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Mercy Kill / Video Games

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Mercy Killing in video games. Since it's a Death Trope, all spoilers are unmarked.


  • In any online game where players can respawn and damage their allies, they will exploit these mechanics by killing a teammate who has low hp to resurrect him and heal by this strange way, or just to not let the enemy get his reward. The first case can be considered this also because the said teammate has a chance to start act like The Millstone by hiding from fights and wasting healing stuff or dying somewhere where resurrection would be harder or even impossible.
  • In The 3rd Birthday Aya does this to Kyle Madigan upon his request, after he becomes... Whatever the hell that was.
  • Adventure War, a virtual gamebook made by one-guy studio Malign Black, plays this for laughs: You can let your character "search and search and search" a certain dead-end room, and God Himself will decide to put you out of your misery.
  • Aliens: Extermination recreates the hive scene from the second film, with the players entering a cocoon chamber filled with unfortunate Weyland-Yutani technicians, the victims of another alien outbreak, being webbed to walls and impregnated with alien chestbursters. Players can shoot them end end their suffering, or sit back and watch them die agonizingly once the chestbursters broke out.
  • Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs features an extremely dark take on this. Ozwald Mandus was shown a vision of how both of his sons would die lying in the cold mud of the Somme, with lungs full of shrapnel. To spare them this fate, he killed both of them himself. The Big Bad's ultimate goal is to subject one of those onto the entire human race; the villain is a sentient fragment of the protagonist's soul which saw further forward and saw things like Stalin's purges, the Holocaust and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, and was promptly driven mad.
  • Big Bad Kerghan in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura has spent centuries studying the afterlife, concluded that all the suffering living beings must endure means that death is the preferable state of existence, and intends to enact this trope upon all living things.
  • In Assassin's Creed II, Ezio does this to Jacopo de'Pazzi after Rodrigo Borgia and another Templar fatally wound him as part of You Have Failed Me. He later also does this to Savonarola, to spare him burning to death.
  • In Assault on Dark Athena, Riddick encounters a man strapped to an operating table who's being converted into a Ghost Drone. The man begs Riddick to pass a message on to his family and kill him before the doctors can finish. It's up to the player to do so.
  • In Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn you do this to a fellow prisoner in Irenicus' dungeon/laboratory. The poor fellow is being kept alive in a special tank against his will and has died and been brought back countless times. He begs you to kill him by removing the energy cell that powers his life support, which is convenient for you since you need that cell to power a different device.
  • In Bayonetta 3, the titular heroine eventually comes across Puppeteer Parasite enemies who can hijack innocent people and force them to fight her against their will. She then makes sure those poor humans fall by her hand in the fastest way possible.
  • In BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth asks Booker to kill her if that ends up being what it takes to protect her from Songbird.
    • Cornelius Slate asks Booker to do this during their confrontation in the Hall of Heroes to spare him from being taken by Comstock's men. If the player refuses, Slate shows up again much later in Finktown having been tortured to the point where he just sits quietly and stares into space. Once again the player can choose whether or not to put him out of his misery, and if they do Elizabeth notes that it's what Slate wanted.
  • BioShock 2 features Gil Alexander, who before the onset of insanity and Body Horror from massive doses of ADAM recorded messages instructing whomever would find them on how to kill him. His current horrendous and quite insane incarnation, Alex the Great, will beg for his life, leaving it up to the player to decide how to deal with the situation.
    • Later on, Sinclair is turned into an Alpha Series Big Daddy against his will and is forced to obey Lamb's orders on impeding you from your objective by holding onto the necessary key, begging you to take him out while he's still sane over the radio.
  • The first boss after the tutorial in Blasphemous is a hideous monster named Ten Piedad. Various item descriptions you find reveal that Ten Piedad was originally a man who slept in the arms of a statue, only to wake up in a nightmarish, agonizing body, fully conscious but with no control over its rampages. "Ten Piedad" is Spanish for "Have Mercy", and once you know its backstory, it's inarguable that you deliver mercy to the man trapped inside by slaying it.
  • Bleeding Sun: Chiyo placed a curse on Kenzo that slowly turns his body grey, starting from his left hand. Haruki reveals that this is a curse that will eventually zombify Kenzou, so Kenzou asks Yori to kill him in the future before he can fully turn. If Yori refuses, Tsuru will offer to do the deed instead.
  • Bloodborne: This is the job description of the Hunter of Hunters covenant. If a Hunter starts to become blood-drunk and is on the verge of attacking people or turning into a beast themselves, the Hunter of Hunters goes after them to kill them before they can become a threat to the people they set out to protect. Eileen the Crow is the only known Hunter of Hunters, though the player character can become one too if they finish her questline, which involves killing two old hunters who've gone mad but not yet turned into beasts.
  • A section of Blue Stinger has Eliot become mutated to the point where he cannot speak. Dogs threatens to kill him if he gets worse, effectively giving Eliot 30 minutes to live unless he finds a cure.
  • In Borderlands 2, this is a key plot point for stopping the Big Bad who locked away his own daughter as a power source for his superweapon. She begs to be freed by death, going so far as to point out the necessary weak spots and supply the player(s) with extra ammo.
  • In Breath of Fire IV, about 90% through the game, you finally find Princess Elina. However, she's been transformed into a horrific monster. She asks her beloved, Cray, to kill her. Even worse, you never get to punish the guy who did it to her.
  • In Brutal Doom, you can save trapped marines and they will aid you on the level, and they will often talk to the player, on one of his lines he tells you to shoot him if he ever starts to turn into "one of those things".
    • You can do this to the mutilated Marines impaled on posts or hanging from the ceiling. Sometimes they'll drop health, armor, or ammo.
  • In Buried: An Interactive Story, Roger gets asked by Dr Khanna, who is lying injured and incapable of moving on the ground several feet away, to please shoot him. Dr Khanna asks this because of the knowledge that a bullet would be a much faster and kinder way to die than whatever the entities are going to do.
  • Occasionally, unlucky enemies and player mooks in Cannon Fodder will bleed to death in agony instead of dying instantly when shot. You're strongly encouraged to put them out of their misery.
