One Hit Kill / Video Games

Examples of the One-Hit Kill trope in Video Games and Visual Novels.

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Action Adventure

• Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, when Kain finds the Soulreaver sword and has maxed out his magic gauge - the Soulreaver becomes powerful enough to kill bosses and enemies that are weaker than the Warlord boss.
• In Bomberman 64, during the boss fight with Hades (the giant robot fought at the end of Red Mountain), there's steps you can do to expose the cockpit where Orion is. If you throw a Pumped-Up bomb in there (which also nets you a Gold Card), when Hades next emerges, it loses all of is health, even if no prior damage has been done to it.
• Bunny Must Die has three bosses with instant death abilities.
  • Count Vladmu a.k.a. Flash has his namesake ability, signaled with flames at his feet before he parts his robe and glows brightly. If you so much as look his way during this, you either forfeit a doll (Chelsea automatically, Bunny on Recall) or head back to your last save point. Direct contact with his head by anything other than the girls' feet is also instant death.
  • Chelsea, as a boss, has a mode where crosshairs lock onto you. If you stay in one spot too long, you get a headshot, which kills you no matter how much health you have.
  • Dechronos!Bunny throws BFSes on the last ten to fifteen percent of her health. Touching one effectively paralyzes Chelsea while Bunny beats a doll out of her. What, don't have a doll? Say hello to the last save point, sucker! Oh, and don't touch her this time, either.
• Drakan: Your dragon ally Arokh is a being from a legendary age of might, so non-dragon enemies that would be a terror for Rynn are nothing but frail mooks to Arokh. If Rynn is on the ground and can lead a foe close enough to Arokh, the dragon will automatically kill that foe by breathing a stream of fire on them or biting them hard.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Almost any time the Silver Arrows or, in later games, Light Arrows are featured (Ocarina of Time is an exception because they only stun enemies). They kill all normal enemies in one hit and are powerful enough to stun Ganondorf, The King of Evil. In The Wind Waker, they're capable of disintegrating the enemies' bodies in an explosion of light.
  • Link isn't immune to one-hit kills himself, whether it's staying underwater for prolonged periods of time without wearing the appropriate underwater gear (Ocarina of Time's Zora Tunic, Majora's Mask's Zora Mask and Twilight Princess's Zora Armor) and drowning as a result or being unable to withstand high temperatures without the Goron Tunic and being cooked to death in Ocarina of Time, and if Link is without the proper attire, a timer will appear letting the player know how long he has left to live, and once it hits zero, he instantly dies regardless of his health. To avoid such an outcome, if Link is underwater, he can either put on the appropriate underwater gear or take off the iron boots and swim to the surface and if he's in a high-temperature area in Ocarina of Time, he can either put on the Goron tunic or leave the fiery area. However, in Majora's Mask's case, once he resumes human form after taking off the Zora Mask, he has to quickly swim to the surface before the timer hits zero, but when switching to the Goron Mask, he loses a heart and respawns where he left off; the same also applies when switching from the Goron Mask to either the Zora or Deku masks when standing on lava.
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: The Thunder Spell can kill almost every kind of enemy shown on the screen, but costs a lot of magic.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening:
    • The Boomerang, which you have to trade in your shovel for, can kill the final boss in a single hit if you aim for the eye.
    • Stealing from the shop and returning with the stolen item will show the owner instantly zapping Link to death.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, scimitar-wielding Gerudo Guards can pull this on you during a duel, if they land a spin attack on you. It instantly knocks Link out, regardless of his health. This does not result in a Non-Standard Game Over, however; he wakes up in their prison afterwards, which is easily escapable by Hookshoting onto the wooden awning and jumping right out, and from there, you have to fight that same guard all over again to free the imprisoned carpenter.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker:
    • The second boss, Kalle Demos, can be killed instantly by pouring Forest Water onto its nucleus after exposing it.
    • After obtaining the Fire and Ice Arrows, Link is granted the option of using the latter arrows to freeze enemies solid, then can instantly kill the frozen enemy by either throwing its body or using the Skull Hammer to smash it to pieces, even on Darknuts if you're quick enough. The Fire Arrows, meanwhile, can be used to kill Mothulas (which have a Mini-Boss tier) instantly.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
    • Link can learn a sword technique that can do this. The Mortal Draw is tricky to use and doesn't work on certain enemies that are defended in the front (you need another sword technique for them), but it can still be effective in certain situations. Against bosses, it won't be an instant kill, but it will hurt like hell! The only boss, however, that can succumb to Mortal Draw is Darkhammer, a heavily armored Lizalfos and the Mini-Boss of Snowpeak Ruins guarding the Ball and Chain, whose weak point is its tail; using either the aforementioned technique or Jump Strike instantly defeats him.
    • There are three areas in the game where uncontrollable fire traps occur: the Bomb Storehouse in Kakariko Village (Twilight), the Great Hylian Bridge (Twilight), and the Bulbin Base outside the Arbiter's Grounds after defeating King Bulblin. If you fail to escape the areas or touch the flames, you instantly die.
    • Twilight Princess also has a one-hit kill against Link regarding the Zora Armor. The armor is weak to fire and ice attacks, which makes Link take double damage, but if he falls into lava or a near-frozen lake with the armor on, it's instant death — regardless of how many hearts you have. Notably, Argorok's fire breath is powerful enough to become an instant-kill attack while the Zora Armor is in use.
    • Link can be killed instantly in Snowpeak Ruins. If you load one of the cannons and then foolishly stand in front of it when it fires, Link will expire instantly, regardless of hearts. Wearing the Magic Armor or having a fairy prevents this.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: The Dark and Armored Trains can kill Link instantly if he fails to dodge them while traveling with the Spirit Train.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:
    • The Guardians patrolling the Silent Realm can kill Link instantly. The fact that they are only found in the Silent Realm, where Link loses access to his sword, can make encounters with them rather tense.
    • There are three examples of obstacles that, instead of simply making Link reappear at the start of the room where they hit him (a tradition for the series), they actually kill him: The giant rolling boulder in the Earth Temple, the statue of Buddha in Ancient Cistern that descends when Link gets the Boss Key, and the lava overflowing a certain underground passage in Fire Sanctuary.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • The Ancient Arrows disintegrate any enemy that's not a Guardian or boss in one shot. However, the parts used to make them are difficult to come by unless you've been killing Guardians left and right, and when you kill a non-Guardian with them whatever equipment or monster parts they have will be lost as well.
    • If Link gets spotted when infiltrating the Yiga Clan Hideout, the player will have to fight a squad of Yiga Clan members who can take him down with a single attack, who then proceed to taunt Link if he dies. This manages to bypass even fairies and Mipha's Grace.
    • In the Trials of the Hero, the One-Hit Obliterator is a weapon that does exactly this, though it's so powerful that Link's health is reduced to a quarter of a heart, making him a Glass Cannon to the extreme — since a quarter heart is the minimum amount of damage something can cause, even the weakest enemies will kill Link in one hit while he holds it.
    • Fire- and ice-based enemies will be instantly slain if struck by a weapon of the opposite element, which will cause them to vanish in a puff of steam. Electric enemies on the other hand have no such weakness.
    • Pebblits — small Rock Monsters — will be instantly destroyed if hit with tools made to break stone, such as cobble crushers and their stronger variants, drillshafts, sledgehammers, or bomb arrows.
  • Hyrule Warriors: In any Adventure Mode battle where "All attacks are devastating", all enemies die in one hit from any attack. The player takes two, thanks to their Last Chance Hit Point (though a single hit is enough to ruin your rank for the battle).
• Metroid:
  • Series-wide: In most 2D games, the Screw Attack is lethal for non-boss creatures. It's a reason why it's often obtained late. In the case of the original Metroid, this also happens with the Missile.
  • Metroid Prime: Hunters has two:
    • In multiplayer mode, there's the Omega Cannon, a weapon so powerful that it will kill anyone, including the shooter, in a single hit because the blast radius is very large. The weapon can only be used once and you have to pick up another if you want it again. It only appears in one level and people generally avoid picking the level it appears in since it becomes a race to the top to see who can get the weapon first. Naturally, people who cheat will love to use this weapon.
    • In single-player mode, the only hazards that are lethal enough to kill Samus instantly are some crushers located within one Morph Ball segment in Alinos, in the path leading to that planet's second Octolith.
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption:
    • The Nova Beam. By itself, the Nova Beam is just a high-frequency weapon that can damage enemies regardless of the special Phazite armor they may be wearing. Use it in conjunction with the previously gained X-Ray Visor, however, and you can start targeting some enemies' internal organs for instant kills (one of the bosses, Metroid Hatcher, can be killed this way as well).
    • The Mining Cannon in Pirate Homeworld, which is powered by the Nova Beam, will use a traction attack to suck you and the incoming Space Pirates towards the middle of the room. The objective is to lure the Pirates into the Cannon once the sucking process starts, but you must also avoid getting sucked by it yourself. Failure to resist will result in one of the entire series' few instant deaths.
  • Metroid: Other M:
    • There's one scene where Samus has to jump up a broken elevator shaft while enemies chase her. She has to make the elevator crash down on the enemies to dispatch them, but the elevator has just as good a chance of killing Samus as well.
    • In Sector 3's Pyrosphere running into the glass pipe, Samus is given a short time to dodge Vorash's lunge. Failure to do so means Vorash will swallow her whole, instantly killing her.
    • Hard mode turns many seemingly-trivial enemy attacks into this. Due to the player being stuck at 99 energy max, some enemy attacks halfway to near the end of the game will inflict damage more than a whole Energy Tank's worth, and since there's no Last Chance Hit Point mechanic in Hard mode, Game Over.
  • Metroid: Samus Returns:
    • Contact with the Diggernaut's drill during the chase sequence will grind Samus into giblets.
    • Enemies frozen by Samus' Ice Beam shatter instantly from Melee strikes.
    • The aforementioned Diggernaut has an attack where he sucks up debris into his grinder; if Samus is not anchored when approaching the funnel cloud, she will be pulled in and chewed up to the tune of 300 damage. On Fusion difficulty, this increases to 1200 damage, which is more health than she can ever have. Proteus Ridley has a telegraphed grab attack which does the same amount of damage.
  • Metroid Dread: The E.M.M.I.s. Once they capture you, their attack instantly kills Samus. While it is possible to counter their attack once they grab you, it can be incredibly difficult to do so thanks to the timing window for doing so being deliberately inconsistent: not only are there different animations, but the frame on which the EMMI will decide to stab you is also variable within those animations.
• Mission Impossible (1990): Aside from the expected Bottomless Pits that instantly kill your agent, there are several other hazards that will eliminate them no matter how much health you have. Slamming into solid structures in the second stage will destroy the boat, and slamming into almost anything (Stumps, buildings, snow banks) in the fifth stage will bring the level to an end. The first stage, a city street, also has occasional traffic. Getting hit by a car will send your agent spinning in the air off the screen before eliminating that agent for the level.
• In Titan Souls, the player character as well as all the titans all die after one hit.
• ToeJam & Earl has the Total Bummer! present that when opened automatically kills your character.
• Certain bosses in the Tomb Raider franchise can do this:
  • Puna in III attacks with instant-death lightning, although it can easily be dodged, and the Final Boss of the same game will shoot an undodgeable instant-kill fireball if it gets in range. In the games where it appears, the T-Rex can swallow Lara whole.
  • The Final Boss of the first game can also instantly kill Lara by grabbing her leg and repeatedly smashing her into the ground.

Action Games

• In the online game Bearbarians, abusing the combo rules and an A.I. Breaker (or just being really good at hitting and running) can lead to your previously low to moderate damage getting stacked up high enough to insta-kill your opponents in a single blow. Combos increase your damage by 1 per consecutive unblocked hit, so a 50-damage attack becomes 51, 52, and so on, but are broken when an opponent successfully blocks. If you can find a location where the AI has to jump up, which renders it unable to block, carefully timed mashing of the attack button will allow you to stack up ridiculously long combos, leading to completely insane raw damage. 1000+ damage per hit will instantly massacre even the most durable opponent. Doing so while holding the enemy flag in a Capture the Flag match will ensure that the battle doesn't necessarily have to end until you develop carpal tunnel syndrome, fall asleep on the keys, or level up while standing atop a gore-soaked platform with more than 600 kills in just that level.
• Every enemy attack in Contra is a One Hit Kill, thanks to your characters being One Hit Point Wonders.
• In Contra's Spiritual Successor Hard Corps: Uprising, enemy snipers will attempt to lock onto you, and if you get caught in the crosshairs, they'll fire a bullet that does 4 points of damage if it connects, enough to kill any character in Arcade mode but it can be survived in Rising mode thanks to life upgrades (most other attacks only deal one point of damage to your Life Meter).
• The Matrix: Path of Neo has two with a level-up, they need to be charged before use and work best when the enemies are already weakened. Whether it's the ground or in-air version, you're vulnerable to damage while it's charging.
• Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge:
  • Jump onto the minecart tracks in the Cyclops levels and you will die instantly. And since Cyclops, like everyone else in this game, doesn't so much jump as he makes itty bitty hops, you'll have to learn to time your jumps perfectly if you hope to pass his levels.
  • The Juggernaut will instantly kill Wolverine if he manages to touch him during his bossfight.
• Vampire Survivors: The Reaper, being The Grim Reaper, can one-shot the player if it touches them, as its touch deals the maximum possible damage. It's possible to kill the Reaper with the right items or tricks, but doing so summons the White Hand a short time later. The White Hand doesn't have character data, making it completely invulnerable to your attacks, it moves based on the player's position instead of the camera's, so it can't be outrun, and it doesn't actually deal damage - instead, it sets your maximum HP to zero, killing you on the spot regardless of any Revives you still have. It exists solely to end your run with no possible escape.
• Several enemies in Zombies Ate My Neighbors could be taken out with one shot of the right weapon. Some were damned obvious (use silverware on the werewolves or the footballs on football players), and some were pure Guide Dang It! (using the Martian Bubble Gun on the giant ants or the tomatoes on the Martians).

Adventure Games

• In Heroine's Quest, frost giants have a decapitation attack that will insta-kill you if you don't dodge (or dodge in the wrong direction). Superboss Dolores has the same attack, and Final Boss Egther opens combat with an insta-kill ice beam that requires a class-specific counter.

Beat 'Em Ups

• Dragon's Crown
  • The Killer Rabbit boss once it Turns Red. It gains a move where it charges up a red aura, then leaps at a character. If this connects, it deals damage equal to the character's max health, and an x-ray of the character's skull breaking appears. Ouch. It can be survivable if your character gets their health above the maximum amount, though.
  • The Wizard's Extinction spell instantly kills one non-boss enemy, several if they're clumped together. It even works on Elite Mooks such as the Boss in Mook Clothing Assassin.
• Both Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara games featured a petrifying ray (either as a chest trap or one of beholder´s attacks), which petrified players hit (in the first game, you at least had a chance to escape by quick joystick-wiggling). Also, getting hit by a red dragon's breath results in an instant Continue? screen.
• In River City Girls, one of Godai's sidequests involves fighting a mook named "One-Hit Tommy". While he doesn't fight any different than the regular delinquents he's based on, if he hits you just once with any attack, you'll get knocked out.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, the Shredder has a spread beam that turns the PC into a regular turtle, effectively ending that life as far as beating Shredder is concerned. He also uses a similar attack as Super Shredder in The Hyperstone Heist and Turtles in Time. The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES had him using this in the form of a gun, which was his only attack, and which could put your turtle out of the game for good.
• It's highly situational, but playing Viewtiful Joe as Sylvia (who takes double damage from attacks) on Ultra-V mode (which quadruples the amount of damage you take) means any normal attack removes half of a maxed-out life bar in a single blow, making any attacks that deal double damage on their own (such as the Final Boss' lightning attack) into this.

Card Games

• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft:
  • Minions with the "Poisonous" trait instantly kill any minion they damage.
  • Many other cards can also inflict a separate instant-kill effect, the most well-known being the Priest cards Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Death, which automatically kill a targeted minion above or below a set Attack Power threshold.
  • Some cards are designed to create One Hit Kills on the Hero as well. Ancient One is a tricky-to-summon monster with 30 attack points — enough to take down a full-health hero if there are no taunts or armor in the way. Mecha'thun's death rattle kills the enemy hero outright, regardless of health or their minions, as long as its controlling player has nothing else left — no cards, no minions. As does Uther of the Ebon Blade collecting all four of his Horsemen. With proper setup, both of those conditional effects can be triggered within one turn, preventing an interruption from the opponent.
  • In a similar vein, there are One Turn Kills, even if they take a couple of actual hits to connect, it still all happens during your turn without a chance for the enemy to react. Highkeeper Ra, that gets summoned by filling your board with seven cultists, in addition to being a 20/20 titan, burns the enemy's board and hero with 20 damage at the end of the turn. Not enough to OTK by himself — but every deck that goes for this combo adds Drakkari Enchanter to make that trigger twice. Exodia Mage has gone through several iterations over the years. One of them involved playing Archmage Antonidas and four Sorcerer Apprentices (via minion-copying effects) in order to render Fireballs free and then burn the enemy hero down. Another involved doubling the time stop effect with Archmage Vargoth, after which they play a full board of 8/8 Giants, and attack on the second turn of the frozen time.
  • Introduction of Kael'thas Sunstrider to the game has immediately created a new branch of OTKs. He makes every third spell you cast on your turn free — so if you have enough 0-cost ones to cycle through, and some big ones to use, you can achieve some crazy things. Demon Hunters immediately put him to use with Twin Slice triggering his effect for 0 mana and Inner Demon giving a big chunk of attack to their hero. Do it twice, and you can have a finisher. Druid went to an even further degree, thanks to having access to several big card-drawing effects, with plenty of both direct damages to burn and cheap spells to activate Kael'thas. The moment he hit the board, the entire deck came flowing through with damage.
  • Initial release of Hysteria gave Wretched Tiller a short-lived but glorious stint of OTK stardom. His effect to deal 2 damage to the enemy hero when he attacks anything is normally nearly useless because he usually dies immediately. But granting him and another unit on board invulnerability means he would keep hitting without either dying, all the way up to the hardcoded limit of 30 actions, and thus 60 hero damage. After Hysteria got nerfed slightly to only work on enemy units, a version of the combo survives with Neferset Thrasher, who deals damage to his owner whenever he attacks. Gift one to the enemy with Treachery, lower attack of everything with Curse of Weakness to make sure he survives and has targets, and let Hysteria go. Fortunately for the state of the game, it is much harder to pull off than the Tiller version, thus it remains possible rather than getting nerfed further.
• Legends of Runeterra:
  • Drawing from an empty deck is an instant loss in this game. Maokai and Lissandra focus on making it happen by destroying the enemy's deck.
  • The Dreadway doubles all damage dealt when it is on the field, and enables two potential OTK:
    • Commander Ledros' on-play effect is to halve the health of the enemy's nexus. Dreadway of course makes it go down to zero.
    • Alternatively, you can copy the Dreadway with Dawn and Dusk, resulting in the multiplication of all damage by 8. After that, all you need is a couple of Warning Whots, or one shot and some powder kegs, to blow the opponent to kingdom come.
  • Leveled up Lee Sin casts a spell when he attacks to strike both his blocker and the enemy nexus. Normally this cancels his regular attack because he was blocked, but if you give him Overwhelm, the attack goes through after the blocker is removed. Enough attack buffs, which his deck specialized in any way, and the opponent goes down instantly.
  • They Who Endure and Nasus. Both power up with deaths of other units — any deaths of your allies for the former and any units, your own or your opponent's, that you slay for the latter. They Who Endure has Overwhelm in hopes of punching through the blocker while Nasus' Fearsome keyword and a suite of tools to lower the attack of all enemies is trying to ensure no one can even try to block him. And as a backup, both of them go with Shadow Isles, where the Atrocity spell can sacrifice them to deal their attack damage directly to the nexus.
• Shadowverse:
  • Followers with Bane will always kill the other follower they're fighting, even if they end up doing zero damage.
  • Medusa's signature ability lets her instantly kill anything she's attacking without worrying about taking damage in return.
  • Deepwood Anomaly can instantly kill the enemy leader when it gets a clear hit on them... as long as they don't have any damage reduction effects like Durandal the Uncorrupted.

