception. For a real twist of irony, pull this classic fatality off on Sub-Zero and Noob Saibot. Maybe that'll teach them for pulling that stunt on him in Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 4. This is also how he killed the first Sub-Zero in the story mode of Mortal Kombat 9, alongside his classic "Pull Off Mask and Kill It with Fire" Fatality: all that's left of Bi-Han is a skull with the spine still attached.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, Myrkul, the former god of death, is noted as being a huge fan of ironic deaths. Fittingly, you can utterly annihilate him using the powers his curse gave you. He even lampshades it, taking a perverse pleasure in the fact.
• OMORI: Sunny and Basil co-operated together to pass off the Accidental Murder of the former's sister Mari as a suicide. In all endings except the Golden Ending, one or both of them are Driven to Suicide themselves out of sheer guilt over what they did.
• Near the end of Persona 4, when the party has cornered the killer they've been tracking the whole game, Naoto half-suggests throwing him into the nearby TV, which would kill him in the same manner as he's been killing and attempting to kill others the whole game. The group argues over what to do, and it leads to the protagonist having to make the decision. If done, not only does the group commit their first murder, but it results in the death of a mostly-innocent man and leads to a bad ending, the real killer still unsuspected and on the loose.

• In Red Dead Redemption II:
  • Arthur Morgan, when he’s not robbing banks, holding up stagecoaches, and generally causing mayhem, draws beautiful sketches of places and wildlife in his journal, to the point where his fellow gang member remark upon it. What kills him in the end isn’t his violent lifestyle (directly) but tuberculosis. How is that ironic? In 1899, TB was also known as ‘The Artist’s Disease’. And he contacts TB from a petty crime; beating up a random man for a loan shark, not one of the big, dramatic action setpieces where you fight dozens of foes.
  • Grimshaw died in the same spot where she killed Molly and in the same manner, shot in the stomach. The reason Grimshaw killed Molly]] because they thought the latter was a traitor, only for Grimshaw to be killed by the real traitor, Micah.
• In Saints Row: The Third, Killbane does a Neck Snap on Kiki DeWynter and dishes out a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on his own gang. If the player chooses to pursue Killbane instead of saving Shaundi, the Boss kills Killbane with a neck snap.
• Sleeping Dogs (2012) contains a rather subtle example. In the mission before the wedding, Peggy mentions that a black orchid flower will guarantee that she and Winston will be together for the rest of their lives. However, Wei STEALS those flowers, and from a sacred, non-corrupt Buddhist temple at that. Peggy and Winston certainly do stay together for the rest of their lives... until they are gunned down at their wedding shortly after.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog 2, in order to obtain an extra life monitor in Wing Fortress Zone, one must guide Sonic to ride a propeller powered elevator to a set of rotating platforms and bump the monitor down by hitting the bottom. If you are not fast enough to escape, Sonic can and will get crushed to death by the very extra life you've been trying to get.
• Happens to the Gamillan Imperial Guard captain who tries to leave the Yamato in the subspace void. In the show, he was simply shot after a failed mutiny. In Super Robot Wars V, however, he was killed by the very fleet that he summoned to destroy the Yamato.
• In the backstory of Star Trek Online, several Starfleet representatives proposed to enter the Klingon-Gorn War on the side of the Klingons on grounds of Undine infiltration of the other side. Councillor Sokketh blocked the proposal, saying that peace with the Undine was still possible. In the game proper, he's killed and replaced by an Undine.
• In Team Fortress 2, one of the Medic's alternate melee weapons is the Solemn Vow, a bust of Hippocrates, so players can be beaten to death by the father of medical ethics. What makes this even more ironic is that if you zoom in on the bust, there's a little brass plaque underneath that says "DO NO HARM", the time-honored motto of the health profession. And even better, what does "Hippocrates" sound like?
• In Trauma Center, Big Bad Erich Von Reitanau plans an ironic death for the entire human race by engineering synthetic diseases that each correspond to what he perceives as humanity's "sins." For instance, there's one that represents war that makes the victim suicidal, one that represents overpopulation that gives the victim an extremely aggressive cancer, one that represents pollution that fatally poisons the victim, and so forth.