  • Dead Rising 3: After Nick is bitten by a zombie, he and Gary make their way into a funeral home... only to find its emergency stash of the anti-zombification drug Zombrex is empty. Gary opts to kill Nick so he won't suffer the transformation (with Nick not raising any objection), but a surprise zombie attack causes him to waste his last bullet. This turns out to be a good thing, however, as Nick realizes his wound is healing right afterwards, meaning he's The Immune.
  • Detroit: Become Human: When Markus is trying to get out of the junkyard, one of the broken droids he encounters asks him to kill them by removing their thorium pump. There's no reason not to do this, short of apathy.
  • Deus Ex: If you tell DeBeers that Everrett has no intention of treating his illness, he commands you to deactivate his life support. This is more or less since he doesn't want to "die a prisoner."
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Brent asks you to do this since he doesn't want to become an aug due to his injuries. It is possible to talk him out of it though.
    • On a more positive side, destroying the machine or better yet the critical components during the Hyron Project boss fight is more at ease with players, even on Pacifist Runs. Considering what the young women are forced to witness, this adds a Bitter Sweet Ending.
  • The Diablo franchise, LOVES this trope.
    • Every boss battle against Diablo is this because Diablo needs a host in order to take physical form. And in order to defeat Diablo and free the host, the host must be put down. In Diablo, the title demon possesses the younger brother of the warrior character, forcing him to kill his own brother in order to defeat Diablo.
    • In Diablo II, Prince Aidan, the warrior character from the previous game becomes Diablo's new host, forcing the player to kill the former main character.
    • Early on in Diablo III, you have to help New Tristram's blacksmith, Haedrig Eamon, kill his wife Mira and everyone else who's been bitten by the zombies attacking the town. The Demon Hunter's response to Haedrig's question about how he could kill his own wife is "Sometimes death is the only mercy we have left." Later on in the game, when Leah is possessed by Diablo himself following Adria's betrayal, the final battle is essentially this for Leah as well as a final reckoning for the Prime Evil. During that same act, players will often find angels impaled on spikes and unable to move or continue fighting. Players can give these angels a mercy kill and be rewarded with additional money. The player character even wishes the angels a peaceful afterlife.
  • In the PlayStation game Die Hard Trilogy, the Die Hard 2 segment is an FPS rail shooter. Shooting a character who's on fire is considered a "mercy kill" and worth points.
  • You can see this happening in the Dust District mission in Dishonored 2 on a Low Chaos run. In the Overseers Outpost, you can come across a critically-wounded Overseer agreeing to be killed quickly by his companion by his bedside. After the latter stabs him in the chest, he pours wine over his face and kneels by him in prayer.
    • During a Low Chaos run of Dishonored's second mission to assassinate the High Overseer of the Abbey of the Everyman. Corvo can come across an Overseer in the bunkhouse begging his fellow brothers for one of these having contracted the rat plague (and not wanting to turn into a weeper). After some clear hesitation the deed is quickly done via a stab to the head.
  • Divinity: Original Sin II:
  • The final level of Doom (2016) has you rampaging through what used to be the Doom Slayer's homeworld, Argent D'nur, now absorbed and fragmented by Hell. Your objective before fighting the Spider Mastermind is to snuff out the former guardian deities of Argent D'nur, the Wraiths, who have been immobilized and repurposed as an infinite power source for Hell's crusade to conquer The Multiverse.
  • Dragon Age:
    • In the backstory, the prophet Andraste was condemned to be burned at the stake after she was betrayed by her husband to the Tevinter Imperium. The Tevinter Archon Hessarian who ordered her execution felt pangs of guilt and compassion at the last minute and impaled Andraste to spare her the pain of burning to death. Afterwards, he converted to the Chant of Light and helped spread it over Thedas. The sword he used to end Andraste's life is symbolized in Andrastian lore as the "Blade of Mercy", and is usually depicted wreathed in flames such as on Templar heraldry.
    • Dragon Age: Origins:
      • While helping the Dalish with their werewolf problem, the Warden runs into a Dalish-turned werewolf who gives them her scarf, asks them to deliver it to her husband, and kill her. Doing so gains approval with compassionate party member Leliana.
    • While traveling in the Deep Roads the party comes across a taint-maddened dwarf named Ruck. You can opt to kill him, if the assassin Zevran is in the party, he will insist on it on this basis.
    • This happens a lot in Dragon Age II, and it usually overlaps with Kill the Ones You Love just to rub salt in. You can also find one of the aforementioned Blades of Mercy and give it to Fenris, a runaway slave from Tevinter. Depending on your relationship, he either finds the irony amusing or tells you to keep it.
      • Near the beginning, Aveline's husband Wesley is infected by the darkspawn. He begs for her to kill him to spare him the slow, agonizing death the taint would bring him (since the only cure is to become a Grey Warden, and given that DA II's prologue occurs several weeks after Ostagar, that's not an option. Hawke can either force Aveline to do so, do it themself, or leave the choice to Aveline; who then kills Wesley herself.
      • Later on, Hawke may have to do this to their sibling, if brought into the Deep Roads without Anders in the party.
      • At the end of the quest "Tranquility", Anders' friend Karl is revealed to be made Tranquil; which cuts a mage off from the Fade, removing their magic and ability to feel emotions. When Karl is temporarily restored by proximity to a spirit, he begs Anders to kill him before it wears off, preferring death to living as an empty husk.
      • Varric can do this to his lyrium-crazed brother Bartrand (Varric already wanted to kill him for betraying the party, but finds a broken, gibbering wreck rather than a monster).
      • Serial Killer Kelder will ask you to do this, as he can't stop himself and his magistrate father will just keep covering up for him. You can use your Murder Knife on him or let Fenris do it — either way, it's one of the few actions your party unanimously agrees on.
    • Dragon Age: Inquisition:
      • On her companion quest, Cassandra finds Daniel, her former apprentice, lying close to death in the abandoned castle of Caer Oswin, having been lured into a trap there, tortured and infected with red lyrium. Now beyond help, Daniel essentially begs Cassandra for this; his old mentor obliges.