Eastern RPGs

• Baten Kaitos:
  • The two magic users, Xhela and Mizuti, both had One Hit KO special moves. Xhela's was her level XIII special "Seal of Water" and Mizuti's was her level IX special "Planet Soul". There are also a few that have a death chance and a few with a 100% chance (such as the "Death" tarot card).
  • A few select enemies and bosses have this. For example, during the boss fight against Geldoblame after he touched the End Magnus, he has the ability Forfeit Your Life, which causes a 100% chance of death unless you have some kind of resistance, which is hard to get by that point in the game.
• Child of Light gives such abilities to players, not enemies. Aurora's Light Ray spells have a 10% chance of outright killing a dark creature. Oengus' passive skill Kiss of Death gives all his attacks up to 20% chance of causing instant death. An "obliterated" status appears if the effects trigger, and it's also the only status effect that doesn't work on bosses.
• Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory have instant death as one of the games' eight status ailments. Several Digimon can learn Destruction, a weak dark-elemental attack with a decent chance of inflicting it. Some Digimon also have unique attacks that have a chance of inflicting instant death after damage, such as Gallantmon Crimson Mode's Quo Vadis. There are also support abilities like the Keramon line's Destroyer or Belphemon Rage Mode's Furious Howl that add it to existing attacks. The most unique take on the one-hit kill in either game is Knightmon's Berserk sword, a 30% accuracy Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack, whose status is Instant Death.
• Dragon Quest:
  • The "Whack" spell may cause instant death to an individual enemy. Its advanced form "Thwack" can affect the whole group, but has a lower probability of working. Finally, there's Kathwack (or Max Defeat before retranslation), which is also group targeting but has a higher rate of success.
  • There's also Kamikazee, which depending on the game, has a chance to outright kill every available target at the cost of killing the user. Particularly infamous in Dragon Quest II where Kamikazee always works and always kills every target, meaning if an enemy casts it, you are GUARANTEED a Total Party Kill.
• The Etrian Odyssey series has an instant-death ailment that can be inflicted upon enemies with certain weapons, or any weapon if enough Instant Death units are imbued during its Forge. The Nightseeker class in Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, as well as a Deathbringer-titled Harbinger in Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth, have each an unlockable skill that has this effect — the more times it's upgraded, the higher the success rate of the move it'll be. Be warned, however, that certain bosses and Field-On Enemies (F.O.E.) can use instant-kill moves against you, too.
• Epic Battle Fantasy series:
  • The Zombie Hydra, introduced in Epic Battle Fantasy 2, has a skill called Grim Reaper (renamed The Reaper in Epic Battle Fantasy 5). Whilst inaccurate, it would kill instantly if it connects, either by dealing absurd amounts of damage (in EBF2) or inflicting the Instant Death status described below (in later games).
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 3 introduces a status effect called Instant Death. As its name implies, it kills the target instantly upon being inflicted. There is equipment that can reduce infliction risk, however, and Epic Battle Fantasy 4 would introduce a means to render a character temporarily immune to it via the Bless status effect.
  • EBF4 and EBF5 both feature a Superboss called The Glitch. It, alongside its minions, inflicts absurd amounts of damage when they attack^note EBF4 displays the attack as inflicting 0 damage, whilst EBF5 displays it as inflicting 2,147,483,647, the highest number a signed 32-bit integer can reach, instantly killing their target. Naturally, Instant Death resistance and Bless don't protect against it.
• The Fate/EXTRA portion of the Nasuverse has a couple of these throughout the series, mostly in the form of Noble Phantasms...
  • Most Noble Phantasms used by a final boss. Examples include the Noble Phantasm of Saviour/Saver, Amita Amitabha: Transmigration into One.
  • If the Superboss of Fate/Extra, Ryougi Shiki, seals all of your skills, she will use her Noble Phantasm, Boundary of the Void, which is this.
  • And then there's Gilgamesh in Fate/Extra CCC. Gilgamesh's Noble Phantasm, Enuma Elish does this in the most ridiculous way possible. First, it can only be used on a target below 30% HP. It deals the maximum damage in the game (No enemy in the game, not even the final boss, has that much HP), and then applies an instant death effect on top of that.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The infamous "Slots" spell almost always has an instant victory result, if you can time your button presses correctly (Though in the case of Selphie's "The End" and "Rapture", and Lady Luck's CONGRATS!, you don't actually kill the opponent. They just sort of go away). All Slots techniques bar Selphie's also have the chance to cast the same instant death spell on your own party, often with the result being just one reel off.
  • In most Final Fantasy games, the summoned monster Odin has a one-hit kill attack with his Zantetsuken. Naturally, it doesn't work on bosses. Odin learns that the hard way. In some games, like Final Fantasy V, he gets a second attack to make up for it, Gungnir Lance.
  • The Tonberries creep slowly towards you and then stab you to death. In some cases, it's not an instant death attack, but just does obscene amounts of damage. Later versions added the "Karma" ability, which deals damage equal to the number of enemies a character has landed the killing blow on, sometimes with a positive modifier (i.e. the number of killing blows x10, x20, etc). This can lead to odd circumstances where your main character is OHKOed, but your White Mage or a party member you haven't been using much takes very little damage if any at all.
  • The "Roulette" Blue Magic, which chooses one victim among all the current combatants. Unblockable, but doesn't kill the undead (they regenerate, as it's an "instant death" effect).
  • There's also the Jumbo Cactuar's "10,000 Needles", which hits for 1 damage 10,000 times in a series where the HP Cap is 9,999. One game has an ability that allows you to exceed this cap, but the same game has a super boss called the Cactuar King with a 99,999 Needles attack. Guess what the boosted HP cap is.
    • In Final Fantasy XIV, a boss in the Sunken Temple of Qarn will use 100,000 Needles, which will deal exactly that much damage. Prior to the release of Endwalker and the subsequent stat crunch, it was possible to have more than 100,000 HP (significantly more, even), but now only tank classes with absolute top tier equipment can have that much HP (and if you're running the dungeon normally, you'll only have about 5,000 HP at most).
  • And (in)famously, Revive Kills Zombie. A single Phoenix Down is enough to destroy the Phantom Train, the "Fake President" Gerogero, and most undead Mooks. Inverted in Final Fantasy XII, where the Clan-exclusive accessory, Nihopalaoa, reverses the effects of consumable items — by equipping it, any character can toss a Phoenix Down at any living foe (that isn't immune against Death) and kill it instantly with 100% success rate. By that same logic, that same character can toss a Soft at an enemy and cause instant Stone status (Soft heals petrification and stone.)
  • Final Fantasy probably featured the largest variety of one-hit kill spells as standard black magic, several of which actually was very effective against specific monster types (even more as the party leveled up). There was also one enemy called 'Sorcerer' (named 'Mind Flayer' in the remakes) whose physical attacks inflicted only Scratch Damage but with a side effect of instant KO — pray they don't get to strike first when you encounter a group of 5. The ProRing, despite being obscenely expensive, protects against instant death and renders Sorcerers completely impotent, but the game doesn't tell you that, ever. And you're not going to find them until after you've had to deal with Sorcerers.
  • Final Fantasy II has a variety of instant-death spells, along with transformation spells that function as instant-death when used on enemies. The Death spell is a Useless Useful Spell through and through, but the Matter element that all other instant-death spells apply to is rarely resisted, making those spells potential Game Breakers.
  • Final Fantasy IV:
    • Trap Doors in Sealed Cave have skill Ninth Dimension that kills target instantly. They indicate who they are going to target beforehand, but usually there is little you can do, though in DS version this can be neutered by giving Cecil Draw Attacks augment and Aegis Shield (if you visited Feymarch) that protects against Instant Death effects. Casting Reflect/Wall on the target will cause the Trap Door's spell to reflect back and kill them. This is easier said than done, as you have literal seconds to put up the wall if it's not already up.
    • In Sealed Cave there is also an Advancing Boss of Doom, the Demon Wall, that possesses one of these. Once it gets far enough to the right, it starts using "Crush", a completely unavoidable and unblockable instant kill. The idea is that it's literally crushing your party against the opposite wall. You can avoid this by killing it before it gets far enough, but that's the only way to keep it from one-shotting your party members.
    • Globe 199/Object 199 used by CPU among other things always does 9,999 damage, thusly killing anyone it hits and no instant death prevention can help you. This is the reason you keep the Attack Node (Defense Node in the DS version instead) alive and blast away at the CPU once its counterpart is slagged.
    • Ahriman enemy in Lunar Subterrane inflicts Doom on single target, which counts down from 10 and kills the target when it reaches 0. The Plague Horror does this at the beginning of fight to the whole party, essentially turning the fight into a Timed Mission.
  • Final Fantasy VI:
    • The game has a trick that can make the Doom spell 100% effective on most enemies. This includes most bosses. However, it was corrected for the GBA version. There are also some weapons (the Assassin's Dagger and the Ichigeki are two of them) that will randomly use a highly-accurate Death spell for free (along with a unique animation) when you attack with them.
    • Setzer's Slot ability is different from the usual one, in that the game will not let you get higher-end results unless the RNG says so. For example, if you get the first two 7s for Joker Doom, and you're not eligible for it, the slot machine will actively skip over the third 7 to prevent you from getting it. On the other hand, if you are eligible, the machine will help you by skipping up to four symbols trying to find the last 7. (And thanks to the game's fixed RNG and the way item animations work, an Echo Screen will give you a guaranteed Joker Doom.)
    • The enemy ability "Repose" (previously known as "Calmness") used by the top-tier foe Rest in Kefka's One-Winged Angel transformation, as a final attack. The character must block it or suffer an instant kill.
    • Edgar's Air Anchor. It always hits enemies that aren't immune, and when it does, the enemy gets one more turn before instantly dying. Earlier he has the Chainsaw, which has a 1/4 chance of causing instant death and a 3/4 chance of causing massive damage. Ironically, instant-death immunity is so common that in most situations the "massive damage" version is actually more likely to cause a One Hit Kill than the so-called "instant death" version.
    • Most instant death attacks do not work on The Undead, which regenerates to full health when struck by one. However, in Final Fantasy VI there are a few abilities that kill an enemy Deader than Dead, shown by an animation of the enemy disintegrating into tiny bits. The Odin and Raiden summons, Cyan's ultimate sword technique, and the Scimitar/Zantetsuken weapon are the only four that can one-hit kill even undead foes.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, an enemy in the Northern Crater called Scissors has an attack it uses when it splits into two. Despite the low damage it does, this attack carries an instant death effect.
  • Light Pillar in Final Fantasy VIII, used by both Weapons. Like Globe/Object 199 from IV it is not instant death effect per se, but it always does 9,999 HP damage so it always kills any party member it hits.
  • From Final Fantasy IX, Zidane's Soul Blade move, which gives the target the status effect of the weapon equipped with a 100% success rate (barring immunities). With the Masamune equipped, which has the Doom status effect, all you have to do is survive until the countdown runs out.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • Giga-Graviton, an attack used by Sin that it will use after certain number of turns. It kills whole party and it is implied to destroy ship you're standing on and probably a quarter of Spira so no Auto-Life or Aeon will help you there.
    • Kimahri's Doom Overdrive has a 100% success rate (again, barring immunities) which causes the target to instantly die within a certain number of turns, indicated by a number above their head. The Thrust Kick enemy attack and Auron's Shooting Star Overdrives knock enemies right out of the battle. ^note Kimahri's version of Thrust Kick erroneously states that it ejects an enemy from the battle, when in fact it simply deals physical damage. There's also Anima's Pain ability, which causes Death, and Yojimbo's Zanmato (NOT an Overdrive, despite what many people think) which instantly wins the battle for you and works on VIRTUALLY ANYTHING, even bosses (With the exception of multi-form bosses and some odd bosses). You have to pay a ridiculous amount of Gil to make him use it in some cases, though. Lastly, many weapons can be customized with Deathstrike or Stonestrike, which kills any enemy that doesn't have immunity to Death or Petrification with one hit, and with high odds if they have a resistance to it. It also makes catching many monsters much easier.
    • Monster Arena boss Fenrir has the "Fangs of Hell" attack, which inflicts instant KO even if the victim has Deathproof armor.
    • Dark Anima's Pain can negate Deathproof too; if you use cheat codes to use her yourself, it's basically a cost-free Zanmato.
    • Dark Yojimbo and Dark Magus Sisters' overdrive causes 99,999 HP damage (times six in the case of the latter) and also dispels any buffs including Auto-Life your party has, so in this case it is truly one hit kill unless you have an Aeon out.
    • Penance's Judgment Day and Nemesis' Apocalypse also hit the higher Damage Cap, thus always killing your party, though they don't dispel Auto-Life.
  • Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and X all have the ability to add "Death" to the physical attacks, using the material, status junction, and weapon modification, respectively.
  • Final Fantasy XII:
    • In addition to the standard Death spell, the game has Warp, which kills all enemies in a range — but you won't get any loot, EXP, or LP from them, unlike Death.
    • The Technicks Sight Unseeing and Bonecrusher can potentially one-hit kill enemies, but the former is usable only when you're Blinded, the latter can one-hit kill you if it misses, and both are rather unreliable.
    • The Esper Zalera is called the "Death Seraph", and appropriately, his repertoire consists of Death, Warp, Kill (a one-target version of Warp), and Condemnation (a Limit Break that kills enemies with less than 9999 health and deals Cap-breaking damage to anything with more). As a boss, he has a special attack called Prime Level Death, which KOs all party members whose levels are prime numbers.
    • There's also Dimensional Rift, a attack exclusive to a few Reaper-type enemies that allows them to instantly kill a character and themselves.
    • Zodiark's Darkja has a chance of inflicting you with either Blind, instant Death, or both; while Blind can be negated by a Goggle Mask, Argyle Armlet, or Ribbon, there is nothing in the game that can protect you from instant Death (Shell halves the chances, but that's it). Zodiark opens the battle with this move, meaning if you're stupid enough to enter the battle with your best characters, it can eliminate them right off the bat. In fact the most walkthroughs suggest entering the battle with only a single person.
    • The superboss Yiazmat not only has a special OHKO Technick called Death Strike, but his regular attacks also have a 5% chance of killing you outright. When low on health he'll frequently chain up to 12 hits, which has in total 46% chance of killing target if we ignore pure damage hits do.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, it is possible to craft spells with the "Killcast" property, giving it a chance to instantly kill most enemies with a single use. Near the end of the game, the player obtains the Ring of the Lucii which grants the spell Alterna; in exchange for a full MP gauge, you can rip an interdimensional rift open that has a chance to suck in any enemy in the area, including most bosses (even the Adamantoise, a Level 99 Super Boss).
  • Final Fantasy Type-0: No matter how high the enemy's Lv is, the heroes of Perestylium Suzaku can strike them down with one one quick work of their equipped weapon or the skills that are mapped to the 4 buttons. Provided the red symbol has been tagged onto the enemies. This' known as the Kill Sight system. It can be easily activated anytime the player evades the enemy's attack. Sort of like the game's version of Star Ocean: The Last Hope Blind Side attack. However, this does not work on mid-bosses or bosses associated with the current mission that your characters are undergoing.
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake:
    • Just like previous Final Fantasy games, using Raise on most undead enemies, outside of bosses, will defeat them instantly to the point the damage counter instead of stating the amount of HP done, will just say "Dead".
    • One of the game's secret enemies, a Tonberry, will one-shot anyone it tags with its Chef's Knife.
    • The Arsenal's Desperation Attack, Cry Havoc, deals 9999 damage if it hits; not even Barret can have more than that.
• Golden Sun:
  • The psynergy Condemn can instantly kill although rarely. The summon Charon has a chance to instantly kill. The Djinn Serac and Whorl may OHKO enemies and Gale will sometimes blow enemies off the map, but you won't get the experience. Obviously none of them work on most bosses and the chance for some is rather low. That doesn't stop Dullahan from instant killing you with Charon. In addition, certain weapons such as the Assassin Blade and the Crystal Rod had unleashes that had the potential to occasionally OHKO enemies, and they even worked on the bosses in the Suhulla Desert.
  • The Dullahan attack called "Charon" is not exactly the same attack as the summon called "Charon". They have the same attack animation and damage calculation, but the Dullahan attack has a higher chance of OHKO.
  • Menardi and Karst have the Death Scythe attack, which can do this. The Ice Queen's Icy Kiss attack can also oneshot someone in Dark Dawn, a bit of a wake-up call due to the lower level at which you encounter her. Skorpna-type monsters in the Grave Eclipse have a OHKO move called Drag Down.
• Granblue Fantasy:
  • Miria Akagi has a chance of inflicting this on enemies with her "Persuasion" debuff. If you're lucky, it can also affect certain bosses!
  • The raid boss Ewiyar has a move called Mach 3, which can deal six-digit damage to an unlucky party member. The attack also hits them with an instant death status effect, just to be absolutely sure it kills them if they somehow survive damage that high.
• Two toys in Guardian's Crusade, Draken which does damage equal to half current hit points to everyone, and Versius, which doubles all damage. Sure you take it too, but if you keep an odd number of hit points, the rounding will save you. Doesn't work on the final boss though.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • All final bosses and major villains in the series can do this.
    • Many high-level bosses inflict so much damage per hit that you would need to be very over-leveled or have Second Chance and/or Once More equipped in order to not die in one hit.
    • The final boss of Kingdom Hearts II, Xemnas, can attempt to grab Sora, which can only be avoided with invulnerability from something like Reflect or a limit attack. Should he succeed, he'll attempt to rip out his heart. Riku can save Sora from this, but if his HP is too low when he gets caught, you're out of luck, as it'll be completely impossible to stop it in time.
    • In the Final Mix version of the same game, Terra's Lingering Will has an attack that is a bit like Heartless Angel; it rapidly drains your HP, and you have to push a button at the right time to stop it. Should you fail to do so, or push the wrong button? Instant death.
  • The final boss of Sora's story in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories has Death, in which you have six seconds to break six of his cards, or you die instantly. Combine that with the sleight that scatters your entire deck including your reload card, forcing you to pick them up again, and...
  • The Zantetsuken attack introduced in the Final Mix version of Kingdom Hearts has a fairly high chance of OHKOing normal enemies. It becomes much more effective in later games with the addition of commands like Magnet and Zero Graviza that gather your enemies together.
  • Enforced when playing the final level of story mode in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. Dual-Wield Roxas can kill the Neo-Shadows in one hit even at Level 1 when playing in story mode. Presumably, this is to live up to his performance in the Deep Dive trailer.
  • During the battle with Sark and the Master Control Program in Kingdom Hearts II, Sark will occasionally put up a wall to stop the party from escaping him when the MCP loses one bar of health. By using the reaction command from it, Sora will leap up onto the top of the wall, jump off, and then stab Sark in the head, instantly killing him.
  • Using Fire magic on any of the Bomb Heartless in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days will cause them to immediately explode, killing them instantly.
  • Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind introduces EZ Codes, one of which is Deadly Blow. It, of course, means that Sora can kill everything in one hit.
• Two examples in The Last Story:
  • If the Mystic Spider fought in Chapter 15 swallows Zael after trapping him with its spider web, it's all over. Swallowing another member of the party won't mean the end of the battle. And in any other battle, even the deadliest enemy attack will only knock characters down at most (the game has a life system that allows the fallen character to get up up to four times). It's made stranger in retrospect when you fight a Palette Swap of the same boss later, as the same attack doesn't result in instant death and Zael can simply hack at its insides until it releases him.
  • Dagran's Limit Break ability, Death Sentence, kills a mook after a brief amount of time. Other mooks also have this spell, so if they use it against you or your party members, the heal circles will be the only way to abort the incoming doom.
• Live A Live:
  • During the Wild West Boss Battle with O. Dio he can use the move Gatling Barrage, a multi-hit attack whose damage is almost always in the high hundreds or even hits the cap of 999 damage. For context, an endgame character's health is often in the mid-hundreds at maximum, making him one of very few bosses that can threaten an endgame party during the finale's Boss Rush.
  • A rare self-damaging boss example: if the superboss Death Prophet is attacked diagonally and from behind, he'll immediately counter with "Not the tail!" This move deals 999 damage to himself, instantly destroying him.
  • The superboss Headhunter can use the move Wizenblade when in melee range, a move that hits four times in one turn and deals similar damage to O. Dio’s Gatling Barrage. Just about any endgame party member shy of a fully-levelled and geared Masaru and Hong doesn't stand a chance against it, though it does debuff the Headhunter after each use.
• Instant-death spells appear in the Lufia series. Also, the Deadly weapons in Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals have a fairly high chance of a one-hit kill every time they hit.
• Lunar series:
  • Final bosses in this series often have a spell that deals a ludicrous amount of damage or simply has a K.O. effect. Lunar: Eternal Blue started the trend with Hell Wave, an attack that deals about 2,000 damage against characters who have 1/4 that number at most. Mercifully, the game broadcasts where the attack will fall a turn in advance. It also recurrs in the PlayStation remake.
  • Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete has Fate Storm, which just kills the target outright. Hell Wave returns but is different — it just plain hits really hard. Particularly bad because the boss in question doublecasts and always pairs these two. So you have to revive the dead person AND restore your entire party, unless you learn the pattern and prepare for it beforehand.
