I think you're gonna need more than a couple of tissues for that.
We all know that when a character starts coughing up blood, it's a bad sign, and nosebleeds can be similarly ominous. Therefore, if you want to kick those tropes up a few notches and really hammer home how doomed a character is, just have them bleed from everywhere: mouth, nose, ears, eyes, and even some other places if you really want to gross out the audience.
Such an extreme case of bleeding is usually reserved for deaths that are out-of-the-ordinary; it might be caused by magical or psychic powers, advanced technology, aliens, or just a really nasty and probably contagious new disease.
See also Blood from the Mouth, Deadly Nosebleed, Psychic Nosebleed, and Tears of Blood.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- This is a sign of possession by Satan in Blue Exorcist. In some cases in the anime, blue flames also pour from the eyes and mouth.
- In Canaan, this is how the unfortunate people infected with the UA Virus usually die. It's seen in an especially horrifying way when Liang Qi tries to give herself synesthesia in a mad bid for Alphard's attention and affection via willingly injecting herself with the virus, and soon is bleeding from everywhere while wearing skimpy lingerie due to not having the genes necessary for synesthesia to work for her like it does with Canaan.
- In Fist of the North Star, the ultimate death of Rei happens in this style, as Raoh strikes a pressure point that forces all of a victim's blood out of their body — violently. It's so graphic even by the series' standards that when he hides in a cottage to finally die, nobody bothers to follow him in, forced to listen to a great man dying in such a painful fashion.
- Inuyasha: Blood from the Mouth is a fairly common occurrence. When Miroku, determined to finish off Naraku once and for all before the fight against him kills Sango's little brother, takes in so much miasma that he starts bleeding not just from the mouth but from the nose, ears, and eyes as well, there's no doubt how serious it is.
- Made in Abyss: Ascending from the Fourth Layer results in this, no matter how cute the curse's victims are.
- In Saint Seiya, this was the effect Shiryu suffered for overusing his Dangerous Forbidden Technique. Luckily his opponent had a Heel Realization and saved Shiryu before he died from blood loss.
Comic Books
- In Death & the Family, when Lana Lang finally succumbs to her mysterious illness, blood flows from her mouth, nose and eyes, forming a red pool under Lana's collapsed body.
- Robin (1993): After getting hit with an electrical weapon Lock-Up had set up Tim is left with blood seeping from his ears, nose, mouth and nail beds. He's still able to kick Lock-Up over a railing from his spot on the floor when the villain arrives with a message he wants Robin to deliver to Batman.
- Wonder Woman: Earth One: Maxwell Lord dies with blood spewing from every orifice due to the psychic blowback from Diana destroying his telepathically remote-controlled Humongous Mecha.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Both of Monster X's two heads bleed from their eyes, noses and mouths when Ghidorah establishes psychic contact with them.
- In the Real-Person Fic Astral Journey: It's Complicated
, while in her astral form, Emma notices blood coming out from her mouth, nose, ears, and eyes.
- In the cornice in the ground, Eggsy starts bleeding from his mouth, nose and ears after he resurrects Harry, who had been dead for a week at that point.
Films
- Avengers: Infinity War: When Thanos strangles Loki and breaks his neck, blood starts pouring from his eyes, nose, and mouth.
- This is one of the symptoms of the flesh-eating virus in Cabin Fever.
- In Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the final stage of Poppy's virus causes explosive expulsion of blood and other bodily fluids from every place that it can.
- The titular technique from Kiss of the Dragon works this way when the needle is taken out.
- In L: change the WorLd, the terrorist organization creates a virus spliced from Ebola and influenza. The influenza part guarantee that the virus can spread through the air and mutate quickly, and the Ebola part is so that the disease can kill as quickly as possible, and includes hemorrhaging from the victim's eyes, mouth, and nose.
- Outbreak presents Motaba, a fictional viral hemorrhagic fever. Its symptoms are based on real-life diseases Ebola and Lassa fever. All three cause hemorrhaging from bodily orifices.