      • When investigating the Shrine of Dumat if Calpernia became The Inquisitor's rival, you meet a Tevinter Magister named Erasthenes who was magically bound by Corypheus and imprisoned. He begs you to kill him, but you can alternatively decide that the information he has is too useful and keep him alive. If you're playing as a mage, you can also make him Tranquil so he no longer minds being bound indefinitely, which he happily agrees to.
  • In Duke Nukem 3D, the babes the aliens have abducted and incorporated into some kind of alien personal holding cell (most likely complete with very sexual tentacles) beg for Duke to kill them.
  • The Final Boss of EarthBound (1994) implicitly but certainly feels like this, as the boss in question is an alien turned into a formless blob of hate and insanity by his own Psychic Powers, existing in a perpetual state of self-inflicted Mind Rape.
  • Elden Ring:
    • The Deathbed Companions do this for a living; they use their Vampiric Draining powers (in the form of hugs) to grant quick, soothing ends to people on their deathbeds while selling the Life Energy to rich nobles. The player meets one such Companion named Fia, and in exchange for 5% of their health she offers an item to temporarily increase Poise and reduce stagger (as well as a hug).
    • The battle against Starscourge Radahn is explicitly this. His troops couldn't stand to see their beloved General reduced to a mindless monster by the Scarlet Rot that infects him, so they organized a "festival" to draw in strong fighters from all over the Lands Between in the hope that they will be able to give him an honorable warrior's death. Key word being hope, since even with all of you working together, it's still hard.
  • In The Elder Scrolls series, some clients will ask for these from the Dark Brotherhood, an illegal organization of assassins whose membership mostly takes a sadistic glee in killing and who practice a Religion of Evil, often if the client believes it is for the best but does not want to get their own hands dirty. This is one theory behind the Dark Brotherhood mission in Skyrim that involves killing the mentally challenged beggar Narfi, seeing as how it is really out of place compared to most targets who are Asshole Victims. Another in Skyrim occurs partway through the questline when you are tasked to kill Astrid, by Astrid, who performed the Black Sacrament seeking one of these after being betrayed and badly injured during the Imperial raid on the Brotherhood Sanctuary, as well as to atone for her betrayal of the Night Mother.
  • In Eternal Darkness when Paul meets Anthony, he does what anyone would do when attacked by a hissing, moaning bastard-sword-wielding zombie and fights back. Afterward, however, he prays for his soul and receives a quick flashback of Anthony's time as the holder of the Tome of Eternal Darkness, making it obvious that this was a bit of a bonus.
  • Eternal Evil has the scene where Marcus has to execute his zombified best friend, Hank.
    Marcus: I'm sorry, Hank. [Boom, Headshot!] For honor.
  • In Ever Oasis, being touched by Chaos is considered a Fate Worse than Death for sapient beings, as unlike the smaller creatures, they cannot recover from it. Thus, whenever one of the intelligent races, such as the Seedlings or Drauk, are taken by Chaos, it's usually considered humane to kill them. This what eventually befalls Miura's sister, whom she's been hunting for for the whole game, and she's at peace with the fact that her sister is finally able to rest.
  • Fallout
    • In Fallout 3, you encounter the playthings of Dr. Stanislaus Braun. The karmically good end of the quest is to deactivate the failsafe that kills his victims permanently and traps Braun (who has his own separate failsafe) forever all alone in his virtual world.
      • If you locate the forested Oasis and engage in the mission there, you will encounter Harold, a mutated character merged with a tree. One of the "good" options the Lone Wanderer can take in this mission is to grant Harold's request for this trope. The lone "bad" option for this mission is to invert the trope and kill him without mercy.
    • In his backstory in Fallout: New Vegas, Boone tracked his pregnant wife Carla and her kidnappers to a Legion slave camp, where he realized rescue would be impossible. Rather than let her and their unborn child be subject to a tortuous life of rape and endless abuse, he decided to shoot her to spare her such a fate.
    • You can also find amputated and mangled troopers in the No Man's Land between Nelson and Camp Forlorn Hope, frag mines set beneath their bodies. They beg you to kill them. They were removed in a later update to the game, likely because Dead Money is accessed near that area and the developers wanted to make it easy to get to without blowing yourself up.
      • In Nipton, the only survivors of the Powder Gangers (other than the lottery winner and runner up) have been crucified and are on death's door. Saving them is impossible, and it is far kinder to shoot each of them in the head.
    • Boone also notes that as an NCR sniper, he's had to do this to various prisoners of the Legion since they deliberately torture them in plain sight to reduce morale.
    • In Fallout 4, if you choose to become closer with Paladin Danse, he eventually begins to open up about his life and tells you about his dead best friend, Cutler, who stuck by Danse while they lived as traders in the Capital Wasteland; once the Brotherhood of Steel came by recruiting, they signed up together. After a year with the Brotherhood, Cutler and his recon team went missing while on a field mission — Danse later found them all in a super mutant hive, all dead but Cutler, who had been transformed into a super mutant through exposure to the Forced Evolutionary Virus. Danse, knowing that Cutler never would have wanted to live like that, put him out of his misery.
      • The Insane Troll Logic of the Mechanist's robots resulted in them trying to do this to everyone. The Mechanist built them and told them to go out and save people. But life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland really sucks and is also really dangerous. If you save someone from being eaten by a giant mutated beastie now, they'll probably just get eaten by a different one later. Or shot full of holes by raiders. Or die in any number of other horrible ways. Therefore, they decided that the most efficient way to "save" people would be to just put everyone out of their misery now and be done with it. The Mechanist had no idea this was going on as the robots just kept reporting back that people were getting "saved" left and right.
  • Far Cry 2 allows you to put down a mortally wounded assisting character if you let him/her get injured enough times. Or you just feel like it.
  • Far Cry Primal has two of these by different characters. First, Tensay the shaman is tending to a Wenja hunter who was set on fire by the Izila tribe's fire arrows. The hunter is in sheer torture, he's that burnt, so all Tensay can do is ease his pain by giving him a Neck Snap.