  • The final boss of the PSP remake of Lunar: The Silver Star punishes the player for abusing Mist Barrier by casting a spell that makes his next spell deal 2,000 HP to the entire party on the last turn it's active. To put it in perspective, Kyle has the highest HP in the party, and at the level cap, he has 276.
• In the Magic Knight Rayearth RPG for the Super Nintendo, Fuu had a spell that made the target's next attack an instant kill. It doesn't work on bosses and is next to worthless on enemies because spells that deal lethal amounts of damage to every enemy in the formation are readily available.
• Miitopia:
  • Clerics learn the Righteous Anger move at level 19. With a success rate of 50%, it banishes an enemy regardless of its remaining HP.
  • At level 23, Imps learn "Demonic Whisper", which attempts to one-shot every enemy. In exchange for targeting all enemies, its success rate is a paltry 20%.
  • Chefs can learn Monster Dinner at level 30. With 50% probability, it instantly turns the enemy into grub.
  • Some enemies, like the Fiends, Terror Fiends or Scary Scorpions, can defeat Miis in one single move.
• Monster Hunter:
  • The series has several bosses who can do this with certain attacks. The most infamous of them is White Fatalis, who has an attack that covers the entire battlefield in dozens of lightning blasts, all of which are instant death.
  • Monster Hunter: World:
    • The base game has Behemoth, hailing from Final Fantasy XIV, who takes this up to eleven with its Ecliptic Meteor attack. Throughout the fight, the Behemoth will drop comets that stay on the battlefield. Unless you are hiding behind one of said comets, Ecliptic Meteor WILL cart you instantly when it lands^note There are a few other ways to avoid the attack: Do the Dragoon Jump emote with very precise timing, or be inside the campground's tent or canteen (but you have to be there before Behemoth initiates the attack, since once it starts up those locations will be locked down). This can lead to a Total Party Kill for unprepared parties — hope you didn't break the comets! To make matters even worse, Ecliptic Meteor hits the ENTIRE map, so just fleeing to a different region isn't good enough. During the final phase it gets even crueller: Behemoth has a DPS check, and if you don't do enough damage within a set amount of time it'll drop an Ecliptic Meteor without laying down any comets first, which will more than likely spell Quest Failed unless all your teammates have the food bonus that negates their first cart.
    • Iceborne has raid boss Safi'jiiva, whose Sapphire of the Emperor attack takes its cues from Behemoth. The primary difference is that the boulders that drop during the battle can't be shattered like Behemoth's comets, but otherwise it follows the exact same pattern as Ecliptic Meteor, including the final phase DPS check.
• Mother series
  • PK Beam Gamma and PK Fire Omega from EarthBound Beginnings do this to one target or the whole party respectively.
  • EarthBound (1994):
    • PSI/PK Flash can do this. It's in the main character’s powerset and actually works on bosses. Should it fail, it typically leaves a status condition.
    • The "emit a glorious light" attack numerous enemies possess (Along with one of Giygas' "unknown" attacks) is actually a renamed PK Flash Gamma, and thus has a high chance of causing instant death to multiple party members, though thankfully, accessories that completely null the effects of PK Flash are rather readily available.
  • In Mother 3:
    • The Upgraded Robots use the aforementioned glorious light, though there isn't any way to protect yourself from it this time.
    • The Ultimate Chimera instantly causes a game over when it reaches the party. They don't even get a chance to fight it.
    • Notably, PK Flash's instant death effect is one of only two ways you can beat the King Statue, which has a HP count of 100 million, versus the usual four digit HP count other bosses possess.
• Numbered Phantasy Star games tend to feature a variety of these, often cheap to cast and geared to work on certain types of targets (inorganic or living). Even better, some of them are almost reliable! PSIV has a particularly large number of them; between techniques, skills, and combination attacks, nearly every character can kill some kind of enemy instantly. Played straight in that they don't work on bosses. Phantasy Star II's Fanbite and Desrona enemies each have a small chance of killing a party member instantly, while Phantasy Star III's Gnasher enemy has an incredibly high attack stat, which is high enough for it to instantly kill a party member if it manages to get in an attack (in an ambush, it's pretty much guaranteed someone will be killed).
• Pokémon:
  • The series has several moves that will knock the target out with a single hit: Guillotine, Horn Drill, Fissure, and Sheer Cold. They are balanced out by having the lowest accuracy out of any moves. In Generation I, these moves always fail if the opponent has a higher Speed stat than the user. In later generations, OHKO moves always fail if the target is a higher level than the user, and have an accuracy stat that's dependent on difference in level between the user and the target: if both are the same level, the moves have an accuracy of 30% (20% in the case of Sheer Cold if the user is not an ice type), and the accuracy increases by 1% for each level above the target that the user is (so if you're 10 levels higher, they have an accuracy of 40%, 20 levels 50%, and so on). Accuracy can also be upped to 100% with the use of Lock On or Mind Reader the turn before or if the attacker has the ability No Guard. This has led to Gamefreak taking specific steps to prevent Machamp, which can learn Fissure in Gen 1, from getting that move while also having No Guard, which is one of its abilities.
  • A Pokémon with full Hit Points holding a Focus Sash will survive a potentially OHKO move (even if it's a regular attack that deals a lot of damage and not an automatic KO move) with 1HP instead. The ability Sturdy also protects against automatic OHKO attacks — it was later modified to also work like a Focus Sash.
  • All of the aforementioned moves are also present in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series where they tend to be a lot more dangerous, due to only your team's leader needing to be defeated in order for you to lose. As a result, keeping Reviver Seeds on hand as a precaution is typically a wise idea when exploring any dungeons known to contain Pokemon with OHKO moves, as only the Sturdy ability will protect you from them.
  • These fall into the Awesome, but Impractical territory in the Pokémon Rumble series, as while accuracy isn't an issue, they have a ridiculously long start-up time and don't work on bosses. While they will work on the boss strength normal enemies in the Battle Royales, getting them off without being interrupted or KO'd is almost impossible due to the sheer number of enemies you face simultaneously.
  • Any damage done to Shedinja will be a One-Hit KO, as Shedinja can only ever have 1 HP. It does have the ability Wonder Guard that makes Shedinja immune to any non-Super Effective attack, which in Shedinja's case gives it an immunity to all but 5 out of 18 types (Flying, Rock, Ghost, Fire, and Dark). Wonder Guard does not protect the user against indirect damage, such as status effects, weather, and entry hazards, though.
  • If Stealth Rock, G-Max Steelsurge, and three levels of Spikes are all up, an Ice/Rock, Ice/Bug, or Ice/Fairy type Pokémon will be KO'd as soon as they enter the field, even from full health, unless they have Levitate. ^note If Gravity is in effect, the ability Levitate doesn't matter, and Ice/Flying types will also be OHKO'd.
• Steven Universe:
  • In Attack the Light, Amethyst's Rolling Attack can be upgraded to give it a small chance to instantly defeat the enemy. However, it doesn't work on bosses.
  • In Save the Light, the second upgrade to Pearl's spear gives it a 25% chance to instantly defeat an enemy with 20% HP or less in a perfect strike. It also doesn't work on bosses, however.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • The games have the Mudo and Hama spells, both being single-target spells with 40% chance of inflicting instant death. Those are the weakest variants of the instant death spells in that particular franchise. Their most powerful forms, Mamudoon and Mahamaon, have a 60% chance of inflicting instant death on everyone in the party, yours or the enemies'. Of course, elemental affinities can mess with this. Both spells, however, also come in damage flavor. In the Digital Devil Saga series, Hama instead dealt a percentage of damage based on your current Health. Shin Megami Tensei V has the Hama and Mudo series inflict damage, with a chance of instant death if the target is weak to the spell. This includes the Nahobino.
  • In most games, the most HP a single member of your party can have is 999; therefore any attack that hits for more than 999 HP is an instant kill. Shin Megami Tensei IV allows your party members to exceed 999 HP, but it's quite difficult to achieve, as only you, physical-based demons, and demons buffed with the Doping skill will be able to reach 1,000 HP.
  • Satan in Shin Megami Tensei II could just point his finger at someone, and the character would die. No chance of failure. The final boss only had to use his voice to do the same.
  • Demi-Fiend, from Digital Devil Saga, has Gaea Rage (also known as Game Over), that deals anywhere between 7,000 — 12,000 Almighty-elemental damage to your entire party. Again, HP cap is at 999.
  • The Demi-Fiend, again, in Shin Megami Tensei V, still has Gaea Rage. It's a Physical move that pierces resistances and Repel effects, and it inflicts high quad-digit damage where the boosted max (via Bowl of Hygieia or similar effect) is 1299. He will use it if you use Tetrakarn or an Attack Mirror, so learn to adjust your resistances unless you wish to give up on life.
  • Satan, again, in Digital Devil Saga 2, along with spamming Mamudoon on your party, has Retribution and God's Breath. God's Breath deals 9999 Almighty-elemental damage to everyone in your party. HP cap is at 999. You do the math. Retribution just plain instant kills a character, and is also Almighty-elemental, so no way of guarding from it.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey:
    • Empty Mem Aleph has MA, an attack that kills one character and absorbs their HP. Mudo or hama resistance won't help. If it hits you, it's an instant game over.
    • Mitra, the second sector's boss, has Light of Order, which is a guaranteed instant kill towards a random demon. Thankfully it never targets you, but you'll still find yourself spending turns reviving demons (you need one turn to revive, then the next turn to bring them out to battle).
    • Attacks that cause Stone are effectively one-hit kill attacks. In the case of demons, the effect can be removed, but if you get hit with Stone, game over.
    • The final boss of the Chaos route, Pillar Zelenin, has an Almighty-based (and thus unblockable) instant-kill spell called Requiem that can hit the entire party at once. The only thing making it less frightening than MA or Light of Order is that it's not a guaranteed kill.
    • Redux adds Soul Steal, which is instant death to Charmed enemies. It's used by Ishtar, the boss of the Second Sphere in the Womb of Grief.
  • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne goes to town on this.
    • Beelzebub has Death Flies from this game onwards, an Almighty-elemental spell that deals plenty of damage and has 100% chance of instantly killing anything that doesn't nullify or repel Death-elemental spells. The good news is that you may acquire said skill later in the game once you've leveled your Beelzebub adequately and in the Digital Devil Saga series.
    • Metatron, conversely, has the opposing move, Fire of Sinai. Massive Almighty-type damage, random chance of killing everything and anything not immune to Expel spells, and it can hit twice due to the attack hitting random enemies.
    • Trumpeter has an Almighty-elemental skill called Evil Melody that deals instant death to the character with the lowest % of HP left.
    • In the first half of the fight with Ahriman, he declares specific actions that are forbidden (chosen from physical attacks, magical attacks, healing, and item use, in any combination save that he never forbids all of them at once). If a party member violates the rule, he kills them on the spot with Hell's Call.
    • Eternal Rest instantly kills any character currently asleep in both parties.
    • God's Bow, a skill only White Rider has in Nocturne, kills anything not immune to Hama.
    • Another Rider, the Pale Rider, has Pestilence, a skill that inflicts Almighty damage and a chance of poison. Casting it on poisoned enemies will instantly kill them.
    • Stinger, one of Dante's moves in Nocturne, also has an instant kill factor.
    • Hell Gaze, another Death-elemental instant kill move.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse:
    • The game turns light and dark spells into standard-damage attacks, their One-Hit Kill properties only applying if the caster is under Smirk status.
    • Remember YHVH's "let out His voice" instant-kill from Shin Megami Tensei II? It's back for the Final Boss fights, with an official name: Mouth of God.
  • Devil Survivor tones down on the instant-kill moves by removing the Hama and Mudo skills, but it does have Death Call, a move that will instantly kill anyone that has been paralyzed, and Megidoladyne, a move exclusive to the Superboss that deals severe almighty damage to every allied unit on the field that increases in power until it does 4-digit damage when your player characters can only have up to 999 HP.
  • Devil Survivor 2': Alice has her signature move "Die For Me!", which in this iteration deals almighty damage equal to the target's maximum HP (and MP) and thus can only be survived via the Endure or Anti-Almighty skills. Record Breaker also brings back Megidoladyne for its new Superboss Tico, and it's just as deadly as ever.
  • In Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, there are lots and lots of instant death moves. Of course Hama and Death (called Light and Dark) but also many physical attacks, whether it's a main or added effect, various elemental combos that shouldn't be used on demons that can repel them and a few non elemental attacks that can be used by both your party and opponents. Some demons will use kamikaze instant death attacks. Phoenixes deserve a special mention as they will afterward revive their kamikaze fellows. Non elemental attacks like Multi Dimension will work on anything that isn't immune to instant death. Many are surprisingly effective. Death Roulette will do wonders on a single non boss opponent and will take care of those Boss in Mook Clothing. Some of them don't work that often but can't be blocked either and will help against those magic reflecting demons. Others will always kill anything... but at a price. Armageddon will do it for free but you can only use it in a New Game+ and you'll need loads and loads of money to obtain it. A few personas have the special ability to (sometimes) deal instant death to your opponent if the equipped character dies.
  • Persona 3 and Persona 4:
    • Alice's signature "Die for Me!" and Daisoujou's "Samsara" are Dark and Light instant-kill spells with a higher success rate than the common versions; around 80% against enemies with no weakness or resistance, as opposed to the 60% of Hamaon and Mudoon. In Persona 4 they are 100% successful against any enemy that doesn't resist their element, and other than bosses, it's actually extremely rare to find normal shadows that block both light and dark.
    • Also in both games, the ability "Ghastly Wail" is instant, unavoidable death for any character afflicted with Fear. This also works on some bosses, such as P3's Strength and Fortune.
    • Another attack in Persona 4, "Summons to Yomi", is instant death to any character with any status ailment whatsoever. The enemy that uses that attack knows this, and likes to prefix it with one that afflicts party members with random status ailments.
    • Several Superbosses also have an unofficial one-shot move, in the form of a modified Megidolaon that always deals 9999 damage in a game where the HP Cap is 999. Though they're programmed to only use it if you break the unwritten rules of the fight.
    • The Armageddon fusion spell from Persona 3 deals 9,999 points of unblockable, undodgeable, Non-Elemental damage to all enemies, making it a one-hit kill to all enemies, including bosses, with the exception of one Superboss.
    • Chie's follow-up attack, Galactic Punt, is capable of instantly killing even midbosses and does high damage on bosses. However, as follow-up attacks only occur randomly after knocking down an enemy, so you can't control when it occurs.
  • Persona 4: Arena:
    • The Instant Kill attacks in BlazBlue have been un-nerfed even further, as all it takes is for your character to have a full SP meter in a deciding round, and it will take out any opponent, regardless of how much life they have left.
    • Naoto's Hamaon and Mudoon supers will instantly KO a foe if their "Fate" meter (which counts down from 13 when the opponent is hit by Naoto's gun or Persona attacks) is reduced to Zero.
    • Elizabeth has enhanced versions of these moves (Mahamaon and Mamudoon) which can be used at any time once she has enough SP, but they turn out to be Awesome, but Impractical because:
      1. They have an absurdly long charge-up time and the opponent may not be in position once the spells activate, and
      2. The spells disappear immediately if Elizabeth is hit (even while blocking).
  • Persona 5:
    • Instead of a 9999-damage Megidolaon like their sisters, Caroline and Justine have an attack that instantly knocks down everyone, followed by an All-Out Attack which will instantly KO. They use it if you take too long to complete certain phases of the fight.
    • Thanatos from Persona 3 returns as a DLC Persona, with the unique move Door to Hades, which deals heavy almighty damage to all foes with a chance of instantly killing them instead.
    • The Despair ailment prevents action for three turns, with the afflicted losing some SP each turn, before dying on the third turn. Moves that inflict it effectively become this if they hit every party member or enemy, preventing it from being cured. Hilariously, in the original version of the game the Reaper can start the battle with despair under certain conditions, making an otherwise hellish fight laughably easy.
• Super Mario Bros. RPGs:
  • Showstopper from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Up and Away from Paper Mario 64. Surprisingly enough, they aren't as useless in battle as one hit kill moves in other games, although the latter move gives no Star Points upon use. And in Chapter 1 of the former game, you can be crushed by a spiked ceiling, killing you instantly. Showstopper also will work against Bowser and Kammy Koopa when they drop in during the endgame and immediately challenge Mario after he's beaten Grodus to reflect the fact that Mario has no time to deal with these two pinheads now.
  • Paper Mario: The Origami King introduced the worst enemy a person made of paper could think of: an evil, sentient pair of scissors. When Mario faces the Scissors, touching its unsheathed blades or getting hit by its "Final Cut" attack is an instant Game Over.
  • Super Mario RPG:
    • Geno from Super Mario RPG has an attack (the Geno Whirl) that deals 9999 HP of damage when timed just right. Since no enemy in the game, including bosses, has that much HP, that makes it a One Hit Kill attack. However, it does only minor damage to said bosses (except one: Exor, after losing his protection, so it comes in handy for players who consider him to be That One Boss), along with certain other enemies, namely the chest-based ones such as Box Boy.
    • Some enemies also have attacks that instantly kill the character hit by them unless said character is wearing an accessory that blocks them. Out of these attacks, some can be either fully or partially blocked if the player has good timing. One of the forms of the final boss has an instant kill which cannot be blocked be a Timed Hit. Of those that can be blocked, depending on your timing, you may either emerge unscathed, suffer an HP to One effect, or die.
    • The remake introduces a couple exclusive to the post-game rematches that are instant kills. Booster gains the "Loco Express 023", and Bundt gains the "Celebration Shot", both of which will wipe out the party if they connect. That being said, there are caveats to their usage (Booster's requires a charge-up time that can be reset if he's hit, and Bundt requires all five of his candles to be lit.)
• Tales Series:
  • While you have to whittle away half her HP first, Reid's Omega Seal becomes a One Hit Kill for optional Duel Boss Valkyrie in Tales of Eternia.
  • Also in Eternia, and given a callback in Tales of Vesperia (PS3), bringing the Dhaos cameo from Tales of Phantasia down to half and pulling off Indignation is an instant kill in homage to Phantasia. In Vesperia, doing this is the only way to unlock Indignation for Rita.
    • Instant kills also exist in the form of fatal strikes in Tales of Vesperia, though they only do this to normal enemies, and can only be triggered after depleting one of their fatal strike gauges through use of arts. In the PS3 version, Clint can use this on you if he or his allies land enough hits. Notable in that it'll still kill you even if you have the otherwise invincible level four Overlimit active.
  • Tales of Phantasia also had a set of instant-death spells for Arche (and a summon for Claus), each with a varying accuracy as well as those pesky urchins in Moria Gallery touching which simply kills your character (except Arche).
  • A multitude of artes in Tales of Graces and Tales of Xillia have a chance of causing instant death when they connect. The instant death just comes as an added perk, however, so using them against enemies that are immune to effect is still practical.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: One of the status effects that has a chance of being applied is this. Most notably the Angel of Slaughter from the second game specializes in this, and tends to open fights with an Limit Break (S-Craft) that can easily deliver a Total Party Kill via Sinister Scythe in her first turn, if you don't have equipment that provides immunity to the status effect, or activate a particular party member's own S-Craft that blocks incoming attacks entirely.
• The PS2 Transformers RPG had a minicon which gave you the headshot ability. OHKO to mooks, 3HKO to the Heavies.
• Vagrant Story has the Death spell which Ashley Riot can learn. There's 4 levels and at the highest level, the chance of effecting an enemy is very high. Unfortunately for you, evil doll and lich type enemies can use Death spell as well. Particularly annoying when it kills an Ashley whose stats and armor are high enough to treat every other attack as Scratch Damage.
• Wild ARMs 2 played with this a little. There was an optional boss that would completely regenerate its health every three turns, and 75,000 HP is no number to scoff at in this game (the Superbosses have 100,000). While using an Instant Death ability seems counter-intuitive in a boss fight, it's actually the way he is supposed to be defeated.
• In Xenogears, the boss Redrum has an attack called "Murder" that kills one of your party members and heals it for 100% of the damage dealt.This is shown by gouging the victim with its claws and drinking the blood from their corpse.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has Instant Death attacks such as Sharla's Head Shot. The Avalanche Abaasy has an Instant Death spike as well as Decapitator by the Reckless Godwin. Other attacks by bosses and Unique Monsters can cause over 9999 damage therefore being Instant Death as the max health you have is 9999. Another example is Yaldabaoth's Bionis Slash X which does Infinite Damage which is an Instant Death on all of your party members.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles X, two of the post-ending Superbosses have attacks that can destroy instantly all Skells piloted by the party members, namely Dadaan The Strongest Prone (through a destruction command that is activated during the first ten seconds of the battle) and Leva'el the Terminus (with the Apocalypse Wand). While you can still continue fighting the former on foot, the latter will ruin your day if it triggers its deadly move, because it's far too high in the sky to be fought from the ground.
• A few enemies in Yakuza: Like a Dragon have abilities that'll instantly KO any party member that gets hit by them. In particular, the Outlier's Fatal Touch and the Shaman enemy line's Lethal Curse and Effigy of Demise. And in terms of bosses, there's Tendo, who, after turning red, has God's Right Hand, used after he triggers God's Warning. Better hope no-one targets Ichiban with any of these!