- Implied to be the case in Repo! The Genetic Opera, with Marni bleeding from the eyes to start with.
- Resident Evil: Apocalypse: A guard watching via security camera gets this treatment after Alice unlocks her psychic powers at the end of the film.
- Saw:
- Discussed in Saw II when John tells Eric that his son and the rest of the victims in the Nerve Gas House are doomed to this fate. Eventually averted, however, as the only victim who actually dies from the gas, Laura, only gets Blood from the Mouth.
- In Jigsaw, this is how Carly dies when Ryan injects the three syringes of the Chain Hangers into her.
- Yongary: Monster from the Deep has the titular monster seizing and bleeding out the rectum after having been doused with ammonia.
Literature
Examples by author:
- In the works of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, a cultivator suffering a qi deviation will bleed from their seven facial orifices. This happens to Liu Qingge in The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong and to Nie Mingjue in Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi. Unlike the Romance of the Three Kingdoms example below, the victims are explicitly described as bleeding from their eyes, and the state of their private orifices is not discussed as it is very difficult to examine a formidable warrior in a berserker rage brandishing a BFS that closely.
- In The Circle Opens, reference is made to the "blood plague" that helped to bring down the Vestigial Empire predating the nations on the Pebbled Sea. People would bleed to death through the pores of their skin.
- In Deep Six (1984), a deadly chemical weapon called Nerve Agent S has the side effect of causing victims to do this before dying.
- Averted in The Emigrants. During the crossing of the Atlantic, Karl Oskar is woken by his son to find Kristina bleeding out of every orifice due to scurvy. He believes she will most likely die and spends the night keeping watch over her, eventually succumbing to sleep. When he wakes in the morning Kristina has made it through but another woman in their group has died of the same illness during the night.
- The medical novel The House of God has a former physician die of leukemia. This happens to him when there are no more platelets left to help him clot. "Oh God, this is awf..." he begins, but he can't finish for obvious reasons, and no orifice is spared.
- Let the Right One In: Eli when she enters a building without an invitation.
- In The Locked Tomb novel Harrow the Ninth, Harrow tries to have a conversation with Camilla Hect, who according to Harrow's Fake Memories is dead. During the conversation, Camilla informs Harrow that Harrow's ears, nose and eyes are bleeding.
- In "The Masque of the Red Death", the Red Death, whose symptoms include profuse bleeding all over the face and the body, kills within half an hour of infection.
- Journey to the West often uses the expression "he bled from all the seven orifices", usually as a result of some unlucky soul getting smashed by Sun Wukong's cudgel. On one occasion or two, it's from the monkey itself, due to an incredibly inhuman physical effort (namely trying to not get crushed flat by three mountains which are summoned on his back).
- In Malazan Book of the Fallen, during Mother Dark and the Dying God's duel in Black Coral, Clip starts bleeding profusely. It isn't a fatal example, but it surely takes him out of the fight for good.
- This is how Lu Meng dies in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He suffers a massive hemorrhage brought on by being possessed by the vengeful spirit of Guan Yu, with the book noting that he died of 'bleeding from the seven bodily orifices,' which is both a pretty visceral mental image and especially horrifying if you're aware that many ancient Chinese scholars technically did not count the eye sockets as bodily orifices.
Live-Action TV
- The virus that the Grounders use as a biological weapon in The 100 causes this.
- In Being Human (US), drinking the blood of a werewolf makes vampires bleed from all their orifices. The blood of humans infected with a certain strain of the flu has a similar but more pronounced effect. Exposure to the former helps Aidan survive the latter.
- In one episode of Criminal Minds, the unsub kills people with poisoned wine. At first, his targets were criminals, but then we see an innocent young couple start to bleed during dinner as the pre-teen daughter watches.
- The Hands of Blue from Firefly kill people like this using a small pen-shaped ultrasonic weapon. It's officially stated that it causes bleeding from every orifice in the body.