    • By the end of the game, the second Mercy Kill is granted by Player Character Takkar, to his enemy-turned friend Dah. Dah, like most Udam, is suffering from a sickness called "skull fire", and it will kill him slowly and humiliatingly unless someone else kills him instead. Dah, judging Takkar to be a Worthy Opponent, and therefore the only person allowed to kill him, holds out a dagger in his hand. Takkar guides the dagger home to Dah's heart, and stands over the Udam as he dies, placing his skull helmet upon his chest and giving him the Wenja last rites of saying "Walk free."
  • Joseph Seed requests this from the Captain at the end of Far Cry: New Dawn. After having a Heel Realization from spending years living in Hope County after the Collapse, and watching his son Ethan mutate into a monster, forcing the Captain to put him down, Joseph feels that the atrocities he carried out were not what God wanted, and the only thing he can do to atone for it is let himself be killed- but due to his hardline religious beliefs, Joseph dares not kill himself directly, because if he does, he'll send himself directly to Hell. Instead, he asks the Captain to "grant (him) God's justice." If the player decides not to kill him, he sees it as a Cruel Mercy, and spends the remainder of his screentime screaming for God or the Captain to "RELEASE ME!"
  • The flashback nightmares Shadow from Final Fantasy VI suffers from reveal that he became The Stoic because his emotions caused him to chicken out of mercy killing a wounded friend.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, this is considered to be the only option to deal with people who have been Tempered by a Primal. The Tempering process turns the person controlled into a fanatic worshipper of the Primal due to the Primal partially replacing the Aether of the victim's soul with their own, and there is no known way to excise the Primal from the Tempered victim. Only be killing them can their soul be freed from slavery to the Primal's will.
  • Final Fantasy Adventure makes the player do this to Amanda — she's cursed to turn into a Medusa that will victimize the nearby village, but her curse also means that the hero can gather her tears to cure her brother, who was turned into a parrot. She's already transformed to the point where she cannot commit suicide; the player must attack her to end her misery.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics: Ramza kills Zalbaag, who's being possessed by lucavi demons and can't commit suicide to avoid harming Ramza.
  • In Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, by the end of the game, the Greater-Scope Villain Anankos has used Takumi's feelings of resentment and betrayal towards the Avatar to turn him into a homicidal maniac, force him to commit Psychic-Assisted Suicide, and completely possess his corpse to use as a weapon against the Avatar. All you can do for him at that point is put him out of his misery.
  • In Fire Emblem Engage
    • In Chapter 10, Diamant and Alcryst, princes of Brodia, rush to try to save their father King Morion from King Hyacinth of Elusia, but find that they are too late- Hyacinth has drained Morion's blood for the Fell Dragon Sombron, who revived Morion as a Corrupted. Diamant realizes that they have to destroy their father's Corrupted form, and while Alcryst is initially reluctant, he decides to go through with it.
    • In the Fell Xenologue DLC, it turns out that the royals of Alternate Elyos are actually Corrupted that, with the exception of Alternate Fogado, aren't even aware of their status as such. If Rosado faces Alternate Hortensia, the counterpart of his friend and liege, he sadly concludes that the only thing he can do for her is put her out of her misery.
  • FromSoftware:
    • In Demon's Souls, the true King Allant is nothing more than a feeble blob clinging to his sword thanks to his corruption by the Old One, wishing for death. He still puts up a rather pitiful fight even in this tormented state — his lingering obsession with the power of souls is just that powerful.
    • In Dark Souls, Gwyn's and his champion Artorias' boss battles have you putting them out of their misery. Gwyn has been reduced to a mad Hollow after burning for so long as the kindling of the First Flame. Artorias is even worse off, having been reduced to little more than a vessel of the Abyss. If you speak to Artorias's companions afterward, they will thank you for killing him and ending his torment, something even they were unable to do. However Gwyn's mercy kill is tragically averted come Dark Souls III, where he's very much alive inside the Soul of Cinder a physical form of every being who linked the Flame
    • In Dark Souls II, King Vendrick's attempts to cure the Undead Curse failed, and he became afflicted with it in the end. By the time you meet him, he is nothing but a mindless Hollow wandering aimlessly in his tomb. By killing him, you lay the once-great king to rest.
    • In Bloodborne, Gehrman offers the Hunter mercy from the horrible Hunter's Dream by killing the Hunter, the reverse can also be true, as Gehrman also wants to be unshackled from it as well, but he decides to sacrifices his own good and offers the mercy kill instead. If the Hunter refuses the offer, then the Hunter can honour the old man's wish.
      • In a way, you're already doing this for the other Hunters you fight as bosses...one of the saddest being Father Gascoigne.
      • This is why Eileen the Crow's, the Hunter of Hunters, uses a weapon called the Blade of Mercy: her whole job is hunting down Hunters who've gone insane, like Gascoigne did, and putting them out of their misery before they have a chance to hurt any innocents. In Gascoigne's case, you just got to him first. If you complete her questline, she passes this job onto you.
    • Dark Souls III has "The End of Fire" ending where you choose to let the First Flame finally die, ending the Age of Fire and plunging the entire world into darkness, beginning the Age of Dark. Considering that the "To Link the First Flame" ending heavily implies that the First Flame's death is inevitable and every linking is weaker than the last, this is effectively putting the world out of its misery. It isn't a total Downer Ending though. The Firekeeper states that eventually tiny flames will flicker in the darkness, and a new Age of Fire will come naturally.
  • In Gears of War 2, after spending a decade searching for his missing wife, Dom finds her in a Locust prison reduced to a catatonic Empty Shell. He and Marcus both agree that the only humane thing to do is mercy kill her. For bonus symbolism, he uses a Locust-made Boltok Pistol to do it. In the next game, he ends up joining her via HeroicSacrifice.
    • Subverted and Double Subverted depending on the player. In multiplayer getting an execution on an enemy, rewards you with the ribbon Coup De Grace, which means "Mercy kill". How much of a mercy kill? Depends on your standpoint: If you're the last guy alive, and your teammates were assholes (towards them) expect the worst kind of mercy kill ever. You should be accounted as lucky if someone just curb-stomps or shoot you as the last one alive.