Fighting Games

• Barbarian may well have had the first One Hit Kill in the history of one-on-one fighting games, and without being a gamebreaker to boot. You could use a decapitation move at any time in a fight (complete with a shower of badly pixelated blood), but the long buildup time made it very easy for the other player to dodge or interrupt.
• Parodied in the Fanservice-packed PC fighting game Bikini Karate Babes. Venus, one of the boss characters, has a grab move that swipes the bikini top off certain fighters. This sends the opponent running off-screen while covering her breasts in embarrassment, thus ending the round. Word of God states that the fighters get their powers from their bikinis, so Venus stealing them effectively depowers them.
• BlazBlue:
  • Instant Kills have been replaced by the nerfed Astral Heats, which can only be used in a tiebreaking final round of a match, require 100% of your super bar, and can only be used when the opponent is below 25%, at which point any normal super move would likely win anyway. After all, There Is No Kill Like Overkill. As of Continuum Shift they've been un-nerfed; you can now use them in round 2 of 3 if it would win the match for you, and your opponent can be at or below 35% health.
  • BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, naturally, retains the Astral Finishes; characters from BlazBlue and Persona 4 Arena use the finishers from their home games, while the Under Night In-Birth and RWBY characters are given brand-new moves^note UNIEL didn't have a One-Hit Kill mechanic, and this game is RWBY's first fighter. As before, the move is Difficult, but Awesome: The player has to max out their team's "friendship gauge" by tagging between their two characters, then when they're down to a single character they can activate Resonance Burst, a power-up which only lasts 15 seconds but lets you gain up to 9 levels of Super Meter — and the Astral requires all nine. Obviously the move can only be used when the opponent is also down to a single character, but unlike BlazBlue the opponent's health doesn't matter at all. Additionally, Naoto Shirogane retains her Instant Kill special mentioned below.
• The Bushido Blade series is quite well known for this where any solid hit to a vulnerable area will win the battle with most fights ending instantly (and in PvP Double KO's are extremely frequent), though hits to the arms/legs will merely cripple the target, making them easier to kill.
• Shin Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu in Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium when done as a Ratio 4 or the CPU against a Ratio 1 character. The CPU can pull this off against a Ratio 2 character as well. Then there's the Misogi.
• Dragon Ball Fighter Z:
  • Android 16's self-destruction attack. It's relatively easy to dodge, costs 3 bars of meter, can be used only once per match (failed attempts don't count), and brings 16's HP to One — but it's unblockable and can knock-out absolutely anything.
  • Additionally is Gogeta (Super Saiyan 4)'s 100X Big Bang Kamehameha, which is triggered by using his Meteor Attack after reaching level 7 via taunting enough times. It doesn't do as much raw damage as 16's Self-destruct (19,980 as opposed to the self-destruct's 50,000), but it's still nearly enough to one-shot a character twice over. Notably, though, unlike 16's Self-destruct, SSJ4 Gogeta can use his multiple times — he just has to taunt up to level 7 each time he wants to use it. The drawback is that it can be blocked, which can leave Gogeta in big trouble once his opponent can retaliate.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy:
  • Occasionally you will encounter gold manikins that have exactly one HP. Hitting one of them with an HP-damaging attack at any point in the match will result in instant victory. However, early on in the game, some of them will also have insanely high Bravery levels, meaning they can do this to you, as well.
  • The infamous Iai-strike Build, man. It kills the majority of things in simple two button presses: one to instantly Break your opponent, the other to execute the 9999 HP damage. Character HP naturally caps at 9999. Oh, and some characters' HP attack, such as Yuna's pony laser, also damage Bravery, potentially making it actual One Hit Kill. Feral Chaos suddenly looks trivial.
• Fist of the North Star: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment:
  • The game has the Deadly Fist Blows, also known as Fatal KOs, that work similar to the Instant Kill from Guilty Gear. They require a bit of build-up, however, as you must hit your opponent until the Star gauge under their lifebar is reduced to a single glowing star, which usually takes more than one round. This seems to be to ensure that when you use the Deadly Fist Blow, the entire match is over (not just the round). Since it's possible to combo into these, and they don't require any special stance (unlike the Instant Kills), which allow them to be used as surprise attacks, Deadly Fist Blows have seen use in Tournament Play, and many players consider finishing the opponent off with one to be a point of pride.
  • Shin has an interesting inversion in one of his Deadly Fist Blows — when his star gauge is empty, he can choose to one-hit kill himself in reference to his suicide in the original manga. While this ends the round in a loss for Shin, it will refill his star gauge in the next, preventing the opponent from doing so on him and ending the fight instantly.
• Every character in Guilty Gear has an "instant kill" technique. Land it, and you'll win the round; but don't miss, or your super bar will disappear completely! This is even more egregious in the very first game; the setup for the instant kill is either punch + kick or a well-timed block, there's no penalty for missing, and you win the entire match should it land.
• In the highly-realistic fencing/Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) sword fighting game Hellish Quart, most fights are settled by a single well-placed strike that kills (or severely maims) the unfortunate character outright. Sometimes subverted because the character doesn't actually die, they just are so badly injured that they give up.
• In the fighting portions of the NES Hiryū no Ken games (Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll and Flying Warriors), red star hit markers will sometimes appear on your opponent's body. These usually require a specific set of actions to pull off, but if you can attack the star marker quickly enough, you'll defeat your opponent instantly and win the fight.
• Kengo: Legend of the 9 (aka Kengo Zero in Japan and Europe) has a gameplay mechanic where your Stamina, although it can be depleted by many things (including walking), only itself affects one thing — whether or not that person can be one hit killed; basically one of the swordsmen initiates a Kumitachi (sword lock), the two attempt to physically overpower each other as they move around, draining Stamina, and one who loses all his Stamina is susceptible to, after being thrown, being one-hit killed.
• The King of Fighters:
  • Igniz from KOF 2001 had a move called "Brutal God Project" for his SDM where he pins your character back against the wall and unleashes his entire repertoire of (immensely high damage) attacks on you consecutively. It is, unsurprisingly, a 1-hit kill for the most part (Note that in this game: character stamina gets higher as you sideline more characters as strikers so a one man fighter with three strikers could theoretically survive "Brutal God Project" at full health). And he most commonly performs it as a follow up to his reversal special move which juggles. There's a reason that Igniz's portrait is at the top of the SNK Boss page.
  • Ralf's Galactica Phantom SDM/LDM in 97, 98, 99, 2000, and XI qualifies if it hits as a counter. In XI, though, it depends on the damage setting, as in who you're fighting. One of a team, yes. Single person, e.g. boss, no.
• M.U.G.E.N:
  • Given how every character is custom-made, there are a lot of characters that can do this with their moves, most of which are considered Game Breakers. The most game-breaking ones do this to their opponent even before the battle starts.
  • By pressing the F1 button, you can do this to your opponent (Ctrl+F1 kills yourself). It doesn't work on everybody, though...
  • Some attacks do massive amounts of damage as opposed to draining the opponent's life to 0 on the spot. While this usually results in a one-hit kill, characters with super high health/defense or constant HP regeneration can survive these attacks, making them known as "untrue OHKOs.
• Persona 4: Arena features instant-kill attacks. The input for them is universal (down-down-down-C+D) and they require 100 SP to execute (a full meter of SP without Awakening). They are highly situational, though: they can only be used if winning the round would win the entire match, and are badly telegraphed. Nonetheless, like in Guilty Gear, landing it will win the round instantly. And in addition to their regular Instant Kills, the characters Naoto and Elizabeth have super moves which are one hit KO's if they hit. Again, these are highly situational.
• Super Attacks in Playstation All Stars Battle Royale. The game's battle system is based around finding ways to land these to score points, up to three levels of strength/ease-of-use. Some examples mentioned elsewhere in the page include Kai's arrows (combined with Stuff Blowing Up) and Kuma's Fatal Wind.
• SoulCalibur IV also has these now, a first for the series. They're called "Critical Finishes" and they work in a similar way to Fatal KOs in Fist of the North Star. Constantly forcing an enemy to block powerful attacks, or Guard Impacting them around a lot, causes their Soul Gauge to turn from green to a flashing red. Once fully emptied, a single strong hit will send them into a vulnerable state ("Soul Crush"), and the Critical Finish can then be performed.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • The Home Run Bat item has this effect — landing a smash attack with it is an almost-guaranteed Home-Run Hitter KO.
  • This one-hit kill takes some work, but in the first SSB game, Fox's reflector will bounce a projectile back at its shooter for 1.5 times the damage and knockback. When it comes to reusable throwing items however, the damage increase can be stacked for each time it's bounced off the reflector. So when you use an item that's pretty powerful to begin with like a green shell, and have it thrown against Fox's reflector two times (computer AI opponents will happily do this for you), you suddenly have a "charged up" green shell of death that's powerful enough to KO another player even at 0% damage.
  • Roy's fully charged B attack in Melee will KO any opponent at any percentage, at the cost of some recoil damage. Ike claims this ability in Brawl.
  • Ganondorf's up tilt is instantly lethal in Melee, and mostly lethal in Brawl.
  • In Brawl, some Final Smashes consist of one powerful attack that is (nearly) guaranteed to KO anyone it hits. Zelda's, Marth's, and Captain Falcon's are prime examples. Assembling the three pieces of the Dragoon is also an instant KO, even if the target hasn't suffered any damage. Unless, of course, you miss.
  • The final boss of Subspace Emissary in Brawl, Tabuu, has the infamous "Off Waves", three successive screen-covering attacks that will kill you if you don't dodge with absolute perfect timing.
  • In 3DS / Wii U, the Daybreak, a Wave-Motion Gun from Kid Icarus: Uprising's multiplayer, also has this effect: like in the original game, assembling all three pieces of the weapon and hitting someone with its powerful beam would guarantee a KO.
  • The Clipped-Wing Angel final form of the Master Core, fought in 3DS and Wii U, has a five-ring version of Off Waves as its only attack. It only actually uses it if you take an unreasonable amount of time to destroy a completely motionless enemy, though, and if you manage to survive the attack it self-destructs.
  • Jigglypuff's Rest is capable of killing at 0% depending on the situation, but will usually one-hit KO anyone close to or above 40%. The price? The hitbox is confined to Jiggly's eyes, and if you aren't placed right the instant you use it, you've got 3 seconds to sit helplessly while your opponent charges up a smash. Also, even if you do get a kill, unless it's off the top, your opponent is going to come back to life before you wake up, which means they will kill you if you're above around 80%. Jigglypuff is also capable of instantly killing itself, which also applies to enemies. If its shield is broken by anyone including itself, if there is no ceiling above it then it will instantly be KO'd. This is because it is the Balloon Pokemon, and its shieldbreak is the balloon popping.
  • Little Mac has a power meter located just above his damage gauge that fills as he takes and inflicts damage. Once it's full, his neutral Special turns into an uppercut that, in one single hit, will send anyone it hits flying into oblivion.
  • The Death's Scythe item in Ultimate KO's any target if landing a Smash attack with it would bring them over 100% damage. Rather than blasting the victim to oblivion, anyone who is KO'd by this attack instantly disintegrates.
  • Hero has quite a number of these, thanks to some of his Command Selection spells. First off, the Whack and Thwack spells are attacks that have a chance to instantly kill the opponent, with said chance increasing the higher the opponent's damage percentage is. Hatchet Man is a slow, but powerful downward slash that will send opponents flying upon contact, but if it hits while Hero had his strength enhanced in any way (e.g: Oomph, Psyche Up, growth from Hocus Pocus, etc.), its damage and knockback puts the Home Run Bat to shame. Metal Slash will instantly kill any metallic opponent, even another Hero that has steeled himself with a Kaclang spell. Even with all these options, there's also the 1/8 chance that Hero's Smash attacks will be critical hits, increasing damage and knockback, meaning that he could possibly one shot opponents with low damage percentages.
  • The "broken but balanced" hack Brawl− gives one to Ganondorf in an effort to make up for his place at the bottom of the tier list in the vanilla game. His slow Warlock Punch does 666% damage and knockback to match, sending enemies off-screen instantly.
• Tekken:
  • Starting from Tekken 2, Paul Phoenix has a move called "Burning Fist" (Back+ both Punch buttons) which will not only take a second to charge up, but will take out the opponent in one hit (and send them flying backwards). Some YouTube videos show Paul playthroughs comprising of nothing BUT Burning Fists. ^note Only applicable in Tekken 2 and 3 with the lowest fighter health setting, as starting from Tag, fighters have more health internally coded to avert this.
  • The Jack-series has an attack called "Dark Greeting" starting from Tekken 2. He takes a step forward, with sparks flying from him, and makes a quick chop downwards with his hand. If the opponent is in range, they're down. ^note Dark Greeting is also only applicable for Tekken 2 and 3 with the lowest health setting.. Ditto for Wind-up Gigaton Punch, which does increasing damage for every arm swing, with the attack K Oing the opponent if it connects after the 5th wind-up swing, albeit by this time it's easy for the opponent to interrupt or zone out beforehand.
  • Kuma's "Fatal Wind", which is extremely difficult to hit with due to the attack's frame delay and limited hitbox. This move only made appearances from Tekken 3 to Tekken Tag Tournament 2, as it was removed in Tekken 7. Panda, being a Moveset Clone of Kuma, also has this move.
  • Miguel, first debutting in Tekken 6, has an unblockable move. He puts his hand over his mouth and laughs, then he winds up and punches the opponent. It's easy to stop him during the laugh or the wind-up, since they both take a while. But if he does manage to land the move, it's an instant K.O.
  • In Tekken 8, Azazel's Rage Art can instantly kill you up close. At a distance, it's still shaves a good 75% of your health.
• Time Killers was notorious for having this. A well-placed hit at any point in the round would instantly decapitate your opponent, and for good measure you could slice off both their arms first.
• War of the Monsters has the buildings. While they take a number of hits, some particularly large ones will crumble onto the ground. Any monster under it will be Squashed Flat.

First-Person Shooters

• Headshots with a sniper rifle in almost every FPS will instantly kill its target regardless of circumstances, unless it's a boss or invincible. Whether or not you can pull off headshots with other weapon varies, and if you can, it tends to be a damage multiplier rather than a guaranteed kill. This is so common and expected that it has its own trope.
• Battlefield:
  • The knife in most of the series, excepting Battlefield Heroes and, depending on how you use it, in Battlefield 3, is a short-ranged weapon which kills all infantry in one strike. Boom, Headshot! works also.
  • Headshots with Sniper Rifles would always be a one hit kill, and shotguns were a one hit kill in the head at close range (along with any other part of the body) but other small arms would just deal more damage than normal.
  • The RPGs in 2 and 2142 were one of the few weapons that would result in the victim not able to be revived by a medic, regardless on where they were hit.
• In Black, a headshot will kill any enemy soldier in one shot, no matter what angle it's shot from. Even the hockey-masked shotgunners, who resist even a shotgun blast and three rifle rounds that'll make said mask fall off, fall to a single bullet.
• Call of Duty 4 and beyond add a knife that is an instant kill if it connects. Bashing people with your gun in earlier games was also generally instant death, unless you did it with a pistol.
• In Combat Arms, the headshots were a one hit kill of course, but at one point, getting shot in a, ahem...sensitive region for males would also score a insta-kill, along with the humorous announcement "Nut Shot!" with a picture of two cracked walnuts. It was later nerfed to only occur when the fatal bullet (or melee attack) would nail the unfortunate player in the nads. Female characters could suffer this too, for balance reasons, but lacked the extra effects the males had.
• Counter-Strike features the infamous AWP (which, incidentally, isn't actually an AWP; it's an AW Super Magnum) which yields a one-hit kill no matter where the bullet hits its target.
• The Harvesters in CULTIC wield a chainsaw, among other weapons. If they get close enough to hit you with it, it won't kill you instantly, but it will kill you, guaranteed. Having more health just means it takes longer to die.
• This is subverted in the Jedi Knight series, where Force-sensitive enemies will dodge your sniper shots, even if they don't see you. Of course, this is because the lightsaber is the most powerful weapon in these games: one slash is usually enough to kill any non-Jedi enemy and one well-placed slash with the "Strong", Darth Vader-like style is enough to kill anyone except the bosses. Jedi Outcast also includes the hidden "realistic combat" mode, which unlocks the lightsaber's full decapitation and dismemberment potential, making each strike (even mere touch!) lethal. That also affects the enemies' lightsabers.
• Deep Rock Galactic:
  • The Drilldozer. Nothing that gets in front of it while it's plodding towards its destination will survive. Not Dreadnoughts, not BET-C('s parasites), not a Korlok Tyrant-Weed's core, nothing can avoid being ground to paste if it's caught in front of the drill. Though it does mean if it rams straight into a Bulk Detonator you can say goodbye to an entire segment of its health.
  • Getting caught in a Bulk Detonator's stomp from Hazard 3 onwards, and being blown up by the Bulk Detonator's death explosion at any Hazard level, is usually instantly fatal. Even just catching one of the explosive tumors that serve as cluster bomblets in the latter can take you from healthy to downed on a direct hit. And it can easily take one of the Drilldozer's mechanical segments from healthy to utterly destroyed with either, so Bulk Detonators should never be approached, Drill Tank or not.
• Doom
  • Doom II: During the Final Boss fight, the Icon of Sin will send diabolical cubes that summon enemies upon landing on the floor. If you're positioned right where a cube lands, the summoned enemy will Tele-Frag you, killing you instantly.
  • Doom Eternal: The Crucible is capable of killing almost any demon in a single slash (save for Doom Hunters, who require two hits — one to destroy the sled and another to actually kill it, as well as bosses).
• In F.E.A.R. you can instantly kill almost anything that moves with a melee attack. Yes, even sliding into their ankles works... somehow.
• GoldenEye (1997) features the Golden Gun weapon, hindered by its one bullet magazine and that it only does enough damage to deplete either armor or health. Then there's the Gold PP7, which can kill anything in one shot and has a 7 round magazine, but can only be obtained through cheats. The Golden Gun is actually required to kill Baron Samedi in the Egypt mission since no other weapon (not even explosives) can kill him. The Golden Gun comes back in other James Bond games, and is something of Flanderization of the version of it in The Man with the Golden Gun. In the film, the bullets were no more lethal than regular bullets, it was simply that Scaramanga was skilled enough to always kill his targets in one shot. The reason they're gold (i.e. hideously expensive) was simply to boast about his marksmanship abilities. It had a one bullet magazine too.
• Halo:
  • In Halo 2's Legendary difficulty, the Sniper Jackals kill you instantly no matter where they hit.
  • Like most shooters, explosives and sniper headshots are one-hit kills. Additionally, the Binary Rifle is a special sniper designed to kill an enemy in one shot no matter where they're hit. Halo 5: Guardians balances this out somewhat by requiring you to keep the beam on your target for the entirety of its (short) duration in order to get the kill.
  • The Gravity Hammer and Energy Sword are one-hit-kill weapons, to balance out the fact that they're melee weapons.
• Left 4 Dead:
  • The game has one hit kills on the common infected if they are set on fire.
  • The sequel also supports this and also has incendiary bullets, making any gun similar to GoldenEye (1997)'s Golden Gun on the common infected.
  • Shoving the back of a common infected while they are idle (just like Metal Gear) is an instant kill and also nets you an achievement.
  • The Magnum can also one shot common infected, regardless of difficulty or where you shot them, though that doesn't apply to any special or boss zombies.
  • Doing a Goomba Stomp to a common infected will also kill them instantly and break your fall.
  • Left 4 Dead 2's melee weapons in general can One-Hit Polykill the common infected, and one hit kill the majority of the special infected (except Chargers outside of a head impact, and Tanks and Witches no matter what) as long as you're not aiming for the legs, regardless of difficulty.
  • As a reverse example, on Expert difficulty, the Witch only has to swat a Survivor once to kill. She can also do this on any difficulty in Realism mode.
  • Also, as the norm for the genre, headshots kill most zombies in one hit with a strong enough weapon. Again, Tanks and Witches are immune to that.
  • Witches can be killed with a single well-placed point-blank shotgun blast to the back of the head (an act affectionately dubbed "cr0wning the Witch"). Very much Difficult, but Awesome, because miss by just a tiny bit and you'll be on the receiving end of the Witch's own One-Hit Kill.
  • Tanks on Expert difficulty can incapacitate a survivor with a single punch. They can also attack by punching cars, dumpsters, and other heavy objects at the survivors, which will instantly incapacitate anyone it hits regardless of difficulty, and may very well end up killing the victim if they get trapped under the object and therefore unable to be helped up by their teammates.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Holy Water will kill any normal enemy in one hit.
• Overwatch has this for some of the heroes' Ultimates:
  • McCree's "Deadeye" is a guaranteed headshot for every hero in his line of sight.
  • Reinhardt's "Charge" is all but guaranteed to kill any non-tank hero, dealing 350 HP damage while non-tanks only have 250 HP at most.
  • D.Va's "Self-Destruct" will blow any hero unlucky enough to be in the blast radius to hell and back.
• The demon morph Super Mode in Painkiller deals out one hit kills to mooks. Ostensibly, it's powerful enough to kill bosses in one hit as well, but with one exception (the final battle against Lucifer, a Puzzle Boss who is immune to your attacks) you can't get souls on boss levels, so no demon morph for you.
• In Paladins:
  • Drogoz's ultimate is the "Dragon Punch", which launches him at high speed to one shot a single enemy with a jet-powered punch, regardless of their health or shields. "BEHOLD! THE DRAGON'S FURY!"
  • Moji's ultimate, "Bon Appetit", transforms an enemy into a defenseless walking biscuit to be gobbled up by her pet Po-Li.
• PAYDAY: The Heist has trip mines, small explosives that can kill any enemy instantly, including the heavily armored Bulldozers.
• Perfect Dark :
  • The Farsight XR-20 railgun, which is like Counter-Strike's AWP, but even more broken. Not only can it instantly kill any unshielded target with one shot regardless of hit location, but it can also shoot through any number of solid objects. It gets worse, when you put the Farsight into its secondary mode it will also track the enemies for you, meaning the player could basically kill anything by pulling the trigger anywhere on the level. Broken indeed.
  • There's also the golden DY357-LX, a golden version of the normal revolver. It destroys anything that can be destroyed in one bullet.
  • Both the Farsight and the gold magnum have virtually unlimited penetration, so they would instantly kill as many people as you could get in a straight line.
  • The Crossbow has a secondary fire that turns it into a one hit kill weapon, which was far more useful than the primary fire, "Sedate". Add to that the fact that you could retrieve bolts if they missed, and you had a potentially infinite-ammo instant kill weapon.
  • The Tranquilizer Gun also has an instant kill function, although it ate up a lot of the gun's ammo and functioned as a melee attack.
• Primal Carnage:
  • Most attacks by a Tyrant will kill all humans in a single strike; in particular, their primary bite attack, which is instant death, and the Acrocanthosaurus' Shockwave Stomp, which kills any human in its immediate radius (and sends their corpses flying) and does massive knock-back and damage to those further away (making it likely for those not killed by the initial blast to die from knock-back induced Falling Damage).
  • The Novaraptor and Oviraptor's pounce attack, which pins a human to the ground while the dinosaur mauls them, will guarantee a kill if performed to completion (the attack will be interrupted if they run out of stamina mid-attack or they get hit by another human).
  • Most of the explosive weapons do so much damage that a direct hit will instantly kill the smaller dinosaurs, although large dinosaurs are usually able to tank them due to their massive health bars. Be warned, the explosives are also powerful enough to instantly kill yourself if you are caught in the blast radius.
  • The Pteranodon's grab attack is inescapable once a human player has been captured, which will guarantee a kill unless the Pteranodon is shot by another player before it can reach a fatal height to drop its victim, which will cause it to automatically drop its quarry.
  • The Trapper's knife will instantly kill any small dinosaur incapacitated by one of his traps (either its stun gun, the Net Gun, the bear trap, or the electric mine). Incapacitation will trap the small dinosaur in place for several seconds, up until they free themselves or are freed by another dinosaur, but they are totally helpless in that period.
• Rainbow Six Siege has this trope as a central gameplay mechanic. A single shot to the head from the majority of guns, even through walls, will result in an instant death. The only major exceptions are shotguns for balancing reasons. The game relies so heavily on this trope that when Blackbeard was added to the game (whose special ability involves withstanding multiple headshots thanks to a gun-mounted ballistic shield), many high-ranking players found him controversial and ill-fitting of the game's meta. His gun shield ended up being nerfed multiple times, prompting the nickname "Nerfbeard".
• Splitgate:
  • Railgun fire and strikes from the BFB are always instant death, no matter the mode. The only save is if you're the VIP, and you still scrape out with very little HP.
  • Headshots in Team SWAT mode are an instant kill, no matter the weapon.
• Emissions in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat. They are one-hit kills, except in Call of Pripyat if you have Marked by the Zone achievement (Survive emission three times without taking cover, it's possible with special pills called Anabiotics) and enough health, but even then, it will leave you with just 2-3 bars of health, and you will pass out. More mundanely, headshots will kill most human enemies with one blow. The RPG and Gauss Gun take this to the next level; they will kill almost anything in one hit. Good luck finding ammunition, though.
• In Stick Fight, certain stages have hazards that will instantly kill a player that hits them, such as huge laser beams and spikes, either on platforms or in stage-specific obstacles.
• In the Syphon Filter series, headshots and explosions are guaranteed instant death for the player as well as enemies (except for certain bosses), regardless of armor and health levels.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The Spy's butterfly knife is a guaranteed one-hit kill if you can attack the enemy from behind. The base damage is twice the victim's health, multiplied by three for a Critical Hit. The attack is based on which part of his foe the Spy is aiming at, not where's he's actually standing (this is particularly infuriating when server lag lets enemy Spies Backstab you in the face).
  • And the Sniper's headshot ability, when fully charged, inflicts 450 damage, (and 518 with the Machina) exactly enough to kill an over-healed Heavy and (way) more than enough to kill anyone else.
  • On a technical level, only telefrags and falling into pits are One Hit Kills. However, the examples noted deal up to 500 damage without any modifiers and boil down to One Hit Kills except against a Spy using a the Dead Ringer or a Heavy affected by a stun during the time it gave victims a 50% damage reduction to make it less overpowered.
  • Sawblades, trains, and the Horseless Headless Horsemann (later nerfed) deal damage equal to double your current health.
  • On the note of "so much damage that it's an instant kill, assuming there's no damage reduction," taunt kills. Taunting with a certain weapon out (it varies depending on the class) will make your character play through an animation that will kill any enemy unfortunate enough to walk in front of you at the wrong time. They do 500 damage, and as mentioned above, the normal maximum health count is 450. Most of these can destroy buildings instantly as well, whereas the backstab and headshot rely on Critical Hits to work, which don't affect buildings. Of course, given that you're locked in place for the duration of the animation and the limited range of most of these taunts, they fall firmly into Awesome, but Impractical territory for any kind of serious gameplay.
  • The Half-Zatoichi is a katana for the Soldier and Demoman. If you hit an enemy wielding one of his own with it, it does damage equal to three times his current health, causing an instant decapitation.
  • A cluster of well-placed stickybombs can also gib any player unfortunate enough to get caught in the detonation.
  • Getting caught right in front of a Heavy's minigun is essentially this; the thing deals insane damage at point-blank range (enough to shred even another Heavy in half a second). Of course, it suffers from damage falloff as range increases, but it has to be balanced somehow.
  • Combining the Chargin' Targe/Splendid Screen with the Eyelander/Claidheamh Mòr/Persian Persuader/Half-Zatoichi and timing the swing right is a One-Hit Kill against quite a few classes; the Scout, Sniper, Spy, Engineer and Medic. The Heavy, Pyro, Soldier and other Demomen also take one or two hits, depending on overheal levels. You can also use the Ullapool Caber to one hit kill everyone near you with a massive critical explosion. On the other hand, it takes more than half your health in the blast and then turns into a detonated grenade that's basically worthless.
  • Tanks in the Mann vs. Machine game mode can instantly kill players by crushing them against a wall. They can also destroy Engineer buildings by running them over.
• Some entries in the Unreal series include the InstaGib mod, which gives all players Shock Rifles with nearly unlimited ammo and each hit is lethal. This mode was available in Quake III: Arena, too, but with railguns.
• Another staple variant in FPS is the Tele-Frag, which can be exploited as a valid means of killing in games like Unreal Tournament that have teleporting "weapons."
• In Urban Terror, a shot to the head with any weapon is a OHK, unless they have a helmet, in which case some weapons won't deal enough damage; even with a helmet, a sniper round to the head means death. The Remington sniper rifle is a OHK anywhere, except the arms, in which case it does "only" 67% damage.