- In Game of Thrones, when King Joffrey drinks the poisoned wine, he leaks blood from his nose and the whites of his eyes filled with blood. He also appears to hemorrhage beneath the skin.
- The Virus from The Last Man on Earth is described as causing feces and brain fluid to burst out of every hole of the victim's body. Every hole.
- A few episodes of Millennium (1996) feature a super-plague like this, the symptoms going from headache to bloody puddle in less than 5 seconds.
- From Monty Python's Flying Circus, Sam Peckinpah's version of "Tom Brown's Salad Days" eventually ends like this. Pretty strong meat there.
- Murdoch Mysteries: A young woman's body was found ditched in a river and it appeared that her blood has been drained. The team found out that she was pregnant and tried to induce a miscarriage by eating insecticide, and combined with some strange oil and pills, it did induce the miscarriage, but it also caused severe bleeding from her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, nails, and down there... She died an agonizing death.
- Paris Police 1900: In the second series, Paris Police 1905, Dr. Verlot dies bleeding from every orifice after taking poison when the police try to arrest him.
- In ''Sloborn, this happens to people in the late stages of the pigeon flu.
- Symbaline blood burn does this to a Red Shirt in Star Trek: Enterprise.
- This occurs often in Supernatural, usually to show that the Victim of the Week died from a supernatural cause.
Video Games
- 428: Shibuya Scramble, as the predecessor of Canaan, also has this as the usual death for the people unfortunate enough to be infected with the UA virus.
- A variation in Persona 5: victims of a Mental Shutdown start oozing a black, blood-like substance from their eyes, nose and mouth.
- This happens to Lisa Garland in Silent Hill after she realizes she's a Puppet Nurse monster. She shambles towards Harry while her eyes, nose, head, and mouth bleed out. Cybil suffers the same fate if you choose to kill her since she's manipulated by a Puppeteer Parasite.
- Trauma Center: In Trauma Team, when people start bleeding from every orifice, it means they are seconds away from Rosalia-Virus-induced death.
Webcomics
- In Drowtales, particularly nasty applications of empathy are shown to be able to do this, first by showing Ash'waren subjecting a Sharen to this, and later Yuh'le demonstrating her unique sorcery that mixes empathy with Blood Magic.
- In Homestuck, poor Sollux endures this twice: first when he's killed by the Vast Glub, and later when he hurls the meteor towards the Green Sun and overexerts his psychic powers. Since his blood is yellow, Karkat describes him as looking like "a packet of nasty fetid mustard".
Web Original
- Critical Role: Lucien's psychic assault causes intense agony directly to the mind, and those he attacks begin to bleed from their mouths, noses, ears and eyes.
- In the DK Vine column "Bitching About Brawl", this happens to Bob O. Friend right before he dies.
Bob: Oh geez... why am I bleeding from my mouth, nose, ears, ass, penis, nipples, and cuticles?
Diddy Kong: Cameras have mouths, noses, ears, asses, penises, nipples, and cuticles?
Real Life
- Although this is a popular conception of what happens with Ebola and related viruses, and it does sometimes happen, it doesn't happen in every case. Even when it does happen, it doesn't always happen from everywhere. Nor does it frequently involve the liquification of internal organs.
- The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. It was reported that infected people were bleeding out of their noses, mouths, eyes and ears. Wikipedia quotes an observer saying that one of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach and intestine.
- Bovine neonatal pancytopenia also known as Bleeding Calf Syndrome is a disease that results in unexplained bleeding or haemorrhaging from the skin, nares, mouth, rectum and injection sites and ear tags and with a raised temperature in some cases. Thankfully, this disease does not affect humans, and as the name suggests, only affects bovine calves.
- In his memoirs, General Marbot relates how he was stunned by a cannonball during the battle of Eylau; the ball had "only" struck his hat, but his whole head endured the impact because of the solid strap holding the hat in place.note Blood started to pour from his eyes, ears, and nose, and he remained fully aware but paralyzed while a desperate fight was raging around him. And then it got worse...