  • Ghost of Tsushima will occasionally have defeated enemies crawling on the ground in agony, allowing you to stab them for a mercy kill, which restores quite a bit of resolve (needed for healing and powerful techniques). Conversely, if Jin is defeated in combat, he'll fall to the ground and bleed until an enemy comes over and gives him a mercy kill, unless you have three units of resolve and the appropriate skill, which allows you to stand back up, to the terror of your enemies.
  • In God of War II, Kratos comes upon the Titan Prometheus, who as per Greek mythology is chained to a rock with an eagle ripping out his organs every day (which grow back every night, meaning endless torment). Kratos mercy-kills him by dropping him into the Fire of Olympus, earning the Rage of the Titans power-up.
    • He later does this to his own mother, after breaking a pact causes her to mutate into a grotesque, and obviously in pain monster.
  • Half-Life 2. Headcrab zombies. The screams. For the love of God, just hurry up and throw that buzzsaw at them before they have to suffer another second...
  • In Halo: Combat Evolved, when Master Chief finds Captain Keyes infected by the Flood, he chooses to give him a dignified death by punching his face in, which also allows him to get the implants out of Keyes' skull. In this case, Keyes had already become assimilated, so killing him was basically the same as killing a human combat form at that point, and the Flood were going to use his knowledge to pilot a Covenant ship off of Halo and spread to other worlds.
  • After shelling North Korean troops with white phosphorus mortar rounds in Homefront, you have the option of shooting the burning soldiers to earn a 'mercy' achievement (there's another achievement for just letting them burn).
  • Mentioned in Homeworld Cataclysm; certain large ships are immune to takeover by The Corruption, taking severe damage instead. The manual tells us that this is achieved by dumping high-temperature plasma into the afflicted sections of the ship and then opening an airlock. Not a pure Mercy Kill in that it's necessary to save the rest of the crew, but the crewmembers about to be ripped apart by flesh-eating nanotech and used to make network cabling would undoubtedly see it that way.
  • In Hotline Miami, occasionally when an enemy is killed he'll slowly crawl along the ground, barely alive. Executing an enemy like this will give you a point bonus, named Mercy Kill at the end-of-level results screen.
  • I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: One event while exploring the Colony Outskirts during Glow Season has you encountering a manticore that's dying from being trapped in a sawmill for several days. You can try putting it out of its misery, but your psychic connection with the wormhole weakens your resolve to do it until you're put in a trance. By the time you snap out of it, the manticore has mysteriously disappeared.
  • Jade Empire:
    • The Water Dragon requests one of these from the Spirit Monk. The dragon's body is being kept alive so that her blood can be used to end the drought, while her divine power is being siphoned off by the emperor.
    • Someone being held by cannibals and forced to turn into one of them asks that you kill him. If you don't, he transforms into a flesh-eating monster.
  • In Killer7, this is the reason Andrei Ulmeyda wants the Smiths to come find him; he knows they're the only people that can kill Heaven Smiles and he knows that he will eventually become one.
  • In Kirby: Triple Deluxe, the pause menu for the True Final Boss has Soul of Sectonia's former friend, Taranza tell Kirby to give said boss her final beauty sleep because she's too far gone in her own insanity. In the original Japanese, Soul of Sectonia asks Kirby herself to put her out of her misery because she doesn't recognize herself anymore.
  • This is the ultimate fate of The Mother in La-Mulana, at the hands of the Player Character. She wants to return to the sky, but does not realize that she is unable to and keeps killing every race of life she creates for failing to fulfill her wish, leaving killing her as the only option that won't cause humanity, the race last created by the Mother, to be destroyed.
  • Multiple times in L.A. Noire, mostly at the end or in flashbacks at occur near the end. One flashback shows Courtney Sheldon running up a hill to administer a fatal dose of morphine to an injured and screaming soldier. Another flashback reveals an accidental but nightmarish atrocity: a flamethrower soldier torched a cave full of women and children, thinking they were soldiers, and the US soldiers have to shoot each of them to put them out of their misery. Finally done by Jack Kelso for Ira Hogeboom, the aforementioned flamethrower soldier, when the latter can no longer live with what he's done.
  • The Last of Us:
    • Early on, you will have to go in a building filled with spores (Said spores turn people into "zombies"), that forces you to wear a gas mask, on said building you will encounter a survivor who is pinned under a piece of wood and his gas mask broke, meaning that he will turn into an Infected sooner or later. He will cry out to you to not "Leave him to turn", and you have the option to shoot him to put him out of his misery.
    • In the sewer level, you can find several notes from members of a group of survivors who once lived there. The notes detail how they all lived together before one night when someone left a door open and a horde of Infected got in. One note from a "Kyle" has him holed up in a room with some children hiding from the Infected which were soon to break through. The note implies that he shot the children to save them from a more brutal death by the hands of the Infected before killing himself. If there's any doubt left in the player's mind, you can also a see several small corspes covered by a tarp next to an adult one along with the words, "THEY DIDN'T SUFFER" written on the ground in large letters.
  • The Left 4 Dead online comic shows this as part of Zoey's backstory — her mother turned during a family dinner, biting Zoey's father before being put down. Since Zoey and her father had watched the same zombie movies, they knew what had to come next. Tragically, the same comic later revealed that the genetic immunity to the zombie plague is passed down on the father's side, meaning that the mercy kill was probably unnecessary.
  • In the Legacy of Kain series, Kain's attempted murder of Raziel is actually one of these. He had known for some time of Raziel's destiny to trapped in the Soul Reaver and he believed death would be preferable. When Kain finally sees the Elder God after Raziel's sacrifice purifies him, Kain is distraught when he realizes he had actually condemned Raziel to a different Fate Worse than Death as the Elder God's slave.
    • In Blood Omen, the first game in the series, Kain explores the lair of Nupraptor the Mentalist and finds several people chained to the walls that the insane wizard has captured and tortured. Kain can even comment on this after questioning one of Nupraptor's former servants.
      "Scars such as hers would never heal. Death would only be a mercy."
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak, Van Arkride pulls this off at the end of chapter one to a dying Aida by stabbing her to end her suffering. Feri was supposed to be the one to do the deed to complete her training as a jaeger but Van ends up doing it himself as he wants the children to not dirty their hands just yet.