Hack-and-Slash

• Bayonetta:
  • The series gives the titular character Torture Attacks, in which she summons the torture devices once used on witches from the depths of hell to brutally slaughter her angelic enemies (the ones who were responsible for the witches being hunted to extinction in the first place). The only non-boss enemy the Torture Attack won't kill is a demonic enemy from the second game called Sloth, which gets chopped down to just his severed head before regenerating.
  • On Route 666, if you are unlucky enough to end up on the wrong side of the freeway, no amount of witch power will save you from a head-on collision with oncoming traffic.
  • The Final Boss of the first game possesses one of these in the form of an Unrealistic Black Hole which the titular witch must outrun. Get sucked in? The Witch Hunts are Over.
• Bayonetta 2:
  • The Elite Mook demon called Resentment has a two-part one of these. It first uses a purple laser to turn Bayonetta into a child. Then it tries to grab her with demonic hands that will drag her into its gaping maw, inflicting one of these if it succeeds.
  • Chapter X has a section where Rodin is seen killing multiple demons with single attacks. According to him, this is him going easy on them.
• Devil May Cry:
  • "Heaven & Hell" mode, in which every attack, player or enemy, is a one-hit-kill. It also has "Hell & Hell", in which only enemy attacks are.
  • Can be done to some enemies in the first game by hitting them in a specific way: Sin Scissors can be killed in a single shotgun blast by shooting their masks point blank right after they attack, and Blades can be killed with a single downwards air attack on their back after being knocked down from behind. Both of them give some extra Red Orbs before the ones they normally drop after their death animation to show the player they did it correctly... as if the Blades flailing around on the ground spraying blood everywhere wasn't enough of an indication. It's also possible to do this on a boss fight during Mission 8. If the player lures Phantom to jump and land on the glass platform five times, it would break, making him fall and be skewered with a large spike.
  • In Devil May Cry 4, a well-timed counterattack (using Buster, firearms, or melee weapons) against the energy ball fired by an Alto Angelo and several Bianco Angelos (if in formation) can easilly net an SSS rank and kills all the Angelos that fired it (especially true if the Alto is weak or doesn't have a high enough vitality). A Buster also instantly kills any Chimera Seed that hasn't attached itself to a host.
  • Death Scissors, a variant of the Sin Scissors demons from Devil May Cry 1 appear in Devil May Cry 5 and they can be one-hit killed by parrying their attack with a melee weapon first, then using another attack to finish them off. Secret Mission 7 requires you to do this with one of them.
• Dynasty Warriors In the pre HD era of the series, Lu Bu is capable of instantly killing the player in a single hit depending on the difficulty and if their character is low enough level. The later entries which feature far more devastating Musou attacks can have Lu Bu 1 shot even a high level character on the harder difficulties.
• In Evil West uppercutting an enemy into the air and then smashing them off a cliff, into deep water or into a dangerous object like a spiked cage will instantly kill enemies that aren't bosses.
• Kill Counters and Superstyle moves in Heavenly Sword. Kill Counters are performed by hitting Triangle as soon as an attack is blocked, Superstyle moves are performed by beating up enough enemies to fill your power gauge, then pressing Circle near an enemy. Superstyle moves are also used on some bosses, where doing so triggers a QTE that defeats the boss if performed successfully. Kai's arrows also kill most enemies in one or two hits, depending where on the body you hit them.
• In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Blade Move attacks can slice apart most common enemies with a single swipe. Cutting off An Arm and a Leg only will often prove non-fatal, although the enemy will be debilitated without all of their limbs. Slashing the enemy's torso or head, on the other hand, will always be fatal, regardless of their remaining health.
• No More Heroes:
  • Travis' Darkside Mode allows for one-hit-kills of a most violent degree.
  • When Dr. Peace is almost defeated, he and Travis agree to perform a Wild West style duel in which the first person to draw his weapon will be able to kill the other. Failure to press the proper button will prompt Dr. Peace to perform a roll to shot Travis from behind, killing him instantly. This also doubles as Kaizo Trap.
  • Shinobu has a pair of near instant-death attacks after she Turns Red: she can take you from full health to two points with her supercharged Gengoken attack, and her multi-Sonic Sword attack will off you if she hits you with all the blades. And she is the third boss of the game.
  • Harvey Moisewitch Volodarskii and Bad Girl also have instant-death attacks, the former if you fail to break out of his magic box, and the latter if you fall for her trap.
  • During the True Final Boss battle, Henry breaks one out once his health reaches Turns Red territory; it's the one that looks like the Stinger from Devil May Cry and plants you into the concrete.
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Surprisingly, there are fewer one-hit kills in comparison to the game's predecessor, but they're noteworthy:
  • Captain Vladimir's extended Kill Sat laser and the final boss' violent defenestration attack. More frustrating is the latter, though, who is more or less a checklist of The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, with teleporting, chaining attacks, ranged attacks, multiple forms, and possibly most frustrating, a OHKO that really can be ANY move, so long as you're on a specific third of the stage (or, if the attack is too strong, almost anywhere).
  • Travis gains another OHK in the sequel: turning into a tiger and ripping apart the suddenly-terrified enemies.
• No More Heroes III:
  • The special skill Full-Armor Mode, which summons a Mini-Mecha suit once the Slash Reel hits three 7s and equips Travis with it, allows him to shoot a Macross Missile Massacre that obliterates any enemy in the field of sight.
  • There's an early cutscene that shows the squid-like Ohma firing its gastro cannon at the city of Santa Destroy and killing everyone in the firing range. Travis has to eventually go up against Velvet Chair Girl and Ohma for the No. 6 fight. If you brush off the Musical Chairs game in the first half or let Ohma get a shot on you in the second? YOU DEAD.
• The Critical and Deflect Critical moves in Onimusha 3: Demon Siege, though they are phenomenally hard to pull off. Once pulled off, though, you can chain them using the "Chain Critical" move (after learning it), allowing you to kill loads of enemies in one move. While in Onimusha mode, using either of these moves kills every enemy on the screen.
• In The Return of the King, your characters can learn "bane" moves, which are species-specific ripostes. If you pull it off correctly, you will kill the mook that just attacked you and instantly go into Perfect Mode. Each character/mook combination is different: for example, Aragorn will manhandle and quickly dispatch a lesser orc, while Sam might bring a human down to size by getting behind him and stabbing at the legs and back.
• In Sengoku Basara, Shimazu Yoshihiro has a Super Skill that will kill any enemy in one hit, whether they be ordinary mooks, bosses or giant robots. Date Masamune's TESTAMENT, when charged for exactly 6 seconds, comes close.

MMORPGs

• Ace Online:
  • The Bomber-type B-Gears are walking One-Hit Kill (named OHKO by players in-game) dealers. The de facto B-Gear weapon, Bawoos, regularly deal 1000 HP damage per missile, while B-Gears are famous to be able to throw at least 6-8 of them forwards, and 12 or more downwards. Coupled with the fact that most Gears' HP range in around 6-7k HP total, OHKOs are frighteningly regular.
  • Another B-Gear example would be their Finishing Move, Big Boom. This move sacrifices one's own gear to take down others equal to its own Energy. With custom made Veils (armors), BBs can hit up to 14k damage, effectively acting as a very effective crowd-control move.
• City of Heroes:
  • The right combination of buffs can grant these, though certain archetypes have an easier time doing it.
  • Blasters need only combine their Build Up, Aim, and Sniper attacks. Though it should be noted that this will only work against "minion" enemies, or "Lieutenants" who are lower level than the blaster in question.
  • Stalkers need only perform an Assassin attack while Hidden.
  • Scrappers can do this with a well-timed critical hit.
• EverQuest has three player-usable insta-kill spells: Disintegrate (destroy target), Banishment (destroy summoned target), and Banishment of Shadows (destroy undead target). Usually regarded as Useless Useful Spells because they are often resisted, unusable on higher-level creatures, expensive to cast, and deny rewards for the kill.
• Final Fantasy XI:
  • For balance reasons the game initially didn't allow players to get these abilities. Doesn't stop some boss monsters, however. Even then, some monsters have abilities which kill them, but deal area damage based on their HP (Unless they have the Ninja job 2-hour, then nothing happens to them). Considering most of these mobs have thousands of HP, well, do the math.
  • An update added a playable instant death ability in the form of the new avatar Odin, which will have AoE death (but with less accuracy the more mobs that surround it), on all normal mobs.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • For most trials, raids, and alliance raids, the boss will have an attack that will cause a Total Party Wipe unless the players do the required mechanics correctly to avoid instant death. Likewise, some attacks will ensnare/trap specific players that will die if they are not freed in time.
  • The Manticore item in the Palace of the Dead deep dungeon transforms the player into a Manticore whose punch can instantly kill any enemy except bosses.
  • Before the Diadem was reworked, there was a boss monster that could cause petrification. Unlike the typical petrification, this version would kill the affected player instantly if they got damaged while petrified.
• In Kingdom of Loathing:
  • There's one boss (Lord Spookyraven) that is designed so that its first hit is equal to your max HP, and all of his attacks will be based on the elemental type you have the least resistance to. The only way to survive his first (and later) attacks is to build up your immunity to all the elements by some degree, have a Familiar that blocks attacks (and hope it works), or pray that he fumbles his first attack, which is known to happen.
  • The Hard Mode version of The Great Wolf of the Air can fire its rocket launcher every other turn, which can only be reduced by pure Damage Reduction. In cast you were wondering, each rocket deals Your Max HP plus 50 damage on its first attack, and increases by 30 every turn. Combined with ML in the thousands plus a steep soft damage cap makes it a tough boss to take down without some preparations.
• MapleStory has several moves that either kill instantly with a high cooldown or have a small chance to instant kill (the latter being nerfed in a patch that increases enemy hp hoping to encourage party play) in addition to just doing regular damage. Depending on how the move is coded, the instant kill will either do the target's max hp in damage or simply hit the damage cap. All bosses are immune to being instant killed, and all moves with instant kill as their only effect simply do very heavy damage to bosses instead.
• The Rage Ghosts in Pirates of the Caribbean Online will attack nearby players using their "Somber Demise" attack, which deals a minimum of 8000 damage. Considering the maximum amount of health a player can have is usually about 2,500...
• RuneScape has an item called the Deathtouched Dart, which can kill almost anything in one hit except for players and a few bosses that are immune or are only advanced to the next phase of the fight. There also is boss called Araxxor can summon acidic spiders that deal up to 32000 when they explode, which will probably instantly kill you because the maximum amount of life points you can have without boosts is 9900. Ripper demons also have a special attack that deals 32000 damage if it isn't dodged. The Kalphite King also has a special attack that can deal up to 32000 damage, and he stuns the targeted player first before he uses it so they can't block it or avoid it. The only way to stop this attack is for another player to block the attack or for the targeted player to prevent themselves from being stunned.
• Star Trek Online:
  • The Unimatrix 0047 Command Ships, a group of ten Borg bosses, have a Plasma Energy Bolt attack that consists of a Painfully Slow Projectile. If it hits your ship it will usually disintegrate you even if you're at max HP and shields (you might survive if you built your ship as an uber-tank, but it's unlikely). Fortunately the projectile is also destructible, and its splash damage can be used against the ship that launched it. The player also has access to this attack if they use the bridge officer power "Torpedo: High Yield" on an Omega Plasma Torpedo Launcher, but theirs is much weaker.
  • The pair of Unimatrices in "Hive: Onslaught" also feature an energy lance in addition to the plasma energy bolt. You're supposed to be able to avoid it by staying near the Borg Tetrahedron containing the Borg Queen, but sometimes they bug out and lance you anyway. They may also bug out and lance you from 30 kilometers away, a range that is normally impossible to even select a ship at (most weapons will only fire at ten kilometers or less).
  • The assimilated IRW Valdore that appears as the boss of "Khitomer Vortex" is a Borgified version of the IRW Scimitar from Star Trek: Nemesis, featuring the dreadnought warbird's signature thalaron pulse attack. The assimilated Donatra in command of the Valdore loves to fire it right after decloaking, but fortunately it's fairly easy to get out of the way in time (it fires in a cone in front of her and she can't maneuver while charging it). Certain tank builds can also survive a direct hit.
  • In ground combat, being assimilated by a Borg drone is an insta-gib.
• World of Tanks has the Ammo Rack on each tank. It usually requires striking the tank from the side or behind, but it's a high value target as damaging it increases reload times and destroying it is an instant kill. The game even displays a special icon for ammo rack kills. Later versions have stated that the tank will not be killed by destroying the ammo rack, if it is not carrying any ammo. Some tanks also mount BFGs powerful enough that they can sometimes score a one-hit kill with an ordinary penetrating hit, particularly if they get a high damage roll. The best-known examples of this are the Tier VI Soviet heavy tank KV-2, with a 152mm howitzer whose HE shells do an average of 910 (more than the maximum Hit Points of the majority of same-tier tanks) so long as it hits armor of 86mm or thinner, and the Tier X British tank destroyer FV215b (183), with a 183mm anti-tank gun whose HE and HESH shells do a ludicrous 1750 average damage (while the higher HP totals of Tier X tanks mean this is no longer a guaranteed one-shot, it can obliterate any unlucky Tier VIII or IX tanks it faces with a single penetrating hit).
• World of Warcraft:
  • The game has most of its raid bosses set to an "enrage" timer that activates at the point the programmers determined to be most logical for the difficulty cap for the boss, upon which point the boss in question gains massive attack strength and attack speed, resulting in instant and rapid death for each member of the raid. Depending on the overall encounter conditions, the boss might be able to do this to the whole raid at once (Algalon uses Ascend To The Heavens to blow up the whole raid, Yogg-Saron extinguishes all life, kaput!)
  • The Lich King uses his Fury Of Frostmourne to wipe the whole raid near the end of the encounter, though the raid is resurrected shortly afterwards and wipes the floor with him.
  • Some boss abilities are basically avoidable One Hit Kills. Avoiding might mean to acquire an effect that protects against a good chunk of the damage, running behind line of sight obstacles, interrupting the spell or simply running away whenever it comes up. Tanks may or may not be tough enough to survive it regardless, but everyone else has to avoid it anyway. Some bosses even go as far as coupling this with getting stronger when they kill someone with such a spell.
  • Bloodlord Mandokir in the updated Zul'Gurub dungeon has Decapitate, which deals around 15 million damage to the target. It is unavoidable, and without a special ability like Cheat Death, it will one-shot anyone it hits. Fortunately, in this encounter death is even cheaper than usual in World of Warcraft; you can get resurrected once by each of the spirits around the arena, and only once all of them have done so or gotten eaten by the boss's skeletal raptor mount does death become like it usually is.
  • Additionally, it has become a standard tactic for any player that has a displacement/knockback effect (Elemental Shamans, Balance Druids, Fire Mages, and any particularly skilled Death Knight) to allow in their PvP strategy a means to place their opponent between them and a high cliff, causing instant death to anyone that doesn't have a means of slowing their descent (Mages/Priests respective 'Slow Fall' and 'Levitate' assuming they aren't an engineer with a parachute). You can also survive being thrown off a cliff with Warlock's 'Demonic Circle', although it requires good timing. Or simply use one of the Paladin's two Invulnerability spells and ignore the damage.
  • The Warriors Execute skill (and similar skills) is meant to be this, although usable only if the enemy is already at low health. Normal opponents and players will die (barring damage-preventing effects like the Cheat Death talent), but against a raid boss it only deals heavy damage.
  • Unique NPC ability example: Vindicator Kuros is a BAMF.
  • The Warlock spell "Curse of Doom" wasn't specifically a One Hit Kill, but designed to have the potential. It does the most single-tick damage of any of the Warlock's spells, but takes a minute before the damage is applied. If the damage kills your opponent, it spawns a Doomguard demon. On lower-level creatures it can be a One Hit Kill, (if your squishy warlock can avoid being killed for 60 seconds) but once you reach boss-level it just does a whole lot of damage. It's since been changed to Bane of Doom which instead deals hefty damage every 15 seconds (not One Hit Kill tier, though).
  • Deathwing is a unique example in that his final attack is something that you've already suffered through- The Cataclysm. This is the closest thing an MMO can get to a Nonstandard Game Over, as letting him use it causes the screen to fade to black as you and everything else is utterly destroyed.
  • Monks have a variant of this, Touch Of Death which instantly deals the monk's max health in damage to an (NPC-only)enemy that has the same or less HP than the monk's maximum, effectively killing them instantly and ending the fight. For the Brewmaster, this means you can one-shot normal monsters, since, as the tank spec, they have a high max HP.
  • In the Assembly of Iron encounter, if Steelbreaker (the giant) is the last of the three alive, he will use an attack on his current target that gives a damage buff, but kills that player after a little while. As such, killing him last is typically considered the hardest way to do the fight.
  • In Throne of Thunder, if High Priestess Mar'li is empowered with Gara'jal the Spiritbinder's spirit, she summons Shadowed Loa Spirits that instantly kill their victims if they reach them (and leap over to them and kill them if not killed in 20 seconds).
  • A hefty chunk of the opponents players face in the Brawler's Guild are capable of this in one way or another, the main challenge being to avoid it while still managing to burn them down fast enough to beat the enrage timer (at which point the arena automatically One Hit Kills you with a rain of fire).

Other

• 100% Orange Juice: Some Hypers, like Yuki’s and Tomomo’s, will outright kill other players though it's also possible that the user is K.O.'d as well.
• In Angry Birds 2, you get a 25,000 point "Strike!" bonus for clearing a stage with one bird.
• Dept. Heaven: Jihad^note  Crusade in the English versions, Rivellion^note Angelic Thunder in the English versions, Judgment Zero^note provided only the unit head is alive, and Megiddo. While they don't immediately destroy the enemy unit, they are unblockable and result in an instant victory for the Clash they're used in. Jihad and Megiddo also come with damage bonuses.
• Dragon Strike: You'll instantly kill enemies if you hit them with your dragon lance or if you're using a silver dragon and use the sleeping gas breath at a low enough altitude that they crash before waking up. Also if you use a gold dragon, it has a poison breath attack that'll instantly kill your enemies too.
• Edge Surf: Getting caught by the purple squid causes you to lose instantly, no matter how many hearts you have left.
• In Eternal Card Game, units with Deadly will kill any unit they deal damage to. The Last Word extends this to players.
• Killer7:
  • Touching Andrei Ulmeyda. He's the boss of the third chapter.
  • The demonic black Smiles during the boss battle of the sixth chapter. In fact, six of the seven Smith members die inevitably because of them. Luckily, Garcian then grabs the ultra-powerful Golden Gun to kill the remaining Smile, as well as the boss himself, in one shot each. From there to the end of the game, he can kill with one shot any Smile (except the final boss, though it still goes down after five shots), without even having to aim at their weak points.
• In Mister Mosquito, while the player sucking blood, the anxiety meter shown on the lower left corner of the screen can range from green to red, when the meter reaches red the animation of the family member quickly stops and about a second later it switches to a slapping animation and if the player is still on the family member's skin while they are slapping, that slap will be an instant kill regardless of how much health the player has.
• MORDHAU: Different amounts of armor will save you from different weapons even in the case of headshots. However, there just isn't enough armor in the world that will let you survive a maul to the skull; it's the only guaranteed killing strike so far in the game. Unless you count siege engines, in which case it bears noting that impalement by a giant ballista bolt, crushing under a catapult boulder and getting blown up by a mortar shell is also about as instantly lethal as one could expect.
• In NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, NiGHTS's Paraloop will defeat Chamelan in one hit. However, he is a Hollywood Chameleon and a "Get Back Here!" Boss at the same time, and he has an infinite supply of hostile playing-card robots and playing-card bombs he uses strictly to increase his distance, meaning finding him can be very troublesome if the player is unaware of the little hints that give away his location.
• WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$: One of the boss microgames pits the player against a rival boxer. Normally, the rival performs telegraphed punches that only substract one heart from the player's Life Meter; however, there's a chance the rival will instead prepare an unusually delayed punch that can instantly knock out the player, even if the latter has full HP (and the chance rate increases when the rival is on the brink of defeat).

