Bludgeoned to Death

Totally legitimate fun fact: he died on the second strike. The third one is just for overkill.

In a fight, the option to defeat your opponent quickly and efficiently isn't always available. When your back's to the wall with no way out, sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty.

Bludgeoning someone to death involves a character being smashed in the head with fists or a blunt weapon until they die. The head is one of the most important parts of the body and is incredibly weak to blunt damage. Naturally, when trying to end an opponent quickly, your best option is to hammer their skull until they stop breathing.

Scenes involving this trope will often take place during a Brutal Brawl. One character will take a window of opportunity to mount their opponent and give them a head-focused No-Holds-Barred Beatdown using some sort of Improvised Weapon, such as a fire extinguisher, or even their bare fists, in an attempt to end the fight as quickly as they can. The end result will most likely have the victim's face reduced to a disturbing bloody pulp, if it's even recognizable at all. If the attacker is particularly strong or bloodthirsty or the weapon is particularly heavy, the victim's head might be demolished entirely. It doesn't have to be during a fight, however. This trope is also likely to occur during a torture or execution scene, where the victim's punishment is to have their head smashed.

A character being bludgeoned to death is almost never glanced over by the work. Scenes like this are most likely played with intense drama and shock value as an intent. And there will usually be a dramatic silence afterward. It can also be Played for Comedy, but it isn't used as much in that regard.

Compare No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and Extreme Mêlée Revenge, which can overlap with this trope. Also compare Boulder Bludgeon, which also involves the striking of another character, specifically with a rock.

As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• In Ninja Scroll, Jubei tries to finish Genma by caving his head in with a furious series of punches and attacks. Unfortunately, Genma has a Healing Factor. Unfortunately, he's left in the way of an incoming wave of molten gold.

Comic Books

• The page image provider is the well-known Batman story A Death in the Family. While The Joker used a crowbar to beat the second Robin, Jason Todd, to within an inch of his life in this way, it wasn't the beating that killed him; it was the explosives in the building Joker had trapped him and his mother inside that finished the job.
• In the climax of the Sin City story "That Yellow Bastard", Hartigan's retribution upon the very sick title character, involving him pounding his head repeatedly into the floor, is so savage and brutal that Junior does not even have a head left when Hartigan is through.
• In The Walking Dead, Negan makes his infamous debut in issue 100 by bashing in Glenn's skull with Lucile, a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. This scene was later adapted in the TV series adaptation, but with Abraham included as an additional victim.

Films — Live-Action

• There are two kills in this fashion in The Boondock Saints:
  • Near the beginning, after Connor McManus drops a toilet on the head of Ivan Checkov, his brother Murphy, who was previously about to be executed, takes the toilet's cover and uses it to bludgeon Ivan's partner Vladdy to death.
  • Later in the film, as Connor and Murphy are killing the mob with the help of David Della Rocco, Rocco finishes off the Sick Mob Man, a hitman who murdered an entire family, by beating his brains in with a cue ball.
    Rocco: Sick! Fuck! Sick! Fuck! Sick! FUCK!
• Child's Play 2: Chuckie finishes off Miss Kettlewell by striking her repeatedly with a yardstick.
• Coming Home in the Dark: After strangling the gas station attendant into unconsciousness, Mandrake enters the gas station, comes out with a fire extinguisher, and proceeds to repeatedly bring it down on his head until it should be paste.
• Old People:
  • In the movie prologue, Mr. Reincke kills a woman by beating her to death with the flat bottom of his oxygen tank.
  • The Old Guy kills Malek by bludgeoning him with a round sphere in his sock.
• During the climax of Saw, this is how Adam kills Zep to keep him from shooting Lawrence — he wrestles the gun from his hand, gives him a solid punch, grabs the lid of the toilet tank, and bashes him over the head with it repeatedly.
• At the end of There Will Be Blood, Daniel beats Eli on his head to death with a bowling pin.
• The Untouchables (1987) has Chicago kingpin Al Capone conduct a birthday party for an underling. Al's gift to the honoree is a baseball bat. As the guest of honor wonders why Capone would choose this as a gift, Capone takes the bat and smacks the man in the head with it, flooring him. This is followed by two more thumps for good measure. Then comes the line: "Nobody skims Al Capone!" After that object lesson, nobody dared.
• Valentine: Gary Taylor is killed by being struck repeatedly in the head with a hot iron.
• In You're Next, this is how Erin dispatches one of the killers, by hitting him repeatedly in the head with a meat tenderizer.