  • In Legend of Legaia, though you don't actually perform the killing directly, Noa's parents, fused with a giant Sim-Seru, request that you destroy the final Mist Generator to save the world and destroy the Sim-Seru, killing them in the process. As the pain they are in is implied to be horrendous, it's likely that they preferred death. This course of action also takes the entire city of Conkram with them, but considering the Body Horror and Fate Worse than Death that Conkram's citizens have been suffering through for 10+ years, it's confirmed by Terra that this is the kindest thing that could've been done to them.
  • Lie of Caelum: At the end of the prologue, Shiro is forced to kill Ten after the latter is possessed by a demon.
  • LunarLux: The Murks are in a constantly pained state, which is why the Murk Slayer wants to slay them all. He later explains that the Murks were once humans and that the ones that don't drop anticores had their souls shattered during their transformation, meaning killing them is the only way to save them from their suffering. The ones that drop anticores have their souls intact, and the Murk Slayer keeps the cores in his hideout in the hopes that he can find a way to restore their humanity.
  • In Mass Effect, there is an optional scene where Shepard can perform a Mercy Kill on salarian troops who were indoctrinated by Sovereign. And knowing exactly how horrible Reaper indoctrination is, it's hard to disagree with the mercy kills. Wrex completely agrees with this decision and notes that if he were indoctrinated he would want to be mercy killed too.
    • There is also a section where you find a ship, empty with the crew apparently dead, aside from a man on life support, whose brain has been described as 'dead'. The crew wanted to put him off it, to which his biotic girlfriend Julia reacted... violently. She will attack, and you may take him off the life support yourself. Your own squad members consider it the merciful thing to have done.
    • On Noveria, the Rachni Queen asks you to do this to her own kids; the rachni are a telepathic species who need to be raised around others to develop properly, but the resident mad scientists took her kids from her before they were ready and the 'silence' has driven them insane. On the same planet, Matriarch Benezia declines medigel after you beat her, knowing that since she's been indoctrinated already living on would just involve being subjected to more of it.
    • If you let Gavin Archer keep David at the end of 2's Overlord DLC, Mass Effect 3 reveals that he eventually "ended his suffering".
    • The third game gives you the opportunity to do this to a batarian terrorist grieving for his family and dying of terrible injuries.
    • In Mass Effect 3, Javik learns from Liara about Shepard wiping out the Collectors, indoctrinated Protheans modified by the Reapers into obedient slaves. When Liara apologizes, he merely comments that he is grateful for the act of mercy.
    • In Mass Effect: Andromeda, Ryder can shoot a kett Chosen who's been horrifically tortured by an AWOL angara resistance fighter for information the kett clearly doesn't have, though more to get the angara to stop and go home rather than any sense of mercy to the kett.
  • The Metal Gear series features this as a device often:
  • Miitopia: At the end of the game, when you defeat The Darkest Lord and liberate the Great Sage you get to hear the backstory of the Big Bad, at which point you are given two options: Give the Dark Curse a new face so he can start again and ammend for his misdeeds, or destroy him to end his suffering. If you do the latter, the Dark Curse thanks you before dissapearing.
  • NieR
    • This is done unintentionally on a species-wide scale. Humanity has been slowly going unavoidably extinct for over a thousand years; beating the Big Bad finishes it off, reducing an inevitable several centuries of further decay down to a few years.
    • Nier has the option of mercy-killing Kainé in several of the endings.
  • NieR: Automata:
    • Endings A and B see 2B mercy-killing 9S after he gets infected with the Machines' logic virus. Even though both of them are androids who can be restored from backups as often as needed, this act is extremely agonizing for 2B because a) their last backup went awry and 9S would lose all memories of the events of the game, b) she secretly loves him, and c) she has already killed him hundreds of times. In a twist happy ending, however, 9S manages to hack into the Machines' own network and backup his data in the nick of time, surviving intact (and virus-free), after all.
    • In a darkly ironic echo of the above, Route C/D opens with 2B getting infected by the same logic virus and pleading with A2 to mercy-kill her. A2 obliges, but not before 2B backups her memories into her sword and bequeathes it to her. Unfortunately for everyone, 9S arrives late enough to miss their exchange, but just in time to watch A2 "murder" 2B, delivering the final blow to his sanity.
  • A possible interpretation of the ending for Outlast. Miles was killed by the police officers to prevent the Walrider from escaping the asylum and using Miles until he's no longer useful. Too bad they made things worse for themselves.
  • In Planescape: Torment:
    • A githzerai woman is violently ill and dying a slow death from the polluted air of the Lower Wards. Unable to even speak, she beseeches the Nameless One through gestures to end her life. The choice affects the Nameless One's alignment: Killing her (or having Dak'kon do it mercifully) is considered a good act, while declining (or being less merciful) is considered evil.
    • A somewhat more comical mercy kill comes in the form of a zombie who has been animated to provide the local coffin maker with a permanent listener—the coffin maker is rather annoying and will talk endlessly about anything and everything, and is so clueless that he doesn't even realize his best listener is a zombie. The zombie begs the Nameless One to undo the enchantment and return him to nothingness because he can't bear to listen to the man any longer.
  • One way of getting out of the old tutorial note  in Project Zomboid was smothering your injured wife with a pillow, as her chances of not dying horribly are essentially zero now that she can't walk.
  • Some levels in Quake II and its expansion packs allow you to free imprisoned soldiers. The problem with these soldiers is that they became empty shells and are literally begging you to finish themnote . At times, it borders on Video Game Cruelty Potential, considering that some of them hold valuable items or (in at least one instance) block entrances to secrets. However, considering what they've been reduced to, killing them is hardly cruel.
  • Radiant Arc:
    • Subverted with the elemental spirits. While the ice and wind spirits want the party to kill them and free them from Morian control, it turns out spirits can't die permanently.
    • If the player completes the Requiem sidequests, Aria will use Holy Embrace to send her father-turned-Lich to the afterlife, freeing him from the Morians' control.