Platform Games

• Banjo-Kazooie:
  • In the eighth level, the propellers in the lower end of the ship's stern can kill the characters instantly upon contact. They can only be disabled for a limited time, and it's the reason why getting the Jiggy behind them is called That One Sidequest.
  • In the last level, the eponymous characters play a quiz game. Failing to answer a question on the green-eyed skull tiles will send them to the lava automatically, and they will die.
• Banjo-Tooie: The characters are crushed by a ton of iron if they lose during any of the three rounds of the Tower of Tragedy minigame.
• In the Beavis and Butt-Head game for Sega, in the hospital level, if Billy Bob catches you, it's an instant Game Over.
• Blaster Master Zero:
  • In every game in the trilogy, you have to fight some variant of the Skeleton Boss. If you have that game's version of the Acceleration Blast, unleashing it at full power will instantly destroy this boss. The Metal Cerbeboss will not be annihilated completely, but unleashing the Full Accel Blast will force it into super-dimensional space to avoid being destroyed.
  • In Blaster Master Zero II, Drolrevo Mastro imitates the abilities of the various Metal Attackers; it will at some point imitate ATOM's Super Mode and unleash a barrage of attacks that lasts longer than it should thanks to imitating the Gaia System in tandem. Once the barrage is done, it goes straight into cooldown mode, and its defenses will fail until cooldown ends. Should the Full Accel Burst be used at this time...
  • In Blaster Master Zero III, you could end up fighting the SOPHIA-J1 and put yourself through the wringer against its variety of attacks. By the end, it will unleash three Full Accel Blasts back-to-back, then retreat to super-dimensional space to recharge. Anyone who knows how the Gaia System works better than the CPU might be forgiven for succumbing to the temptation of hugging a wall, facing the center, and charging the Accel Blast.
• In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, the Death Ring dramatically increases physical and magical power, but any hit will kill you. It's the best way to get Boss Medals, since you need to take no damage/take no hits to get them anyway.
• In Conker's Bad Fur Day, some hazards and boss attacks are deadly if the eponymous character isn't equipped with something (i.e. being inside a tank or having a space suit). The propellers in the passage leading to the Uga Buga level, the rotating chainsaw from the Experiment, and the tail slash from the Alien are signature examples. The Magnum's shots, any Boom, Headshot! hit, the chainsaw, and the katana blade all have this effect in multiplayer as well. The bazooka is this in both multi and story modes.
• In the video game adaptation of Dennis the Menace, if Mr. Wilson catches you in the first level, you instantly lose a life as he forces you out of his house.
• Donkey Kong:
  • Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!: In the level "Rocket Rush" if you impact the ground too quickly due to lack of fuel or simply neglecting to slow down your ship, then you instantly die even if you have both your Kong characters active. It's also the only instance in the DKC trilogy where you can see both Kongs' "death" animations at the same time.
  • In Donkey Kong 64, some dark places house searchlights that try to illuminate your character. If it happens, you'll have one second to escape before a sniper rifle shot kills you instantly. Most of the time, death ensues.
  • In Donkey Kong Country Returns, there are certain attacks and obstacles that will kill the characters upon contact, including the spider swarm near the end of World 5, a mask-drawn flaming wheel in World 6, and everything while riding on a rocket barrel or a mine cart.
  • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: Like in Returns, there are levels which, at one point, have each a deadly hazard that can kill the Kongs upon contact (with the gigantic durian rolling at them in 3-2 and the tall fruit grinder approaching them in 5-2 standing out). However, unlike its predecessor, the game eliminates the instant-death vulnerability in rocket barrels and mine carts (they're given a life meter akin to that of the characters).
• In the Golden Ending final level of Freedom Planet 2, you will be tracked by Syntax throughout the approach to its location, and if the alert meter maxes out, or on occasion during the first half of the boss battle, it will skewer you with its horn, which inflicts at least ten petals' worth of damage; not only is this more than you can have, but it's enough to explode your body. The only difference between them is that you can dodge it in the boss fight; get caught on the way in and die.
• In Iji, if General Tor's Eidolon gathers three charge orbs, he gets one of two attacks: If you've been using the Resonance Reflector, he'll fire a hail of nano to rip into you. If, on the other hand, you haven't figured out the trick, he'll prepare to fire the Phantom Hammer ''planet''-buster. This is signified by the orbs' dispersion and regathering into his gun barrel, and then he stomps the ground for a pull. If the seismic wave hits you or you stay in firing range too long, better luck next life. By the way, the Phantom Hammer doesn't just blast your health to 0 on a hit, it reduces all your stats to 0 at the same time, and "cracks" the screen, and abruptly cuts off your death scream. In terms of the story, this means that Tor's Phantom Hammer completely annihilates Iji's nanofield. With one hit.
• Jak and Daxter:
  • Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy: During the last battle, Gol and Maia will shoot a large burst of Dark Eco that can kill the eponymous duo instantly. This attack is done every time the villains' robot takes damage (or, in one case, all summoned enemies are defeated), and can only be avoided by performing a large jump with the help of an Eco-powered jump pad.
  • Jak II: Renegade: Peacemaker kills any enemy save bosses in one shot, and Border Patrol sentry bot will also kill Jak in one hit independently of his remaining health. In the sequel, Peacemaker's upgrade, Supernova, will also kill everything but the boss in large radius.
  • Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier: The fully upgraded Armageddon missile. While lower-level Armageddon missile is a weapon that "just" deals an obscene damage, the fully upgraded version shoots a missile that splits into about 9 others that each oneshots any non-boss enemy in the game (and deals a ton of damage to bosses). To drive the point home, it is the only weapon that has its power shown as infinite. That being said, it's incredibly tedious to buy the final upgrade before finishing the game.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising has two enemies that can kill in one hit: the Tempura Wizard, who turns Pit into a piece of tempura-fried shrimp and chases him down to eat him, and the Orne, who can kill Pit just by touching him, and unlike the Tempura Wizard cannot be killed except in Chapter 9 with the Arrows of Light. To emphasize how deadly the Orne is, the game's music even changes to an ominous 8-bit tune.
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Sillydillo has an attack where it can try to trap Kirby in a cage. If Kirby gets caught and fails to escape the cage, Sillydillo will slam the cage down, instantly killing Kirby even with a second life bar. Interestingly, this is the only method capable of instantly defeating Kirby in the game - not even Bottomless Pits or being crushed will kill him, unlike in previous games.
• Mega Man:
  • You have to jump through hoops to get it, but Mega Man X's Hadoken can one-shot anything in the game that can be hurt by an X Buster bullet, up to and including Sigma. Except minibosses, who die in two. In Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X, the Hadoken can even destory Sigma's Wolf form in one blow while he was immune to it in the original release.
  • Mega Man X2's Shoryuken kills any boss in one hit, provided you remain in contact with him long. Morph Moth is an exception as he pulls a One-Winged Angel in the middle of the battle. Curiously, so is Zero, by virtue of his ability to frickin' block your attacks.
  • Mega Man X3 downgrades Zero's Saber to a 2-hit kill, but it's still very useful and a lot easier to get, especially since using it with the Buster upgrade causes it to fire out a crescent beam with the same effect and unlike above 2 moves, it doesn't require you to be at full health to use it.
  • Mega Man X3 has two weapons that will one-shot any normal enemy vulnerable to them. Gravity Well will instantly kill most smaller enemies on the screen, and Parasitic Bomb will latch onto enemies it can affect, immobilizing them and turning off their Collision Damage for a few seconds before blowing them up (or throwing them into another enemy to damage them). However, G.Well does nothing on the mooks it cannot affect, making it a Useless Useful Spell, while P.Bomb deals measly damage on those it can't latch onto but can affect a wider range of mooks than the former.
  • Another "2-hit kill" attack is the upgraded Nova Strike in Mega Man X8. All Bosses fall to two hits (regardless of the health of the boss, the first hit always reduces the health to around 25% so the Boss could trigger its Desperation Attack). The previous incarnations of the Nova Strike is Game-Breaker material enough, but this one?
  • If you've gone the alternate route in Mega Man X5 (allowing Eurasia to crash & infect Zero), you'll have to fight Zero in his Awakened state as X in the final stages of the game. If 2 minutes have passed during the fight, he'll become invincible & repeatedly launch two large crescent beams at you (The attack is named "Genmurei"). One of the few ways to effectively dodge them is to use the Ultimate Armor's Nova Strike, but since you can't damage Zero at that point, the fight can only end one way.
  • Mega Man 2:
    • No matter how many times, you can't defeat Wood Man? Have you tried hitting him with a full-power Atomic Fire after he drops his shield? As the link would attest, the whole damn thing's cyclic. (Two hits required in the Japanese version/America's "Difficult" mode.)
    • Like Wood Man, Metal Man has a weakness that will drop him in one hit outside the original Japanese version and Difficult mode, except in this case, it's his own weapon. Sure, you can't do it until the second fight with him, but it's still damned funny.
    • Also, if aimed exactly right, the Air Shooter can hit Crash Man with all three tornadoes in one shot, killing him instantly. Even in the Japanese version and Difficult mode, it will knock off over 60% of his life, making the next hit nearly a guaranteed kill.
  • In Mega Man 3, the Top Spin gets a lot of hate due to how difficult it is to use effectively, but it has the capability to one-shot most of the enemies that are susceptible to it, including two of the Fortress Bosses; the Clone Triplets, and the final boss.
  • Mega Man 7 has an instance of this where Mega Man can fire a Noise Crush right before he enters Turbo Man's boss room, but you have to get the timing exactly right, and hit it in the right frame. If you do, the Noise Crush projectile will enter the boss room and rebound off the walls until Turbo Man enters the room, where the projectile will hit him (his life gauge may or may not be empty at this point) and kill him in one shot.
  • Mega Man Unlimited allows you to kill two of the robot masters (Jet Man and Rainbow Man) in one hit during the re-fights. If a Yo-Yo Cutter is thrown in a way that it collides with them during the animation where they enter the arena, they die instantly, as their health is technically 0 before the animation of the health bar filling.
• In Mutant Mudds, there are swinging hammers on the fifth and final set of levels that will smash you into the foreground when they hit, instantly killing you.
• Ori and the Blind Forest's instant-death hazards include laser beams, certain Spikes of Doom, Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom, lava pits, and Kuro herself.
• In Pizza Tower, Pizzaface will start chasing you down if you take too long in each level's Escape Sequence, instantly killing you on contact.
• Prince of Persia:
  • Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has an interesting variation. The ultimate sword kills any enemy in one hit, but you usually charge your time powers by stabbing stunned enemies with your secondary weapon, and there's no stunning when they turn to dust as soon as you touch them. But of course, by the time you get the ultimate sword, you've lost the Dagger of Time. So no harm, no foul.
  • In the SNES version of Prince of Persia, the Vizier's magic spells kill in one hit by disintegration.
  • In the first PC game, if you have your sword sheathed (or don't have it yet in the first level), any hit from the enemy is an instakill. In the second game, any hit coming from the Prince's back is an instakill as well.
• Psychonauts rarely has these, but they do come up in a few levels:
  • There's a sniper in the Milkman Conspiracy level that will instantly kill Raz if he's shot by it. Raz must figure out how to avoid it in order to progress.
  • Go ahead, jump into a meat grinder in the Meat Circus level. See what happens.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Throughout the series, the Suck Cannon can instantly suck up small enemies, killing them, and allow you to shoot the enemies back at other enemies. There are also weapons that turn enemies into animals. These weapons fire rays that gradually transform the enemy, with the amount of time it takes depending on the enemies size. For really small enemies, they will be transformed instantly as soon as you tap the fire button. They can act as a one hit kill on any enemy if you can dodge them long enough and keep the beam from losing contact with them.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, the Zodiac can instantly kill all enemies on screen apart from bosses and the Arctic Leviathans.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Rift Inducer/Rift Ripper is this, by virtue of being a black hole launcher, to any small-to-medium sized enemy.
• The third stage of Rocket Knight Adventures begins with a pool of reflective lava, which constantly rises and falls. Since the foreground blocks some of the platforms, you need that lava to see your reflection and cross the platforms safely. If you fall into the lava, you instantly lose a life. In contrast, the non-reflective lava later in the level doesn't instantly kill you if you fall in it (unless you're playing the game on Hard Mode, but that's another story), it just takes away a bit of your health.
• Rock Man 4 Minus Infinity
  • The Rush Cannon Adapter deals 255 hit points to anything it hits. However, a few of the bosses can turn it against you.
  • Toad Spell turns Toad Man into an easily-squished toad.
  • When Drill Man turns red, he gains an attack that causes parts of the ceiling to fall down. If it hits you, you're dead.
  • If Dust Man sucks you up, he turns you into an E-Tank. If you don't break free, he kicks you into the incinerator.
  • Shadow Man in Pharaoh Man's stage has one as a desperation attack. His Superboss appearance has a few more as well.
• In RosenkreuzStilette Freudenstachel, you get Kopiekreisel from Trauare, which, if used on Count Michael Zeppelin in the first Fortress stage, is guaranteed to land a 1-hit kill on it for sure. Then again, it works a lot like the Top Spin weapon from Mega Man 3.
• Shantae: Risky's Revenge: The tutorial battle has all its enemies take only one hit to kill.
• Aside from plain old Bottomless Pits and lava, The Smurfs (1994) on the SNES had three: the local equivalent of zombification (getting hit by a Bzz Fly or a Black Smurf), the rotating tree bridge^note If it rotates under you, you're dead before you reach the bottomless pit underneath, and collision with Gargamel.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The final boss fights in Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 begin with Sonic (or Tails) having no rings, and no way to get any rings, so getting hit will instantly cost you a life, as well as require you to restart the fight. It's even worse in Sonic 2, since you have to fight both Silver Sonic and Death Egg Robot with no rings!
  • The race against Metal Sonic in Sonic CD. Robotnik chases you with a laser — touch it and you're fried in an instant, regardless of rings.
  • The Egg Saucer in Sonic Advance 2 has a hand-swat attack that will end you regardless of whether or not you have rings or a shield.
  • Some bosses in Sonic Rush have a one hit kill attack, too, but Eggman's generous enough to give you an audio cue ("Get ready to be schooled!").
  • The End of the World in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) has black holes that pulls the characters in and kills with just one touch, what's even worse is that the stage has zero checkpoints, the lives are shared by the other heroes, and if a game over is received, the stage must replayed from the beginning.
  • In Act 2 of the Sonic Generations version of Seaside Hill, Sonic can run over the water by boosting. There is a giant chopper that attacks if you spend too long outside of certain areas. If it attacks, you lose a life, no matter what. Rings? Won't help you? Going as fast as you can? Won't help you. Super Sonic? IT'S NO USE!
  • Sonic Superstars: Press Factory Act 2 has a giant drone in the background that charges up over time, with buttons throughout the level resetting the charge. Should it become fully charged, the drone will set off explosions to destroy the entire zone, killing the player characters regardless of rings, shields, or Super Mode.
• Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: The robot sharks in Aquaria Towers will eat Spyro in one attack regardless of Sparks's presence. They are also too big to charge, and since they're underwater, Spyro can't breathe fire at them, and even if he could, they're made of metal. They are also much faster than him and are programmed to chase him down once they notice him, being capable of following him even if he jumps out of the water and onto dry land. Because of all this, they are nearly invincible enemies specifically designed to inflict this trope onto Spyro as soon as he enters their zone with no chance of escape. The only way to destroy them is with the superflame power up, which thankfully also counts as this trope.
• Super Mario Bros. series:
  • Poison water and lava throughout the platformers in the franchise will almost always kill Mario or any other player character on contact, regardless of health or powerups. The only exception is the goop-coated water of Super Mario Sunshine, and that game still has instant death poison water in the Lily Pad Ride bonus area.
  • Super Mario Bros. 3: There is an enemy called Boss Bass that roams across the water's surface and eats you in one gulp regardless of what powerup state you are in except for a Super Star. Its prominence in two aquatic levels of World 3 makes it difficult to deal with, due to the precarious platforming in said levels (luckily, its cousin from wholly underwater levels, Big Bertha, never intends to chase Mario or Luigi; it simply spends time playing with its child by "eating" it periodically). Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island has the Lunge Fish that acts similar to Boss Bass, except with a different pattern. As if that wasn't enough, both Lunge Fish and Boss Bass make an appearance in Yoshi's Island DS.
  • Super Mario World: The giant spiked pillars in the Fortresses and Castles will kill Mario in one shot, because unlike the other hazards in the game, the pillars are treated as solid walls, meaning they ignore Mercy Invincibility. So if you get caught from under one, say goodbye to your power up, your stored power up, then your life shortly after. Thankfully this is no longer the case in the New Super Mario Bros or Super Mario Maker games, where they are treated like most other enemies and obstacles.
  • Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3: Pouncers can one-shot Wario in this game, regardless of powerup state. Even if you merely bumped into its sides. This is because the sides and bottom are spiked, and spikes are an instant kill to Wario.
  • Super Mario 64: Swimming into Bubba's mouth or into a whirlpool, as well as getting crushed between a log and a hard place in Tall, Tall Mountain, trigger this.
  • New Super Mario Bros.: The sub-series has a Cheep Chomp that resembles a purple Boss Bass. The main difference is that it will try to eat you regardless of whether you're underwater or close to the water's surface, and if it succeeds you'll lose a life even if you have a powerup unless it's the Starman. In Super Mario Maker 2, this behavior is given to Porcupuffers, which in other games avert this trope, due to Cheep Chomps only appearing as a background cameo in New Super Mario Bros. U underwater levels.
  • Super Mario Galaxy: Thwomps get upgraded to this in this game and its sequel; getting smooshed by one is fatal no matter how much health Mario has remaining. Rhomps and crushing hazards can kill him instantly as well.
  • Super Mario 3D World: Fuzzy Hordes (in Fuzzy Time Mine from World 6) and poison fog (in Trick Trap Tower from World Castle) can kill Mario and his friends upon direct contact, which is why they must evade them at all costs as soon as they start overruning the levels where they appear.
  • Yoshi's Island: In all games in the series, thorns and spikes will kill Yoshi upon impact.
  • Wario: Master of Disguise: Fail to answer any of the questions the Sphinx asks you at the end of Episode 3, and Wario will be zapped to death instantly. And you have to answer three questions correctly in a row.
• In the last level of Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure, just before the final battle with Montana Max and his robot, you have to outrun Elmyra Duff on your way to the boss room. If she manages to catch you, Buster will hold up a sign that says, TRY AGAIN, and you instantly lose a life. There's also the Spikes of Doom, especially in the Ice Mountain levels.

Puzzle Games

• In Bejeweled Twist, Doom Gems will begin to appear at high levels. Unlike standard Bomb Gems, they can only be destroyed with Flame or Lightning Gems, and only count down if you make an unmatched move. Once a Doom Gem's timer runs out, your game immediately ends without a chance to save yourself.
• Gruntz:
  • The Welder's Kit tool fires a fireball that instantly incinerates any enemy grunt (unless they are wearing a Gunhat), but has a ridiculously long reload time.
  • The Timebombs destroy any gruntz in a 3x3 radius when they explode.
• Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes has the Reaper unit, which has a special effect where it instantly kills any enemy unit it damages. Reaper down to 8 damage vs. 100HP double-merged angel on the verge of killing you? Reaper takes it down. This also applies to bosses, such as Lordess Ludmilla, and even enemy players!
• Puzzle Quest 2: Two boss enemies (The Yeti and the Iron Giant^note not that one) have Crushing Kill, which deals 999 damage (more HP than all but the most dedicated level grinder will have). The final boss has Subjugation, which makes the player instantly surrender the fight, winning or losing.
• Scribblenauts:
  • Death in the first game.
  • Anything with the "deadly" adjective in the second, as well as the "dead potion".
  • Unlimited lets you edit most items directly — giving an object the "dead" or "gone" adjectives will poof them right out of the world.

Racing Games

• An annoying number of weapons can do this in Jak X: Combat Racing, especially those that are shot by someone with fully filled Dark Eco meter. Landmines, drones that hover on track, and most importantly, Peacemaker and Supernova weapons, which will destroy either the person currently on first place (unless they have a shield) or everybody before the racer that fired it. Supernova can also do this to its owner, as it has 10 seconds coundown during which it has to be fired, else it backfires.
• In Joe Danger, the horizontal red bars will violently knock you off your bike anytime you make contact with them. NO. EXCEPTIONS. It doesn't matter how many times the game's liberal application of physics have allowed you to land in ways that are physically impossible for someone on a motorbike, if even the slightest part of you touches the bar, you are sent flying. While other objects in the game will also send you flying at the slightest touch, they tend to be more noticeably dangerous; nobody expects to survive landing on a spike strip or giant mousetrap. Other objects in the game are randomly given the same instant death property as the horizontal bars, but they exist in hard to reach areas as Insurmountable Waist Height Fences.

Real-Time Strategy

• The "game ender", a unit or structure that can only be built at or near the end of the tech tree, and even then only at considerable time and expense, but once built, (almost) uncounterably devastates your opponent, is a staple of RTSes. Nuclear warheads are popular, but a common trend is to include a mobile unit with a short to medium ranged weapon that can one-shot anything.
• In Colobot, all enemy lifeforms you can encounter (aside from the Final Boss) will die instantly if you manage to land a single hit on them from the shooter bots.
• Dune II introduced Westwood Studio games' penchant for running over infantry with treaded vehicles.
• Command & Conquer: The game introduced the concept of commando units doing instant kills against infantry with their sniper rifles or similar weapons.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert: The attack dog will one-hit kill any infantry unit. Not very notable most of the time since infantry is pretty weak to begin with, but some weird levels have these super-powered infantry that you might have trouble with but can be neutralized rather quickly with attack dogs.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Battle Fortresses can run over any ground unit that's the size of an Apocalypse Tank and smaller.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The Soviet commando Natasha can take down any ground-based unit with her sniper rifle.
• Defense of the Ancients: All-Stars: Axe's ultimate skill unconditionally kills any hero below a certain HP threshold, even through other skills that normally protect you from fatal damage.
• In League of Legends, prior to having their abilities reworked, Kindred's passive would give them stacks for each marked enemy they successfully killed. Each stack that made their basic attacks do bonus damage equal to 1.25% of the target's health regardless of value, so if you somehow managed to get eighty stacks of the passive (from killing eighty targets), Kindred's basic attacks would do 100% of the target's health as damage every attack. This is assuming the target has not built any armour, which would mitigate this, but also does not account for the standard damage of Kindred's attacks as well.
• In Little King's Story, both you and the enemy have access to one-hit kills.
  • On your side: The Gourmet Chefs can take a Cockadoodle or Concodore (giant chicken-like enemies) up into the air and slam them into the ground, killing them instantly. Lumberjacks can destroy Jumbo Champloon's pencils in one hit. The Rainbow Wizard can turn enemies into rocks and logs.
  • On the enemy side: Yvonnes, the giant frogs, have several attacks, but if it looks like it's rotating back and forth, it's about to stick its tongue out, and if a unit is touched by it, that unit is eaten. All the dragons (except the Reborn Dragon), and Worker Onii carrying Dragon tails, can swing their tails in a circle, swatting any unit in its arc into space and killing it. The swinging beards on the narrow path on Sobamanjaro have the same end effect. Vaccuum Onii can suck up units. Finally, both the Blue Rat and King Rat can drag units into the shadows.
• Many things in Planet Blupi: Explosives (including the enemy variant, Bouncing Bomb), sticky traps (for enemies that can run over them), poisoned tomatoes (for Spiders), Bulldozers and Electrocutor's sparks (for the titular Blupis), fire (for organic creatures, including Blupis) and protection towers' electric barrier (for Spiders and Viruses).
• Pikmin :
  • Electricity can kill the eponymous Pikmin instantly, so any enemy attack based on this element is lethal. Same with bombs and any other explosive attack. Good thing Yellow Pikmin can use bombs in the first game and resist electricity in the second. Also, in the third, electricity is nerfed so that it can only stun non-yellow Pikmin, and all of them can carry and throw bombs.
  • Pikmin 2: During the later fights with the Empress Bulblax, there's her offsprings, the Bulbord Larvae. They die in one hit, but also kill Pikmin in one hit (as well as deal a good chunk of damage to the captains), and they do it fast. Given how the Empress Bulblax also constantly gives birth to the little buggers, they can become deadly if left unchecked. A captain can distract them to leave the other free to attack the Empress, but that can be easier said than done.
  • Pikmin 3: The final boss will instantly kill any enemy it touches during the "chase" phase. Subverted in that the enemies are made out of the same material as it and are implied to be created by the same being. The Plasm Wraith could just be re-absorbing them, but the process still resembles the enemies "dying," their health circles instantly draining.
• In Sacrifice, the ultimate spells of Charnel (Death and Intestinal Vaporization), James (Bovine Intervention and Bore) and Persephone (Charm) will instantly defeat the enemy minions you are targeting. Some of these spells even annihilated the body, preventing resurrection and allowing the instant pick up of souls.
• In Starcraft, the Zerg Queen could oneshot any non-robotic, non-Archon ground unit with its Spawn Broodling ability. Also the Terran Science Vessel's Irradiate ability deals 250 damage over time to any organic unit, which is for all practical purposes a one-hit kill against nearly all organic units with the exception of the high-hp Ultralisk and Devourer, and the latter will be on the brink of death after being irradiated.
• Warcraft:
  • In Warcraft II, the Mage's Polymorph spell turned any unit into a neutral critter. Unlike in the sequels, the spell is permanent, making it work like a one hit KO.
  • Warcraft III has the Transmute spell used by the Goblin Alchemist hero, which can oneshot most non-hero units and convert them into gold for the player who owns the Alchemist. There's also the Doom spell by the Pitlord which deals damage over time until the unit dies, upon which a Doom Guard is spawned. There's also the Finger of Death spell used by various NPCs in the campaign that just seems to kill stuff outright.