Literature

• Discworld novel Feet of Clay begins with the murder of a priest with a blunt implement.
• Ender's Game: Played for disturbing drama when Ender finds himself trapped in Battle School's student showers with Bonzo Madrid who plans to cripple him. Ender is able to maneuver the much bigger Bonzo into holding him from behind, allowing Ender to repeatedly ram the back of his head into Bonzo's face. Ultimately Bonzo dies of his injuries while still standing, while Ender is covered in his blood. Did we mention this is a sixteen and a ten year-old respectively? Small wonder the movie changed the scene to Bonzo cracking his head on the floor.
• The Grimrose Girls: A minor character is found with her head bashed in. There is blood. And brains. Police conclude that she fell down the stairs, but it is plainly obvious to the main characters that this was not the case.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries:
  • Stacey Lawrence from This Pen for Hire was beaten to death with a Thighmaster.
  • Amy Leighton from Death by Tiara has her head smashed in with the tiara used for the winner of the beauty pageant.^note Considering it can fit a working clock in it and is larger than the other cheap tiaras being made, it's a bit more plausible than it sounds.
  • Scotty Parker is murdered in Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge when his killer brains him in the head with a stale and frozen chocolate yule log.
• The Silence of the Lambs: Hannibal Lecter beats one of the guards to death with the other one's baton:
  Boyle tried to get under the table, but blinded by the Mace he crawled the wrong way and it was easy, with five judicious blows, to beat him to death.

Live-Action TV

• This was All My Children's Will Cortlandt's fate at the hand of Janet Greene.
• Black Sails: In the first episode, Captain Flint kills his rival crewmate Singleton in a duel by smashing the side of his head with a cannonball, and then hammering Singleton's skull with his fist until he stops breathing. The beatdown is so intense that the crew stops cheering.
• Boardwalk Empire:
  • Gyp Rosetti favors this method. Probably the worst demonstration is in the episode "A Man, A Plan..." when he is angry about losing a shipment of whiskey. When an underling offers a reasonable explanation of what happened, Rosetti has him buried up to his neck on a beach and proceeds to strike the guy in the head with a shovel until he's good and dead.
  • In "Farewell Daddy Blues", Eli kills Agent Knox by bashing his head in with a glass vase.
• CSI has a few. One notable one was Izzy Delancey in the beginning of the miniature killer arc. Doc Robbins had fun with the guy being a washed up rocker by singing about it. “There was blunt force trauma to the back of the head and damage to the occipital bone. There was massive hemorrhaging on the brain and death was probably swift. Yeah!”
• Dark (2017): In the 5th episode of season 3, Elisabeth beats the man, who tried to rape her and stabbed her father, with a fire extinguisher and 33 years ago, the time-travelled Katharina is killed by her own mother with a stone. Also, Helge Doppler's wounds come from bludgeoned with a stone by Ulrich-in Adam's world he did this to child Helge and deformed his ear, in Eva's world to adult Helge and deformed his eye. In both cases, it's a Subverted Trope as Helge survives.
• Farscape: The episode "A Bug's Life" has Moya hosting a Marauder team who are transporting what turns out to be a virus that can control its hosts, which manages to escape and start working its way through the crew. When it takes control of Crichton, it goes to Hassan, a rather attractive female Marauder that Crichton seems to have an interest in. As it seemingly flirts with her, it suddenly shoves her down onto a table and beats her in the head with a metal rod. The whole thing is over in a matter of seconds; by the time she could react, she was already dead. Crichton himself is horrified.
• Hightown: One victim is beaten to death with an iron by Osito.
• House of the Dragon: At the wedding of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Laenor Velaryon, Ser Criston Cole ends up killing Ser Joffrey Lonmouth by punching his head (with his metal gauntlets on) repeatedly in a fit of rage after interpreting Lonmouth's indiscretion regarding his (Criston's) affair with Rhaenyra as blackmail, to the point it becomes an unrecognizable bloody mess.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Crime and Punishment", Azeem Meer has his head smashed in with a hammer taken from the display in his own hardware store.
• Vito Spatafore from The Sopranos was whacked this way in a Homophobic Hate Crime by Phil Leotardo and his men, who worked him over with clubs.

Music

• Cannibal Corpse's Signature Song "Hammer Smashed Face" involves a person killing another one with a hammer, delivering several hits on their skull.
• Suicide Silence's appropiately named "Bludgeoned to Death", which also adds a dose of Death by Woman Scorned into the mix.

Theatre

• In Das Rheingold, no sooner have Fasolt and Fafner received the full complement of the Nibelung hoard as payment for their building of Valhalla than they begin to quarrel over their respective shares of the spoils, the ring in particular. The giants' argument escalates quickly, which leads to Fasolt being brutally clubbed to death by Fafner and thereby becoming the first victim of the Artifact of Doom's curse. Wotan, who had just minutes earlier been persuaded to give up the ring over his extreme reluctance to do so, has a profound My God, What Have I Done? reaction.