  • In Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, Shinigami does this to Yakou Furio, who as the culprit in the case has to be killed to finish the Mystery Labyrinth even though he was tricked into killing Dr.Huesca out of revenge for his late wife. Instead of brutally disintegrating them with her scythe like all the other culprits, she fakes out an attack, instead giving them a hug that lets them Go Out with a Smile. This is doubly merciful as in the real world the aforementioned culprit is dying from poison gas and bleeding out from a stab wound both at once.
  • Rave Heart: Thanks to her empath abilities, Ellemine realizes that many of the wandering mutants are in constant pain. The mercenary leader Dart points out that regardless, killing them is the only option both because of the threat they present to innocents and because it's the only way to end their suffering.
  • In Saints Row 2, the main character does this to ease Carlos' pain after he's keelhauled by car by the Brotherhood.
  • The defeat of the final boss in Shadow Hearts: From The New World counts, considering what Lady/Grace had become.
    • Before that, the fight with Malice Edna is this.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, you travel through the base of Jack's Squad and encounter a group of demons in life-sustaining tanks, being used for a variety of unethical experiments, screaming and crying as their organs are harvested. You have the option of turning off their life support.
  • Pops up with heart-crushing regularity in Shin Megami Tensei IV; humans who become demons cannot be restored, the National Defense Divinities all hate their summoners but cannot escape their leashes, the people imprisoned in Reverse Hills for use in Red Pills probably all dream about dying. And then come the White with their offer to just end the cycle of suffering.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei V, a bunch of students are kidnapped from high school, and one of them is last seen crawling into the mouth hole of a Babylonian horror. You and your human friends do get to save the kidnapped students with limited exception. And then there's Sahori, who was manipulated by Lahmu into joining with him after a lengthy period on the wrong end of bullying; she's the last of the students you find, and while you annihilate Lahmu's form, it's too late, and he's essentially fused his essence with his Knowledge within Sahori. He skewers the Nahobino when they take a hit for Tao, forcibly divides them into the protagonist and Aogami while they are still mortally wounded, then impales Tao without hesitation. The shock of murdering Tao causes Sahori to fight back against Lahmu, and while she can't truly win, it's enough of a pause for Tao to revive the Nahobino's two halves, and for them to skewer Sahori to put an end to her and Lahmu.
  • Probably the single most extreme version of this trope comes from Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. An entire multiverse is subjected to an endless cycle of death and rebirth, continuing on and on forever until God completely erases free will. In one ending, you decide it's better to destroy this multiverse and everyone in it rather than letting God have His way.
  • A major element of Silent Hill 2, as James doing this to his terminally ill wife Mary is the event that causes the entire plot, which examines James' true motivation for doing so. Was it for his wife, to give her peace; or selfish, to get his life back? Interestingly, the story doesn't give a concrete answer to this, but instead allows the truth to be determined based on the choices made in-game by the player.
    James: The truth is... I hated you. I wanted you out of the way. I wanted my life back!
    Mary's Ghost: James... If that were true, then why do you look so sad?
    • Silent Hill: Homecoming has this as an option for the first of two choices (or three, depending on which ending you're going for) that determine the ending you get. Alex's mother is strapped to a device and is obviously suffering. You are given the choice to either end her life or not. You can only get the good ending if you mercy kill her.
  • Spec Ops: The Line — Mercy killing is a game mechanic; often times when you kill an enemy in a place other than the upper torso or head, they'll fall over and start dying slowly on the ground, crying in pain. Walker can perform an "Execution" move on them — at first, they are genuine mercy, such as a quick bullet to the head or snapping their neck. As the game goes on, Walker becomes increasingly violent and tries to inflict as much pain as possible, by blasting out their kneecaps then shooting them in the heart, or even more brutal techniques. When Walker uses white phosphorus on the soldiers in "The Gate", they will beg you to kill them as you walk by. At the end, the player can choose to do this to Walker if they want, and after all the crap he's been through and done, it's a surprisingly tempting and reasonable option.
  • The fifth boss in the original Splatterhouse is Rick's girlfriend Jennifer, who has been forcibly mutated into a monster. Once Rick puts her down, she reverts back to human form and croaks out "Thank you... goodbye..." before fading away to dust in Rick's arms.
  • Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
    • When the Jedi Exile and Darth Sion have their final showdown, Sion (who is her Stalker with a Crush) says that killing the Exile with his lightsaber is nothing compared to what Darth Traya is planning to do to her, so he'll put her out of her misery now to spare her from that.
    • Also part of Atton's backstory. He was a Sith torturer and "working" on a female Jedi. The Jedi revealed to him that he was Force-sensitive, and gave him a glimpse of the Force. Atton freaked out and realized that he couldn't save her, so he either choked her to death or snapped her neck, then ran like hell from the Sith.
  • In the game The Suffering, one can increase their Karma Meter by mercy killing a guard who has had most of his body eaten by rats inside of a room in an Asylum. Your wife will reassure you that it was "the right thing to do" if you do it.
  • If anyone defeats the Red Riot during Scenario 45 in Super Robot Wars UX, the pilot will begin to burn alive in his cockpit. Jin, acting quickly, shoots down his subordinate so that he doesn't have to suffer.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, just after you finally meet Belius, she gets corrupted by Estelle's Child of the Full Moon powers and you have to kill her. She knows very well what is happening, and asks her second-in-command to not be upset with the heroes for having to do this. Throughout the battle, she begs for you to kill her and if you accomplish the secret mission, she states that her power is gone and tells your party to strike now.
  • Discussed in Tales of Zestiria and its Prequel Tales of Berseria in regards to dragons and Heldalf, described as "killing can be saving". It's ultimately invoked in both, as in both cases there is no other way to "save" them except put them to rest.
  • Team Fortress 2:
    • Invoked for Black Comedy in one of the Scout's domination lines directed at the Sniper.
      It was a mercy killing, ya live in a... camper van!
    • Speaking of Black Comedy, this line shows up every now and then when first starting a Competitive Mode match with a Demoman on your team:
      Lads, I watched their scrim. I think this might be a mercy killing.
    • And, of course, there's the fridge inside the Medic's lab in "Meet the Medic":
      Spy's living, decapitated head: Kill me.
      Medic: Later.