Roguelikes

• In Angband, diving too quickly into the dungeon without proper resistances is likely to end badly. It's not uncommon for a powerful dragon to breathe at a player before the player can even see it, resulting in the infamous "It breathes. -more- You die." message. Naturally, this means starting the game all over again. Gaining elemental resistances through equipment and/or spells counters this, at least until deeper in the dungeon where you run into monsters that can cast Mana storms or breathe Time.
• The Binding of Isaac:
  • Using the Bible against Mom or Mom's Heart/It Lives will kill them instantly, which is accurate to the game's first ending. Using the Bible against Satan will kill you instantly, regardless of any extra lives you have. Using the Bible anywhere else simply gives you wings for the duration of the room.
  • Using the Suicide King card will not only kill you on the spot, but it will also spawn a ton of pickups and items. Unless you have an Extra Life, collecting these goods is impossible.
  • Using the Chaos Card will result in you throwing a projectile that will kill anything it touches, even late-game bosses. It kills one phase of harder endgame bosses, such as Mega Satan, Dogma or Mother. The only bosses that can survive it are Delirium and The Beast.
  • Plan C combines the above two examples into one item. It will instantly annihilate any enemy in the room, but will also instantly annihilate you three seconds later. Unlike Chaos Card, Plan C technically does work on Delirium, but its incredibly long death animation means that you die first. However it's useful during The Beast, as it will trigger the cutscene before you die.
  • The Necronomicon effect (which is caused by using the Necronomicon, using the Death card, losing Black Hearts, and various other means) will kill every weak enemy in a room, but it will only do major damage to stronger enemies (such as the Oob) and most bosses.
  • Euthanasia and Little Horn both give your tears a chance to instantly kill any non-boss enemy on contact. Including invulnerable ones.
  • Damocles spawns a sword above you that has a random chance of dropping and instantly killing you any time after taking a hit, regardless of health. The upside to this item being that all future item sources are doubled while it's activated.
• Brutal Orchestra: Both final bosses have a one-hit kill attack. Heaven has the rare move "Come Home," which will Ret-Gone the party member standing directly in front of it. Osman Sinnoks will end each of his turns with "Mortal Horizon," including both forms of him when he splits into a Dual Boss for his second phase. The bosses Trigger Fingers and Ouroboros also have lethal-damaging attacks, but they are survivable under extreme conditions.
• Darkest Dungeon has the Heart of Darkness' "Come Unto Your Maker", which cannot be avoided, blocked, survived by way of Death's Door, interrupted or generally stopped in any way or form. The only defense you have is the fact it will only use it twice in the entire battle, and that you get to pick who goes.
• Some attacks in Dicey Dungeons do 999 damage, the maximum amount, defeating the opponent in one hit:
  • Cornelius' Nightmare instantly kills you but requires 99 pips to charge. In fact, he starts with one dice and gets another each turn to charge it faster, so you have to defeat him before he could use it.
  • In the Halloween Special, the Stubbed Toe and Jealous Sword can be made into the Night Terrors gadget, which deals 999 damage... to yourself.
  • In Reunion, there are four Workout Cards that give the Warrior victory points: 100 Pushups, 100 Situps, 100 Squats, and 10km Run. When all the victory points are collected, he gets the Omnislash Workout Card, which unlocks a special Limit Break that makes him instantly defeat his enemy with 9999 damage.
• The Wallmonger boss in Enter the Gungeon features the only attack in the game which can kill you instantly, which it will use if it reaches the other side of the arena.
• For the King: Every single-target attack by an Astronomer has a small chance to trigger the Class's "Black Hole" special ability and annihilate the target. This forfeits the XP and Item Drop rewards of killing it normally, but produces a unique consumable item as a byproduct.
• SSI's 80s game Gemstone Warrior and its sequel Gemstone Healer had your warrior carry a limited number of Fireballs. If these hit a target, then the resulting explosion kills everything caught in the explosion (including yourself).
• NetHack:
  • Many, many games have ended with the message "Oh no, <monster>'s using the touch of death!" The player can sometimes acquire their own version of this spell, called Finger of Death, after the D&D spell listed above.
  • Being turned to stone, being transformed into a green slime, being disintegrated, being dragged underwater, being eaten (not instantly fatal to you, but fatal if done to/by pets), swords that can behead or bisect you or an enemy instantly, and of course the wand of death.
  • The canonical One Hit Kill and Yet Another Annoying Death is "You fall into a pit! You land on a set of sharp iron spikes! The spikes were poisoned! The poison was deadly...". Being on the wrong end of this is a sure sign that the Random Number God is out to get you, as it requires: firstly, that a spiked pit be generated; secondly, that you hit the chance that the spikes are poisoned (1 in 7 each time falling into the pit); and thirdly, that the poison is classified as deadly (1 in 20 chance each time you take poison damage). However this can be avoided through Acquired Poison Immunity.
  • Nethack has the concept of a "delayed instadeath" where whatever it is will kill you, but only after a few turns, allowing a lucky and knowledgeable player to save themselves. Examples include the Amulet of Strangulation, the above mentioned transformation into a green slime, and some instances of being petrified.
  • The Nethack variation Slash'EM features an artifact weapon which insta-kills any enemy it is thrown at, but breaks upon use.
• In Nuclear Throne, touching a Laser Crystal will deal 20 damage, exactly enough to kill the healthiest mutant and more than enough to kill anybody else. The Hyper Crystal takes this even further; touching that will deal a whopping 200 damage!
• What stops any combination of items from ever being a true Game-Breaker in Spelunky and Spelunky 2 is that the game is filled with these. If you fall on spikes, get eaten by a Mantrap, land on a snap trap, are caught in an explosion, get crushed by Olmec, a spikeball, or a falling block, are hit by a Crush Trap, get rolled over by a boulder or Quillback, are snapped by a Clam Trap, get hit by lava, get telefragged, get touched by the ghost, it's all instant death, no matter how much health you've accumulated.

Shoot 'Em Ups

• Similar to the above is the Doomsday Infector from Bubble Tanks 2, except the range is infinite and the virus homes in onto the enemy.
• One of the starting weapons in ColourFire's arcade mode is a virus that infects enemies and kills them in one hit, blowing up into even more viruses. The only trouble is its short range, and that it has to wear down their health from the inside before they die.
• Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban: when your father's ghost possesses you, your Baka will transform into your invincible dad and unleash explosive blasts from his punches. These are so powerful they can even kill bosses in a single hit.
• Heavy Weapon has three regular enemies that will kill you in one hit, regardless of the strength of your Deflector Shields. This can be very bad because you lose all your Smart Bombs on death!
  • "Havanski Atomic Bombers" drop A-bombs, which, if not destroyed, will kill you no matter where you are on the screen. A definite Demonic Spider with tons of health.
  • "Romanov Attack Satellites" will fire out a deathray below that fries your tank instantly. To avoid death, keep firing at it to push it away so that it will not fire its laser while moving towards you.
  • "Shovak Bulldozers" are advancing mooks of doom that kill you if you brush against one. To avoid death, you have to push them away by constantly firing at them.
  • As for bosses, War Wrecker's wrecking ball, Eyebot's lightning, as well as Collision Damage with Kommie Kong, Mechworm, and X-Bot will destroy you instantly.
  • On the bright side, your character has two — Nukes will kill all regular enemies on the screen, and the Megalaser will do the same.
• Sol Divide, a fantasy-themed game who otherwise plays out like a space shooter, have a Death Spell, which kills every enemy onscreen, including most bosses (except for the last few). The downside is that it consumes everything in your Mana meter and you're unable to cast backup spells in following stages because of the magic drain, making it Too Awesome to Use.
• In Space Invaders Infinity Gene, the Classic weapon (modeled after the cannon's design from the original game) first a single laser that can kill any normal mook and most sub-bosses with a single shot. To keep this from being a total Game-Breaker, the Classic cannon can never be upgraded, and is next-to-useless against the Final Boss.
• Touhou Project:
  • The series features several superpowers like this. Enfant Terrible Flandre can disintegrate objects at range with no visible weapon by targeting their "weak point", Cute Ghost Girl Yuyuko can kill with a thought, Keine and Yukari can Ret-Gone you with their superpowers, you can fight the not-so-grim reaper Komachi, Cute Monster Girl Yamame, who can inflict every disease ever known on you at once, etc. Isn't it a good thing the Spellcard System prevents "real" deaths?
  • Hisoutensoku has Reimu's Fantasy Heaven, which is so strong that if you use it in the third round of a match, it gets its very own theme music. The move is one big Shout-Out to the Hokuto no Ken example above; the theme music that plays in the third round version is a Suspiciously Similar Song to the Fatal KO theme from Fist of the North Star: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment, and the move is called "Musou Tensei" in Japanese, which is also the name of Hokuto Shinken's ultimate technique.
  • The side story manga also contain this. In one of the early chapters of Inaba Of The Moon, Inaba Of The Earth, Tewi goes for the phrase "One Hit Kill" brandishing a giant mallet in order to make mochi. (She coincidentally also smashes Reisen's fingers.)

Simulation Games

• Airfix Dogfighter:
  • Normally, bumping into objects and walls only drops a tiny sliver of your health and makes you lose speed, but sometimes, you can crash onto something in such a way that your plane just explodes instantly. In particular, flying onto doors while they're in the middle of opening is a guaranteed death. Can double as a Game-Breaking Bug, since you can never be sure what is the point where the game deems the crash as fatal.
  • Early missions have enemy areas that you aren't supposed to fly to yet, and the game will warn you that if you remain there, you will be blown to bits. Stay there any few seconds longer, and it's instant death.
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • Any hit that results in a bisection is always lethal, as well as immersing a creature in liquid and then freezing the liquid (magma into obsidian or water into ice), or caving walls or floors in on an enemy. Other favourite, but less reliable kinds of instant death are magma (although some creatures are immune to it), dropping bridges on the enemy (except for the biggest creatures), and decapitation or piercing the brain with a weapon or shattered piece of skull (as long as the target isn't undead and has only one functioning head left, and has a functional head to begin with).
  • Some forms of evil weather, such as the ones found in Waterburned, are instantaneously fatal to dwarves.
  • Some of the more devious traps, like the one that fires a large amount of serrated disks at whatever poor invader steps onto them, usually result in Ludicrous Gibs and Chunky Salsa all 'round, even when the gibs' owner is Kaiju-sized. Just remember to plan for creatures that don't have anything to dismember.
  • The most reliable instant kills in the game are collapsing terrain, be it natural stone that buries the foe completely or an artificial floor made just for the purpose of falling onto an enemy and shattering on impact while still making sure it dies, and encasement in recently-frozen ice or cooling magma (resulting in obsidian). Nothing in the game, not even the strongest and unholiest of beasts, can survive either.
• MechWarrior series:
  • In many of the games, one can load up so many weapons that you can kill smaller enemy Humongous Mecha with a single Alpha Strike. Mechwarrior 4 has protection against this; no matter how much firepower you load onto a mech, you cannot kill an enemy mech with a single salvo; the first shot can at most drop their center torso or cockpit — the most important sections — to 1 hp.
  • For most of Mechwarrior Living Legends history, a single LBX/20 shotgun blast could kill any Space Plane, or at least render them inoperative with an engine shot. The lethality has been toned down, but it is still extremely painful to the aircraft.
  • The Long Tom Artillery Piece in Living Legends can smite smaller mechs from the across the map with a direct hit ("DEATH FROM AFAR!"), and it will send anything else running back to the repair gantry. However, it all but requires a Target Spotter, must be deployed to fire, and requires some mental arithmetic to lob the shell at the right angle.
• In Nomad (a.k.a. Project Nomad), all space combat is done with missiles. The most powerful missiles are the Phelonese Quietus missiles capable of destroying any ship (except for 2) with a single hit. They're also the most expensive (relatively, as the trading system in the game is of the barter variety) and can only be purchased from the Phelonese. It should be noted, though, that the missiles alone don't guarantee victory in a battle. The victor is usually whoever has the best systems and faster reactions. You might have a dozen Quietus missiles, but the enemy has better targetting sensors and missile loaders, meaning he can put two missiles into your ship before you have a chance to fire your (slow-loading) Quietus missile.
• Vector Thrust has this in store for any unit hit by a L1WAC discharge, SWBM detonation, or MPBM impact.
• Helicopter and plane bullets are always one-hit kills in Wolf (DOS). Bullets fired by ground-based hunters may sometimes be one-hit kills, but are just as often two-hit kills.
• In the X-Universe games, sufficiently powerful weapons can destroy certain ships in one hit. Scout craft, for example, will get vaporized by a single shot from a capital ship's guns, a single blast from any craft equipped with a Plasma Burst Generator, or certain powerful tracking missiles such as the Hurricane and the Disruptor. Earth's Torus Aeternal will vaporize any ship that strays out of the designated docking area — the Earth State doesn't mess around.

Sports Games

• Punch-Out!!: Certain opponents in the series have special attacks that can knock Little Mac down instantly. Bald Bull, for example (and historically the first in the series), has his powerful Bull Charge... which can be countered by Mac to knock him down instead. Same with Bear Hugger's namesake hug in the arcade (it was nerfed for the SNES and Wii games, depleting only 25% of Mac's health meter in the former and 50% in the latter), Super Macho Man's spin punch (except in the Wii game during Contender mode), Mike Tyson/Mr. Dream's uppercuts during the first half of the first round, Dragon Chan's flying triangle kick (exclusive to the SNES game), Rick and Nick Bruiser's Earthquaker punch, Von Kaiser's spin punch (exclusive to Title Defense in the Wii game), Mr. Sandman's final wink uppercut during his Berserker Rage (exclusive to Title Defense in the Wii game), and Doc Louis' Star Punch. Conversely, Little Mac can also knock down (or even out) his opponents during key circumstances, though these conditions are difficult to figure out without outside sources.

Stealth-Based Games

• Assassin's Creed:
  • Stealth assassinations with the Hidden Blade will kill anyone in one hit, even bosses/assassination targets. The trick is that the target either can't be aware of the user or, in open combat, must be distracted or downed.
  • Counter Attacks in Assassin's Creed tend to result in some extremely brutal one-hit kills, i.e. slapping a guard in the face to spin him around and then stabbing your sword into his hip and out his crotch. Moreover, the assassin has full invincibility frames for the duration of the counter kill animation.
  • In Assassin's Creed II, while the archers, agiles, and regular guards with berets die in a single "counter kill", the regular guards with helmets have to have low health before this happens (counter attacks before that will only drain health as the Assassin drives them back), and brutes and seekers can only be countered by polearms, axes, or bastard swords (wielded by brutes, seekers, or mercenaries). However, in return for the smallest window of opportunity, Hidden Blade counters are always a OHK against any weapon, making it the best melee weapon for any player who can consistently time the button press, and the second game made it much easier to pull off, with fewer drawbacks.
  • Executions Streaks, introduced in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, enable the Assassin to chain one-hit kills together regardless of the enemy type or their state of awareness. The catch is that the enemies have to be within melee range and any successful attacks against him break the streak.
• Ghost of Tsushima: Jin doesn't start off able to stealth kill someone but he learns quickly, and uses his shorter tanto blade to assassinate. Notably, until he upgrades the tanto, his executions are long, drawn out, and noisy.
• Hitman: The majority of Agent 47's attacks: strangling, poisoning, explosives and sniper shots, although, seeing as most of his opponents are mere humans, it's not surprising.
• Starting from Metal Gear Solid onwards, almost all the incarnations of Snake can do this after putting someone in a sleeperhold. After this, Snake can either break their necks or in later games slit their throats with his knife. Snake's one-hit kill predates all the other heroes' in the stealth action genre.
• The Sniper Wasps in Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, which are only accessed through the Binoculars (which in turn are only available in Gizzard's Gulch).
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the Spiritual Successor to the Tenchu series and like those games, Wolf can instantly kill non-bosses that he sneaks up on. Bottomless falls are also instant death and these will also affect bosses such as the Demon of Hatred.
• Sly Cooper:
  • Throughout all of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus the player will die from most things in a single strike unless the player has a lucky charm. However, you can also kill enemies (sans bosses) in a single hit.
  • In Sly 2: Band of Thieves there are a quite a few:
    • In the missions Mojo Trap Action and Crypt Hack Bentley will be carrying a mojo collector in the former and an acid battery in the latter. Both missions will end if he is hit even once.
    • If Sly hits the flames in the mission Thermal Ride, he will be burnt and killed instantly.
    • Unusually in the final mission Showdown with Clock-La, Sly will die instantly if he falls whilst going to rescue Bentley and Murray.
  • In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves there are a couple instances:
    • In the mission Operation: Moon Crash if Sly attempts to explore Ayers Rock, Carmelita (who's possessed by the mask of dark earth) will throw the dynamite car she is holding and the unavoidable explosion will kill Sly instantly.
    • During the jolly boat sequences if the player attempts to leave Blood Bath Bay a series of cannon balls will massacre the player and kill them instantly.
    • The Guru will instantly die in the mission A Deadly Bite if he hits the water and the same goes for Sly if he misses the whale fly while he is paragliding.
• Splinter Cell:
  • Earlier games had the elbow strike, which provided a single-hit KO if applied to the back of the head. Otherwise, it stuns. In all games, of course, a headshot is a reliable kill, made trickier if the enemy is equipped with helmets.
  • In the later games, Sam can kill or knock out any guard he gets close enough to with a single quick and very efficient stab of his knife or punch/palm strike to the brain.
  • Conviction has the Mark and Execute system. Although you need to melee kill an enemy to make use of it, it allows you to mark up to four enemies and OHK all of them instantly (or fast enough that it doesn't matter).
• The Tenchu franchise is based around stealth kills. If you attack a guard who is unaware of your presence, you kill him instantly and cinematically as only a freakin' Ninja can.
• In the Thief series, human enemies can be instantly knocked out with the blackjack, instantly killed with the sword/dagger, or instantly killed with the broadhead arrows if shot in the head or chest. In order to do this, however, they mustn't be alert.

Survival Horror

• in 2Dark, a sneak attack with a knife amounts to this on everyone besides the level bosses.
• In Alien: Isolation, if the Xenomorph catches you, it's game over.
• The Evil Within goes to town on this one. Environmental hazards, interactive Run or Die sequences, & special attacks from bosses and ordinary enemies alike can all end you instantly. In fact, the last regular boss is the easiest one in the game simply because it doesn't have any inescapable One-Hit Kill moves.
  • The game also has a special Harder Than Hard mode called AKUMU where everything is a OHK; hit by a random enemy? Dead. Trip a trap? Dead. Step on a campfire? Dead. Have fun.
• Many a Big Bad in the Fatal Frame series can kill the protagonist in one hit (unless said protagonist has a Mirror Stone/Stone Mirror). Some of the Mooks can do this, too.
• Each of the stalkers in Haunting Ground have an attack that instantly kills Fiona. Daniella and Riccardo can stab and shoot her respectively, Lorenzo delivers a crushing Megaton Punch, and any damage received while incapacitated (i.e. crawling along the ground in panic mode) will result in an instant Game Over.
• In The Last of Us, melee combat with Clicker type Infected is generally not advisable, as they go straight for the jugular if they grab you. You can, however, learn a skill that allows you to escape the deadly grasp of a Clicker, with a shiv and good reflexes. Bloaters as well, although unlike Clickers, there is no skill to save you, and you're in for a bit of a shock if they get you...
• Neverending Nightmares has you play as a character exploring his nightmares. Of course, he has some physical and mental health issues and doesn't view himself in the highest regard, so you have to sneak and hide from everything you encounter, lest they handily murder you in a swift and violent fashion.
• The Peacekeeper from The Persistence is a brittle dagger which can kill any enemy besides a Bloodhound with a single stab.
• Resident Evil:
  • The earlier games have Neptune, who can swallow the player whole; the Hunters, who can decapitate the player, and Nemesis, who can impale his victims through the head, among others.
  • Resident Evil 0 introduces Lurkers, gigantic frogs who will kill you if you try to run past them. No matter how far you get they'll lasso you with their tongue and eat you alive. It's practically a guaranteed trap for the unwary as you will be well past them and almost to the ladder before they attack, but thankfully they only appear on one specific walkway in one specific area.
  • Capcom's Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 have various one-hit kills of two kinds, one from regular gameplay or one from quick-time events. One-hit-kills during regular gameplay may result from the player-characters getting decapitated by enemies equipped with a chainsaw, impaled by a Garrador's Wolverine Claws, being crushed by a huge rock, or being eaten by creatures like mutated alligators (exclusive to RE5) or salamanders (Del Lago in RE 4). Failures for quick-time-events frequently result in deaths for the player characters.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations introduces the Scagdead enemy, which will cause one of these when caught by its' jaw attack. In RAID Mode, they can spawn with modifiers like enhanced speed, and the AI has a nasty habit of always performing the One-Hit Kill move. The console release also adds barnacle-like enemies who will kill you dead if they get close.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations 2 adds quite a lot of ways to be killed in one hit.
    • In episode 1, there's the trash compactor in Claire's portion.
    • Episode 2 and onwards for Barry, there's the Glasps and Dhurlga's. Former ally Pedro can do this with his drill.
    • Episode 3 has three ways for Claire. There's a room with a spiked ceiling, a room with lasers that focus on a character then a series of four doors in which three have blades on the back.
    • Episode 4 also features Glasps for Claire and falling from the top of the tower.
  • Resident Evil 2 (Remake) has the Tyrant (Mr. X) that's been stalking you throughout the game and that serves as Leon's final boss has an instant kill attack with his claws in the last fight.
• Dino Crisis:
  • The original Dino Crisis featured a mix/combine option much like Resident Evil, which allowed you to combine various items such as medpacks and tranquilizer darts with each other or mix them with other pickups that can do things like give you more of an item or amplify the item's effect. Combining the highest level of Tranquilizer Dart with a Resuscitation (which acts as an extra life in case you are killed) creates a single poison dart which is capable of immediately killing any dinosaur other than the T-Rex, making them worth their weight in gold when dealing with extremely dangerous Therazinosaurs.
• Silent Hill:
  • Silent Hill had a puzzle that automatically killed you if you did the wrong thing. Given the nature of the clues in that game, it was naturally impossible to figure that out without dying.
  • They must have been counting on players noticing the broken chain on either side of the fridge, which is hard to see for those not paying close attention. The lesson there is to never attempt a no-save run on your first playthrough. Silent Hill 3 has another of these One Hit Kill puzzles, involving a sewer-dwelling aquatic monster and a submerged hair dryer.
  • Silent Hill 2's first encounters with Pyramid Head. Anyone paying the slightest amount of attention knows on sight that if that knife comes down on you, it's over. The first bosses of SH 1 and SH 3 also have instant-kill attacks.
• Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion has Specimen 9, a strange being that only attacks the player when they are AFK for too long. It can even attack in the save rooms and arcades.

