Well, how else is Rena gonna get rid of the maggots that are in no way a disease-induced hallucination?
Human fingernails can be remarkably powerful. They assist grip, and protect the soft skin under them.
Unfortunately, they can also be turned into a tool for Self-Harm.
Scratching one's throat is often the result of Sanity Slippage and is often done in an absent minded way. The character scratching their throat may have an unfocused gaze or Hidden Eyes. Their voice may have dropped to a monotone level, if the character is still capable of talking after causing a lot of damage to their throat.
If the character is in serious danger of killing themselves, there will always be blood.
Clawing your throat would cause a lot of damage, but is a very slow method of suicide, so suicide by clawing the throat is not very common. Yandere characters often do this, but rarely end up dying from it. This trope is almost always played for drama, and is frequently a major source of Nightmare Fuel.
Lastly, it's not always played for self-harm: It's also a frequent reflex for characters that are strangled, especially telekinetically, or to try to save themselves from a hanging.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Played for laughs in the anime adaptation of CLANNAD, where, during a teasing session between Akio and Tomoya regarding the fact that they're now in-laws, both of them jokingly mimic the action as an expression of extreme disgust.
- Tomura Shigaraki from My Hero Academia has a habit of scratching his neck when irritated.
Audio Plays
- In Big Finish Doctor Who play "The Shadow of the Scourge", the eight-dimensional alien invaders have a voice that will compel humans to do anything, however suicidal. And the Scourge like to kill.
"Now put your fingers to your neck. And push..."
Fan Works
- Zelda does this in Their Bond when describing her past sexual abuse by Ganondorf to Impa. Impa has to stop her from hurting herself more than she already has by her Interrupted Suicide.
- Adrien does this The Seven Misfortunes of Lady Fortune upon learning that Marinette was Ladybug and it was her who had been shot a few months ago.
- In A Dreary Tale of Katelyn Potter
Katelyn claws at the rope around her neck during a Bungled Suicide purely as a reflex action.
Films — Live Action
- This was an involuntary characteristic of Dr. Strangelove, although it's been noted that Peter Sellers was improvising.
- Final Destination has this because the person gets a rope wound around their neck and is clawing at their throat to try to get it off.
- A character is manipulated into killing herself this way in Hellraiser: Hellworld.
Literature
- Robert Sheckley's story "The Humours", later expanded into the novel The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton, has the protagonist try this upon realizing that the recovered portions of his personality don't integrate into his own - rather, all of them together reintegrate into something new.
- In Cordwainer Smith's short story "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons", the terminal madness the titular planetary defense system induces in intruders makes this the least you do to yourself.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: In A Storm of Swords, this is how Joffrey Baratheon meets his end when the character drinks poison that prevents them from breathing. In a desperate attempt to breathe, the character claws at their own neck. It just kills them faster.
- One Walker commits suicide this way in The Long Walk.
Video Games
- The suicide sequence in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth seems to imply that the player character strangles himself.
- The original Corpse Party has Ayumi die from this if Yoshiki saves her from the anatomical model in the Science Lab.
- In Kingdom of Loathing, if you or your familiar attempt to directly attack Yog-Urt, Elder Goddess of Hatred, while still under the effects More Like a Suckrament, you instantly lose the fight and get a rather horrific message about tearing not just your neck, but your own throat:
As Yog-Urt's black blood spills into the water, your vision dims. Your last memory is of your own hands clutching your throat. Like, your actual throat, not just your neck.
- In World of Warcraft, talking to either Archmage Tarsis Kir-Moldir or Archmage Angela Dosantos with the Frame of Atiesh in your inventory results in them freaking out and scratching at their throats before dying, likely due to the demonic presence of Sargeras' corruption within the staff.
Visual Novels
- In Higurashi: When They Cry, advanced stages of the Hate Plague infection manifest themselves in the infected clawing at their own skin, particularly the throat. This is shown repeatedly throughout the series:
- Tomitake is repeatedly found having clawed his own throat out.
- In Onikakushia-hen, Keiichi kills himself by clawing at his throat after killing Mion and Rena. He was talking to Ooishi in a phone-booth when he started uncontrollably clawing at his neck.
- In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Rena starts to scratch at her own throat but Keiichi manages to stop her from killing herself. It's shown that she hallucinates bugs under her skin.
- In the DS and PS3 adaptation of Meakashi-hen, there is a "Bad Ending" (though on net, fewer people actually die in it than the "Good" Ending) where Keiichi correctly guesses that the "Mion" preparing to torture him is actually Shion, and then she promptly claws her own throat out.
- In Someutsushi-hen (a DS and PS3-only adaptation of the manga-only Onisarashi-hen), Natsumi claws her throat out after Akira resists her attempted double suicide with him.
Real Life
- It was documented during WW2 that Japanese soldiers taken prisoner by the Allies were prone to attempting suicide by whatever means were available, so as to wipe out the shame to their families that they had not died in combat. note . Japanese soldiers picked up unconscious and wounded on the battlefields and sent to Allied field hospitals for treatment would often seek death when they awoke and realised where they were. A documented case from a British military hospital in Burma describes the death of a Japanese patient who really did manage to claw his own carotid artery open, bleeding out through his neck.