  • In Thief 2: The Metal Age, Garrett comes across a captured spy during one mission, who has been locked in a freezer. After the spy gives Garrett the information he managed to obtain, he requests a mercy killing rather than freezing to death. Although if you oblige, the game still counts this as "killing an innocent".
    • However, since Hard Difficulty requires a Pacifist Run, the requirements for this mission are carefully worded: You're only forbidden from killing Mechanists, meaning you can put down the informant and still clear the mission.
  • In the Tomb Raider reboot, after causing an explosion a mook ends up trapped under burning rubble, begging Lara to kill him. Complying causes Lara to bitterly state "Go to hell".
  • In Tekken 5, the former founder of the Mishima Zaibatsu and Heihachi's father, Jinpachi Mishima has been resurrected by the Devil's blood after dying over 40 years before the tournament, after being locked away by his son in the underground of the family dojo and temple Hon-Maru. After the temple Hon-maru was blown apart, Jinpachi awakened and escaped from the ruins, to later assume control of the Zaibatsu. During that time, Jinpachi's consciousness was corrupted by the constant mental torture of the Devil gene and took all his will to not fall completely to it. Jinpachi then opened the Tekken 5 in hopes someone would stop and kill him, to die as himself, to be sure, he sent a letter to his old childhood friend, Wang Jinrei, asking him to seek him out for his assistance. In Wang's Tekken 5 story mode, Jinpachi struggles in maintaining control of himself, happy that his friend managed to reach him and begs him to kill him. While at first Wang refuses to harm his friend, Jinpachi explains to him that his consciousness is not going to last for long as he's at his limit and the devil gene is close to consuming fully, so to save humanity he asks him "not let friendship stop him" and kill him so Jinpachi can die as himself.
  • In Trauma Center: Under the Knife, Amy Chase had contracted the Deftera strain of the GUILT disease and has been in the hospital for several years. Her condition has been deteriorating over this time and has gotten especially bad by the time of the game. Her brother, Tyler, who's also a doctor at the Caduceus, begins plans to euthanize her. Given the events that follow, It's pretty clear what side of the fence the game is on when it comes to this issue.Note 
  • In Uncommon Time, losing the battle against Teagan will result in Teagan killing Alto in cold blood, believing that it's the only way to free Alto from the burden of her responsibilities.
  • At one point in Unreal you encounter Nali who are being crucified by the Skaarj. While the game doesn't give you any means of saving them, there's a small consolation in that the game does let you perform a Mercy Kill on the poor guys.
  • The Walking Dead (Telltale):
    • In Season 1 Episode 3, Duck is about to succumb to the zombie infection. You must choose who will put him out of his misery. You the player character, or the boy's father. Later in the game you can choose what you want Clementine to do with you. Shoot you before you turn, or run away and leave you chained to a radiator
    • If Ben is still in the party in Episode 5, this happens after he falls onto a metal bar from a balcony, leaving him unable to move. Kenny chooses to stay behind to make sure Ben didn't turn. Seconds after they are out of sight, Ben's screams are cut short by a gunshot.
    • Earlier in the series, the player spots a woman in the distance being chased by zombies. Without any chance of closing the distance to save her, the only options are to shoot her out of mercy or to leave her to her fate and allow her screams to serve as a distraction. Lee also has to kill his undead brother in Episode 1, so he can retrieve the keys to the room in the pharmacy where Larry's heart medication is. Lee can also give one to Irene in Episode 1 and to the undead boy in the attic in Episode 4.
    • Michonne can give one to Norma in Episode 3 of the Michonne mini-series.
  • One of the Apocalyptic Logs that the player can find in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine details how an Imperial Medic is giving the Emperor's Peace to all of the patients under his care over the protests of his assistant, pointing out that the Orks were about to break into the ward and the medication would at least allow the patients a peaceful death rather than one from being chopped to pieces.
  • Axenos from Wizard101 uses the more villainous version of this trope when he decides that to reward the player for releasing him by killing them first so they do not have to witness the horrors he'll bring upon the Spiral. Fortunately, he's more bark than bite and no tougher than most boss battles.
  • In Episode Five of The Wolf Among Us, Bigby has the option of doing this for Georgie Porgie, who suffered a fatal stab wound during an earlier fight.
  • In Wolfenstein: The New Order, in the final confrontation with General Deathshead B.J. Blazkowicz discovers the true fate of his comrade whom Deathshead had tortured and dissected right before him fourteen years earlier (Pvt. Wyatt/Fergus Reid, depending on who you choose to sacrifice in said scene); depending on who, their intact brain is used to power one of the General's Machine Men, and they are fully aware and conscious of everything even after fourteen years of having lost their body. After being forced to fight them, Blazko does the only decent thing he can do for his comrade and honors their wish to let them die rather than suffer this fate any longer.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Towards the last part of the game, Bionis awakening causes all pure blood High Entia to turn into Telethia, which are semi-mindless creatures (they seem to remember those they held dear, to a degree) that work under Zanza's orders to eliminate life on it. The now spread out survivors of Alcamoth will give you quests to put their loved ones out of their misery, which will include killing parents, lovers, friends, etc.
  • Yakuza 0 has a more mundane example at the end of Chapter 6: Nishikiyama appears to be driving Kiryu to a safe place outside of Kamurocho where the Dojima Family can't reach him, but things start getting shady when the car stops in the middle of a forest. The duo get out of the car and Nishiki offers Kiryu a cigarette, even letting him keep the lighter he loaned him... and it turns out to be One Last Smoke as Nishiki puts a gun to the back of Kiryu's head. He tearfully explains that if the Dojima Family ever get their hands on him, they'll torture him so badly for so long that by the time they finally end it, his corpse won't even look human anymore, so he's decided to end it quickly and relatively painlessly. Fortunately for Kiryu but unfortunately for Nishiki, it's not so easy for him to just kill a friend, and he starts begging Kiryu to run away with him somewhere neither of them will be found, but Kiryu's made up his mind: if Nishiki kills him, he'll be able to return to Dojima a hero, basically securing his future in the Tojo Clan for life. Nishiki, of course, can't follow through with it, and simply breaks down crying. Kiryu solemnly orders him to forget this night and breaks off their blood brother oath, driving off as Nishiki lets out a Skyward Scream.

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