Video Games

• In the backstory of BioShock, Jasmine Jolene is implied to have died by being beaten to death by her boyfriend Andrew Ryan, out of anger she sold their fetus to scientists working for Frank Fontaine. Ryan himself ends up committing Suicide by Cop by forcing Jack to bash Ryan's head in with a golf club.
• Bioshock Infinite: Fontaine kills Elizabeth like this with a wrench after she retrieves the code word to control Jack for him. She fully expects it though and allows it as part of her plan to help free the Little Sisters and stop Fontaine in the end.
• Brutal Doom: when boosted by a Berserker Pack or a Demon Rune, the Marine can execute enemies with fatalities when going barehanded: one has him neck-lifting an Imp, punching his head off and then use his body as an improvised weapon, another has him tackle an Imp and just punch him hard in the face until there's nothing left to punch.
• Dwarf Fortress: If you don't have a prison in your fortress, then criminals are punished by having one of your guards beat the crap out of the criminal, which has a chance to kill them if your guard happens to be really strong. If one of your dwarves commits a particularly nasty crime, they will instead be sentenced to a hammering (with a specific number of hammer strikes at that), which will almost always kill them unless your hammerer is equipped with a really crappy weapon or the criminal is a vampire.
• The Elder Scrolls in-game book "The Hope of the Redoran" tells the story of a Dunmeri noble named Andas, of whom it was prophesied that "his blood shall never be spilled", and that he cannot be killed by magic, illness, or poison. Indeed, the prophecy seems to come true, leading people to call Andas "The Hope Of The Redoran," in accordance with the wording of the prophecy. When he grows up, he lords this over his friends and peers as a sign of his superiority in combat, and it gives him the arrogance to challenge his cousin Athyn (who you can meet in Morrowind) to a duel for an important political position. It ends with Athyn beating Andas to death with a quarterstaff and the result is apparently not pretty:
  "The less said about the end of the battle, the better. Suffice it to say that Athyn, wielding a simple club, battered Andas to death..."
• God of War III, Kratos kills Hercules by repeatedly hitting his face with the Nemean Cestus until his entire head is flattened into a red paste. This is also how you finish off Zeus.
• Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number:
  • In both games, moving in for the kill on a knocked down enemy while using a baseball bat, golf club, or length of pipe will have the Player Character bash the enemy's head in three times with the weapon until they stop twitching.
  • In Wrong Number, The Fans murder The Henchman this way while subjecting him to other tortures, while the Henchman's high as a kite and unable to defend himself.
• L.A. Noire has a murderer kill a woman by bludgeoning her with a pipe to the head over and over. What makes the scene disturbing is, despite everything happening in the shadows, the victim screams in pain and said screaming grows softer after each hit until they go completely quiet.
• Infamously done in The Last of Us Part II, when Abby kills protagonist Joel by mercilessly striking his head with a golf club until his skull caves in.
• Mortal Kombat 11:
  • One of Kano's fatalities has him smash the opponent's head with his own, the final hit causing the victim's head to split apart.
  • In the "Aftermath" storyline, Shao Kahn, after escaping imprisonment from Kitana, encounters Geras, who wants him and Sindel to re-join Kronika. Shao Kahn responds by defeating him in battle, and then using his hammer to smash his face in, and then into several pieces.
• Yandere Simulator:
  • In the video demonstrating the feature where mashing the Attack button while at low sanity causes the killing animation to loop, Yan-chan smacks Midori in the face with a baseball bat twenty-nine times (plus the initial blow that knocks her down).
  • In the "Driving Your Rivals to Murder in Yandere Simulator" video, Kokona smashes Musume's head with a bat several times after Musume makes her reach her Rage Breaking Point by Slut-Shaming her.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • In the very first case of the very first game, Cindy Stone is bludgened to death with a clock shaped like "The Thinker."
  • Russell Berry from "Turnabout Big Top" is killed this way, with the murder weapon not being found until the end of the case: a bust that Acro, the murderer, hid underneath his wheelchair.
  • Kane Bullard from "The Stolen Turnabout" is stated to have died this way in the autopsy report, although the murder weapon is never found or brought up.
• Danganronpa:
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: The victim of Chapter 2, Chihiro Fujisaki, dies by being bludgeoned to death with a dumbbell by Mondo Owada.
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: The victim of Chapter 2, Mahiru Koizumi, got hit on the head with a baseball bat by Peko Pekoyama.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: The victim of Chapter 1, Rantaro Amami, repeatedly had a shot put ball smashed against his head by the game's mastermind, Tsumugi Shirogane.
• Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir: After proving of no more use to Kanda, Akira got fatally struck in the head with the top of Kiku's tombstone before his dead body was stuffed inside the tomb.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends: In "Read 'Em and Weep", the demon that has possessed Cub leaves his body. Unfortunately, Pop fails to notice that he's back to normal and smashes his head with a shovel until he dies.

Webcomics

• Unsounded: When Ephsephin gets badly injured as Jivi escapes from the Red Berry Boys the crook begs his boss "Starfish" for a doctor. Instead Starfish beats his head in with a nearby bottle, which is later seen with bits of hair, gore and brain stuck to it.

Western Animation

• Played for Laughs in Peter's third fight with Ernie the Giant Chicken in Family Guy where Peter wins by thrashing Ernie's head with a frying pan at least two dozen times. Ernie still turns out to be Not Quite Dead when Peter walks away.
• Played for laughs in the Looney Tunes short Gone Batty. As a baserunner slides into home plate, the catcher takes a baseball bat and hits him on the head with it several times, then tells the umpire that he's out. When the umpire disagrees, the catcher hauls back once more and smashes the guy's head so violently it breaks the bat in half. It's a Gory Discretion Shot with only the sound of the impact, but the umpire visibly cringes and says "Yecch, NOW he's out."
• Transformers: Prime: In the episode "Armada", Bulkhead murders a clone of Starscream by repeatedly striking him on the head with his weapon arm until he dies.

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