• Uncharted has a couple of examples:
  • Drake's Fortune has Atoq Navarro, who went with Gabriel Roman supposedly as his main lieutenant in finding El Dorado, but in reality was only in it for himself, wanting to snatch the idol for himself for use as a bioweapon, knowing full well what it did. In the end, he gets tied to the idol by his ankle as Nate sinks it to the bottom of the ocean.
    Nate: Adios, asshole.
  • A Thief's End had Rafe Adler, who was so envious of Nate's achievements that he decided he had to have all of Henry Avery's treasure, no matter what the cost was. When he gets sealed in Avery's burning cargo hold with the Drake Brothers, he snaps and tries to kill Nate even thought Nate doesn't even give a crap about the treasure anymore. As Rafe monologues with Nate at his mercy, he steps underneath a hanging net full of gold and treasure as Nate slices the rope holding it up, which lands on and crushes Rafe to death.
    Nate: You want the treasure, Rafe? It's all yours.
  • The Lost Legacy had Asav, an Indian terrorist planning to incite a civil war by driving a train carrying a bomb into a crowded city and blowing it up. Chloe and Nadine beat him up on his own train so that he slams into his bomb, snap the ropes so that the bomb falls on top of his own leg and pins him down, and reroute the train so that it goes over a broken bridge instead. And Chloe delivers one of Asav's own lines to him right before she leaves him to die:
    Chloe: It's like you said: "Progress demands sacrifice".
• Wild ARMs 4 has Gawn Brawdia, the trump card of Brionac, secret final member of Lambda's Elite 11. He's killed by the eleventh missile of the system that was supposed to only have ten.
• In The World Ends with You, you end up killing Game Master Konishi with the same pin she used in order to manipulate you and your partner. In fact, due to the way the boss fight works, it's impossible to not kill her like that.
  • And a few minutes later, you find Sho Minamimoto "crunched" and added to one of his own trash heaps. He reappears alive in the sequel, however.
• World of Warcraft does this sometimes:
  • In the final battle with the Lich King, he proceeds to instantly kill the players attacking him before invoking this trope: his rival, Tirion Fordring, by arming the players and training them in preparation for this very fight, Tirion just delivered a world class 10 or 25-man army to Arthas' feet, who now lie fresh for Arthas to resurrect as unstoppable Scourge champions (which was actually his plan all along) and then kill Fordring, currently encased in ice mere feet away.
    • Averted only to be played straight when Tirion breaks free of the ice using the power of the Light and shatters Frostmourne, allowing Arthas to be killed - the irony being not only that by not killing Tirion, Arthas allowed himself to be killed, along with the fact he was a paladin before a death knight.
  • This is how Deathwing meets his end in World of Warcraft. The artifact he forged long ago to help him conquer the world, the Dragon Soul, is used by the heroes to kill him in the finale of Cataclysm.
  • In Mists of Pandaria, a boss in the Heart of Fear raid, Blade Lord Ta'yak, has this particular gem as his last words.
    "I'd always hoped to cut someone like that someday... to hear that sound. But to have it happen to my own prothorax is... ridiculous..."
• Not exactly "death", per se, but the create-a-wrestler storyline in WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2010 starts off with Santino Marella calling out the player's custom wrestler out of the audience to fight him, to which he loses and loses the Intercontinental Championship. This is exactly how Santino first debuted in the WWE (except there it was Bobby Lashley pulling him out of the audience instead of being chosen by his opponent).
• Ryoba Aishi of Yandere Simulator's 1980s Mode seems to prefer this method of eliminating rivals, as the 'canon' means of eliminating some of her rivals involve: burning the pyromaniac Moeko to death, crushing the bookish librarian Honami with a bookcase, putting lethal poison on the aspiring athlete Sumiko's healthy meal, and electrocuting the idol singer wannabe Ai with electricity from her microphone, while Ai sings a song with electricity metaphors, no less. Even the non-lethal means of eliminating some rivals have some irony to them, such as ruining the kind Kaguya's interactions with Senpai in order to make her look like a jerk, getting model student Teiko expelled, ruining the popular Komako's reputation until she starts getting bullied by the ones who previously admired her so badly that she decides to drop out of school, and befriending Sonoko, who was specifically sent into school to find evidence of Ryoba's guilt for Sumire's murder.

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