Third-Person Shooter

• Next to flareguns, the lighthouse in the second DLC to Alan Wake, "The Writer", is this to the Taken when you're in an area that isn't obstructed by giant boulders (which can be "cleared" out).
• Gears of War:
  • The Lancer assault rifle has an underbelly chainsaw capable of one-hit kills. Gears of War 2 however has an added quick-time event should two people lock themselves into a "chainsaw duel" and victory is achieved by the person mashing the melee button the fastest.
  • In both games, sniper rifle headshots, torque bow shot impalements, and Boomshot (grenade launcher) direct hits all are one hit kills.
  • In the third installment, there is the aptly named "One-Shot." Hit an enemy anywhere and he turns into chunky salsa.
  • Are you kidding? EVERY single weapon that fires bullets in these games is capable of a Head Shot instant kill. About the only things that can't instagib you are Flamethrowers and Ink Grenades because they don't shoot bullets.
  • How can we not mention the infamous shotguns? The games practically revolve around these weapons as everyone and their mother uses them in multiplayer. This is because it's a default weapon, and it can turn an opponent into hamburger at close range with one shot. If ever there was a game series where players utterly destroyed the intentions of the designers by exploiting a single weapon, this is it.
• While any enemy can potentially instantly kill you in Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, the Hard difficulty boost their accuracy and has them always aim for the head, greatly increasing the chance.
• Gotcha Force features several. The most potent is the Ultimate Cannon, which will one-shot anything that gets nailed by it. One of the harder stages in the game involves taking out six in a single level (which also features Arrow Ninjas that can anchor an opponent in place). Anyone nailed with a missile from the ICBM Tank or the Death ICBM also will get taken out in one shot, although those are easier to evade. These methods are distinct in that they are the one exception to friendly fire being Scratch Damage — friend or foe, these attacks will finish anyone hit by them.
• Snipers and a few other enemies in Max Payne 3 can kill Max in one shot independently of the pain meter, which means you don't get a Last Stand even if you have painkillers.
• Splatoon:
  • As far as the single-player mode goes:
    • The boss Ravenous Octomaw can kill Agent 3 instantly if he or she can't quickly escape from the swallowing attack.
    • Getting squished by Octostomp or an Octostamp will knock you straight back to the checkpoint without question.
  • As far as multiplayer weapons go, the game has plenty, but they're the "more damage than the player can handle" variety instead of the "death flag" variety. That said, pushing a Bubbler or a Kraken off the stage or into water is still instant death.
    • Chargers at or near the maximum charge (except the Bamboozler 14 MkI) inflict lethal damage at range that Defense Up can't sufficiently impair. Spamming it is far less effective, and a sign you're invading their personal space.
    • Contact with a roller body (except the Carbon Roller) is roadkill. Flick attacks are lethal at close range; a bit further away with the Dynamo Rollers.
    • Direct contact with a Blaster round will blow you apart. Splash damage isn't fatal... on the first shot.
    • Close proximity to any bomb subweapon (except the Burst Bomb, Disruptor or Point Sensor) is fatal. Inkzooka rounds also kill on contact, unless you're behind a wall (and if lag strikes, not even then).
    • The Kraken's gore attack is also fatal on contact. If you're not rapid-firing down a narrow path or have a Bubbler or Kraken of your own ready, there's only one way to handle it.
    • The Inkstrike and Killer Wail inflict small amounts of damage very rapidly, so you can survive if you're on the edge when they go off. Ground zero? Say goodnight. DJ Octavio uses the latter regularly in the fight with him.
    • The Rainmaker is on a 60-second timer that counts down faster if you retreat. If you run the clock out, it will self-destruct and take you with it. It also erects a barrier that spreads wider as it is pumped with a single color of ink; if it bursts with you close to it and the color ain't yours, give our regards to the spawning pool.
• Splatoon 2 is more of the same.
  • Single Player doesn't have any truly one-hit kills of their own due to the new Last Chance Hit Point system, but getting nailed during that will splat your inkling on the spot. The single exception is the ink bag in the Octo Expansion. If you screw up a certain way in a given level (letting an 8-ball fall, for example), it will gib you in blatant violation of Mercy Invincibility. Expect to see the words "test failed" often.
  • Salmon Run
    • Maws, like the Octomaw, can try to eat your Inkling whole, but sometimes, if physics favors you, you can get out of being swallowed.
    • Steelhead sacs behave like Splat Bombs and should be treated as such; they will gib you when they explode.
    • Steel Eels are mobile Splash Walls; while they inflict moderate amounts of damage on direct contact, you can be pinned between multiple segments and wasted. Griller spills will melt you outright.
  • Ink Battles
    • Chargers are still one-shots at maximum charge (barring the Bamboozlers if they return), but they have an immutable charge time based on the weapon model, so they can't just splat you quickly with just the main shot. This is mitigated in that non-scope models can hold a charge briefly (longer with the Goo Tuber). Other Main and Sub weapons are subjected to the same rules.
    • Jump campers quickly learned to fear the Splashdown due to it exploding violently on contact with the ground. Do not attempt this without a Charger.
    • The Baller can inksplode on the user's command, or when the Special meter empties, nuking anyone in close proximity, and the user is invulnerable during the detonation. It is not unheard of for a Baller to counter a Splashdown in this fashion.
    • The Bubble Blower scatters bubbles around the arena that bounce about, distribute ink where they land, and may dissipate over time or from hostile fire. If you or a buddy pops the bubble with a hostile nearby, the hostile pops unless they're in a Baller.
    • The Ultra Stamp smashes away any hostile ink that's in front of it, and that includes you if you're beneath it when it lands. Expect Thor to laugh if you think you can block a thrown Ultra Stamp with your face.
    • The Booyah Bomb is equivalent to the Inkstrike in terms of damage dispensation; get caught at ground zero and you're kamaboko.
    • MC Princess Diaries (the final version of Shifty Station) has the Hyperbombs and Princess Cannon from the Octo Expansion as stage hazards. They're oversized Suction Bombs and Killer Wails in all but name; if you're in the splash zone when they go off, prepare to be atomized.
• Splatoon 3 has similar main and subweapons as before, but the specials are all new. The Splatfest World Premiere got to show them off.
  • The Stringers are a new series of weapon that fire ink arrows that can be charged up to explode, and further to tighten the trajectory. If all three arrows hit your bare chest, then you just got served on a platter.
  • The Reefslider is a Baller with a fixed trajectory that can be detonated prematurely. You're going for a swim if you're in the splash zone on this one.^*Cuttlefish: As sea creatures, you know we Inklings can't swim! Heh heh...
  • The Trizooka is an Inkzooka with only three shots compared to the all-you-can-shoot frenzy with the original; the Triple Inkstrike has a smaller blast zone but likewise has three shots. You only need one shot to splat someone.
  • The Ink Vac sucks up ink for a period of time before that wad gets thrown back, and it inksplodes where it lands. If the wad hits or you're close to it when it blows, you will be back at the spawning pod before you can say "Return to freakin' sender!"
  • In Alterna, you get challenges similar to the Octo Expansion. However, you don't get a warning via ink sac on the back this time; you mess up, O.R.C.A. will shine a spotlight on you before spilling toxic ink for a one-hit kill.
• Total Overdose gives Ram a variety of One Hit Kill options, but only the targeted headshot is worth any appreciable points. Most Loco Moves are instantly deadly in a pinch; the Tornado sprays dual uzis in 360 degrees, El Toro allows Ram to charge and headbutt enemies to death, the Explosive Pinata lures in enemies before detonating, and the Golden Gun is loaded with 4 bullets that autokill enemies in the general direction it's fired. These may seem like game breakers, but given the volume of enemies and increasing style-point requirements, their use isn't generally ideal, and mostly reserved for panic situations.

Tower Defense

• In Outplay Entertainment's Alien Creeps, one Rocket Tower sub-upgrade is the M.A.R.V drone. The M.A.R.V does less damage than the regular Rocket Tower, but it has a faster rate of fire, longer range and you can buy a M.A.R.V upgrade called the "OHK" missile. Normally firing two red missiles, at random intervals the M.A.R.V will instead launch a single, slow-moving yellow "OHK" which will instantly kill anything including a few bosses (the top alien leader is immune). This makes it a fantastic tower against units with heavy armor, force fields and tons of health such as the Destroyer and vulnerable bosses.
• Cursed Treasure 2 has the "Bury Alive" skill. At max level, this makes all undead crypt orbs have a 5% chance of instakilling any enemy they hit. It doesn't work on bosses but it does work on all Champion enemies.
• Defense Grid: The Awakening has the Orbital Laser, an Area of Effect attack that destroys any enemy within its damage radius, even Crashers and Juggernauts. In exchange, however, it takes a few minutes to recharge, and you do not get any Resources for killing enemies with the Orbital Laser.
• The Immploder and Beam cutter from Desert Moon. The former instantly explodes a Mook and knocks back all mooks around it, while the latter fires a beam that kills everything it passes through. The downside of both weapons are the long intervals between shots.
• Kingdom Rush has the Arcane Wizard's Death Ray and the Musketeer Garrison's Sniper Shot. The sequel has the DWAARP's Core Drill. A number of heroes in both games also have a skill than can do this. All of these instant-kills work on Giant Mooks, but not bosses.
• Mini Robot Wars has the Atomic Bot, which can instantly wreck anything short of a Giant. The upgrade allows it to even destroy a Giant in one hit, but not Titans. On the evil machines' side, we have the Giant and Titan which can both instakill a Minirobot in one hit, the latter can even destroy three in one blow!
• Plants vs. Zombies:
  • In the first game, Chomper bites and all forms of one-shot plant, plus the Cob Cannon upgrade, can take out any zombie except a Gargantaur in one shot, usually several at a time. Spikeweeds inflict a one-hit kill on the Zomboni. On the zombie side, a blow from a Gargantaur's road sign, telephone pole or other zombie, or being run over by a Zomboni, will kill any plant except a Spikerock instantly. Dr Zomboss' attacks are also instantly lethal to plants, one of which is unavoidable.
  • The sequel has the Citron's Plant Food upgrade, which fires a plasma ball that bowls over zombies in its path and can even kill a Gargantuar in one hit. The zombies have the Explorer, who burns your plants with a torch, the Barrel Roller and Pianist, who run over your plants with a barrel and piano respectively, and the Gargantuar Prime who uses its Eye Beams to incinerate your back-row plants. The Electric Blueberry's attack is so powerful, it can even destroy a Gargantuar in one hit... but it targets a random zombie on the lawn.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Advance Wars: Dual Strike introduced Oozium 238, a Blob Monster that can only move one space per turn but will instantly destroy any unit if they move onto its space. They're not too dangerous unless you get surrounded, but they can be costly to engage as their defense is high enough that it's a struggle to inflict enough damage on them to take them out in one turn.
• In Civilization, it can take a lot of time and trouble to conquer a city, and even more to destroy one. Unless you're playing Civilization: Call to Power and have an Eco Ranger unit; it will completely remove a city from the map in a single hit.
• The Stalker class in Dark Deity has a skill called "Fatal", which has a flat 5% chance of killing an enemy outright, regardless of HP.
• In the Disgaea series, any attack that successfully hits somebody standing on a panel with the Deathblow geo effect results in instant death, regardless of whether the attack actually did damage. Also, in 2, the Samurai class has the ability to randomly score an instant kill with standard attacks while in critical health, and the Bone Dragons possess the Vendetta evility in 3 and 4, which allows for a low chance of an instant kill upon a successful counterattack.
• Final Fantasy Tactics series:
  • Original FFT:
    • The twin assassins Celia and Lede have an ability called "Stop Breath", in which they reach out to their target and do just that. It's 100% effective, unblockable (except via rarely-used items), and no, you never get to play with it yourself, because the villains always get the coolest toys.
    • One of the optional characters, Beowulf, has a petrification attack that works surprisingly often. Also, Cloud has an attack that kills, petrifies and/or stops his opponents. Not only is it his most reliably lethal attack (his other strong attacks, which simply do HP damage, are too slow to hit much of anything), it's also, surprisingly, one of the easier ones to obtain.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance adds Celia and Lede's ability as Last Breath. It's not quite 100% effective, but you can get it pretty close. It also has several other One Hit Kill attacks, many of which belong to the same class (Assassin, obviously).
• The Fire Emblem series has the recurring skill "Lethality", also known as "Silencer", learned appropriately enough by the Assassin class. It dispatches the foe instantly, even if a regular attack would have done no damage whatsoever (except in Fates, where your attack must otherwise deal at least 1 damage to work).
• La Pucelle: Prier actually has the Kanji for "ichigeki hissatsu" appear for her first Special Attack, "Coup de Grace".
• Assassins from Monday Night Combat have some rather nasty Back Stab techniques with their bladed weapons. It's not strictly speaking a One Hit Kill, but the target's still helpless to do anything about it.
• Melee attacks in the Campaign mode of Transformers: War for Cybertron are a one hit kill (insert your own justification — Energon blades disrupting sparks or whatever). The downside is missing leaves you completely open, and actually getting into melee range is a dangerous prospect what with all the bullets and the Frickin' Laser Beams.
• XCOM 2 has two examples:
  • The "Repeater" gun accessory gives every shot from that weapon a tiny chance to "Execute" the target, regardless of health or armor or even shield^note The basic version is a 5% chance, and the superior version is 15%. With an appropriate upgrade, it becomes 10% to 20%. It also averts Contractual Boss Immunity: absolutely nothing is immune to instant death - not end game bosses, not heavily armored units, not Alien Rulers, nothing- making the upgraded superior Repeater dangerous, and outright murderous with certain abilites such as Rapid Fire^note Attack twice and Banish^note Attack until the current magazine is empty.
  • There's also a non lethal variety: ADVENT Stun Lancers and Muton Berserkers have a very small chance of knocking their target unconscious and essentially dead to the world for the rest of the mission^note The Stun Lancers chance to knock out a soldier increases for the Advanced and Elite versions, but there's also high level skills that allow a soldier to be revived from unconsciousness. The Alien Rulers from the first DLC also have a chance to OHKO-ing targets with their special abilities^listthe Viper King's Bind and Crush, the Berserker Queen's Quake and the Archon King's Devastate regardless of the operative's remaining hit points.
  • The game also encourage Rocket-Tag Gameplay, by giving you abilities to take out tough units quickly or even instantly. At the beginning of the game, a grenade thrown at an enemy next to an explosive obstacle will kill just about anything with less than 10 hit points^note The grenade explodes for 3-4 damage, and the explosive then explodes for 4-6 damage, and the only early game enemies with more than 10 HP are Faceless. By the time you start running into stronger enemies, abilities like Fan Fire, Quickdraw, Run & Gun, Banish, and more will enable either focus fire to obliterate one enemy, or heavily damaging everything to let another unit finish them off.

Turn-Based Tactics

• Inkulinati: Being pushed off the edge of the stage, swallowed by Sir Snail, or in a space also occupied by hellfire or a Hell's Maw at the end of a chapter will kill a Beast or Tiny instantly, regardless of how much health they currently have. There is also an achievement for killing a creature from full health with a regular attack.

Visual Novels

• Dies Irae:
  • Machina brings this ability to the forefront who, when activating his Creation Figment, Miðgarð Völsunga Saga (End of the Mortal Realm), can quite literally bring whatever is hit by his fists to their end. It works by interfering with a targets history by forcing it to its conclusion, in effect erasing it and killing or destroying whatever hapless target he hit. The way this ability works is actually so powerful that he could potentially even kill the monstrously powerful Reinhard. The sole exception to this is Ren after he awakens to his Time Armor, an ability which locks his state at zero and thus prevents Machina's ability from working as there is nothing to end or erase.
  • The main character Ren is able to kill anyone regardless of regeneration or immortality thanks to his cursed weapon, the guillotine of the French revolution, Bois De Justice. Caveat is that he has to hit the neck and successfully decapitate the target, as such anyone with sufficiently strong defenses or is evasive enough will be able to ignore its effect.
• Nasuverse:
  • Fate/stay night has two examples. Lancer's Gae Bolg, the melee form of which always strikes the heart if he calls its name (though he never really gets the chance to do so). The stronger ranged form is technically blockable though Archer is the first to ever do so and cannot continue fighting afterwards. Second, True Assassin's Noble Phantasm automatically destroys the heart of his opponent, though it seems to be fairly easy to avoid. If it DOES hit you, you are dead though. Except Kotomine, who is immune to it due to the taint of Angra Mainyu. He still lives another two days after happening to have his heart destroyed anyway though.
  • There's also Bazett's ultimate move in the sequel Fate/hollow ataraxia, called the Fragarach. Being the ultimate counter to any enemy's most powerful attack (and only their most powerful attack, otherwise it's a worthless counter), it sends her Noble Phantasm flying into the opponent's heart before they make their attack. The problem with this move is that it functions in exactly the same way as Lancer's Gae Bolg, which also is magically designed to have pierced the target's heart before the attack is even made. Thus, if the two moves were used on each other, both fighters would be killed.
  • The RPG spinoff Fate/EXTRA has another example — The Assassin Li Shuwen's mastery over Chi and the fighting style of Ba Jiquan allows him to disrupt the energy flow of any opponent he strikes with a single touch, leading to his opponents dying after a single hit as their bodies ceases functioning. The technique is referred to in the game as 'No Second Strike' in reference to his historical boast that he never needed to hit an opponent a second time.
  • Shiki Tohno of Tsukihime has this as his defining characteristic: thanks to his ability to see "points and lines of death", get him within stabbing range of something and he will kill it with one blow, regardless of how powerful, tough, or "immortal" it is. This also applies to inanimate objects. Other than that ability, however, he is an ordinary, somewhat unathletic, and anemic high school boy, making him the ultimate Glass Cannon.
• At the end of 2 trials in the third Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game, Trials and Tribulations, you have to press the right statement/present the right evidence, or your ENTIRE life bar is wiped out. In the Japanese version, Godot calls this an "infinite penalty", while the English version calls it "the unlimited penalty". Justified by the fact that, when Godot threatens it, Phoenix's argument is based entirely on circumstance and conjecture, and failing to prove it shows that he most likely made it all up.

Western RPGs

• Probably based off the "Power Word: Kill" example in Dungeons & Dragons (see the Tabletop Games subpage), the Blade of Awe (usable from Bribing Your Way to Victory) in AdventureQuest has a small chance (0.1%) to instantly kill whatever you are fighting. There are dagger, spear, and staff variants of the same weapon with have the same ability, and dark and fire versions of the Blade of Awe which have a 0.12% chance instead.
• Albion
  • The game has some such spells: The Banish Demon series of spells does it to one or more supernatural beings, Kamulos's Gaze destroys any one opponent, and Goddess' Wrath destroys all opponents in the battle. They all work on the Magikarp Power logic, and when not properly trained will not work at all or only work on some opponents out of several they should affect.
  • The Final Boss attacks with a laser that does enough damage to knock out a character — every turn. Yes, it's a Hopeless Boss Fight, unless you use some weird tactics.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura offers uber-spells Disintegrate and Quench Life. They do Exactly What It Says on the Tin. And the former also obliterates all the loot. Technically, Disintegrate just does 32,000 damage, but one would be hard-pressed to find anything in the game with more than a couple of hundred hit points.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • Jon Irenicus of Baldur's Gate 2 would kill the entire party with one spell if you tried to take him on in the Asylum without enlisting the aid of the inmates.
  • The Vorpal Sword has a chance of insta-killing any enemy with any hit. And in the expansion, you can take feats like Greater Deathblow that will insta-kill mooks.
• The 1985 DOS game CaveQuest has the Pendant of Kort, which has only one purpose: instantly killing zombies that pop up. This item is a necessity for the game's final level, as zombies are both the fastest and strongest monsters in the game and will reduce the player character to paste in one strike otherwise.
• Deltarune: The climax of the Weird Route comes with ordering Noelle to cast "SnowGrave" on Berdly, a spell which is described in the magic menu with just the single word "Fatal". True to the description, it ends the battle instantly by freezing Berdly solid — and worse, it's implied to have killed him in the Light World, too. This effect is scripted for the one battle it's meant to appear in; using hacks or exploits to use the spell in other battles reveals that it otherwise "just" deals a thousand or so damage to every enemy.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins gives Mages the spell "Mana Clash," which will instantly kill any enemy Mage or demon of less than Boss level (and some of the Bosses, if cast with boosted Spellpower). And it's an area of effect attack, too, so you can clear out whole rooms full of enemies.
  • Melee Warriors in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening can learn a move called "Peon's Plight", which is an instant kill against generic mooks, does a double Critical Hit against elites, and a normal critical against bosses. Very useful for thinning out the herd, and an absurdly easy way to get the "Heavy Hitter" achievement (main character does 250+ damage with one attack).
  • Fenris in Dragon Age II has the ability to rip people's hearts out of their chests, instantly killing them.
• Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen features Death who instantly kills anything hit by his scythe. While it can be avoided it goes right throw any form of guard or invulnerability.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The series' "spellcrafting" system allows for one-hit KO spells. Normally, the higher you increase the maximum damage of a destructive spell, the more Magicka the spell requires to cast, making high-damage spells Awesome, but Impractical. However, this can be abused with a custom "Drain Health" spell. Drain Health reduces the target's maximum HP for a set duration, but the "lost" HP is restored when the spell ends. Further, increasing the duration of the spell drastically raises the Magicka cost of the spell. This may sound like a bum deal at first, but if you use the spell on an enemy with less HP than the spell drains, the enemy will die instantly and stay dead. Making a high-damage (100 points) but short-duration (1 second) custom Drain Health spell will allow you to instantly kill low and mid-level enemies for a ridiculously cheap Magicka cost. Or you can enchant your weapons with it to give the same effect to your physical attacks, again at ridiculously low cost.
  • Mehrunes Razor is an artifact weapon associated with Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction. It appears throughout the series and typically offers a small chance to instantly kill any enemy it strikes. The lore explains that it has the ability to sever the link between the body and soul of its target, instantly killing them if it does. In Oblivion, it has a 2% to 11% (depending on your Luck Stat) chance to kill the target. It returns in Skyrim, where it has a set 1.98%^note In-game, it says 1%, but the code reveals that it will activate if the random number generated between 0-100 is >=1, essentially giving it a 2/101 chance chance of activating.
  • Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion brings the Ebony Arrows of Slaying, five arrows which are enhanted to deal 5000 damage per hit, more than enough to kill anything in the game in a single hit that isn't protected by a Reflect spell. (Using it against an enemy with Reflect will ensure a quick One Hit KO on the player character instead.)
  • Skyrim:
    • You get to be on the receiving end: Giants can smash you with their clubs so hard that you fly into the atmosphere, and dragons have an attack where they break your neck with their teeth if you're standing too close.
    • On the giving end, players favoring stealth and edged weapons can sneak up behind unsuspecting NPCs and cut their throats.
    • Using the Alchemy/Enchanting exploit, it's possible to craft weapons with an attack power of over one million, making very easy to kill anything in one hit.
    • The Wabbajack, Sheogorath's Daedric artifact in this game, is a staff that casts various random spells on its targets. Two of its possible effects are turning enemies into sweetrolls and transforming them into a shower of coins, from which targets obviously do not recover. It also has a chance to just make targets drop dead on the spot.
    • Due to the absurd amount of damage it deals (300), the Soul Tear shout will finish off most humanoid enemies in one hit.
• Fallen London. There are various ways to go from zero to somewhere undesirable in a single move, and death is only one of such places. So, by menace, the plays that can instantly knock you out of the game for a good while are the following:
  • There's four ways to die instantly in this game, and they are to gaze into Heart's mirror in the Carnival, which will send you crashing through it into death's domain, losing a duel with Feducci, who will nail you to a tree with a jousting lance and kill you right then and there, failing at acquiring an Impossible Theorem, which will lead to the turbine used to acquire it backfiring and roasting you, and getting caught by a Demonic hunting party, where the details are best not shared.
  • Two events can instantly make you Go Mad from the Revelation and get you locked up in the local Bedlam House, which are gazing into the Dream's mirror in the same Carnival, teleporting you to your usual room at the house, and failing to rob the Bazaar, which is punishable by Mind Rape. Successfully escaping from the above Devil hunting party also results in an instant trip to insanity, which speaks volumes about the situation you were in if that was a problem.
  • For instant imprisonment, you can either screw up a robbery in the Brass Embassy, or you can try and fail to bullshit the Ministry of Public Decency about a certain idol you might've found. Both will piss off the Masters quite a bit.
  • And finally, if you want to get instantly exiled to the Tomb-colonies for being too much of a scandalmonger, you can publish a certain opera taking the piss out of the Empress/irreverent comedy about the lives of saints/tragic love story with the biggest Karma Houdini ever (all these at the end of the same storyline), or a ballet that goes through every indecency in the book, which will send the entirety of high society into a bloodthirsty frenzy for a good while. You can also throw the Royal Court's doctor through the window, have a threesome on the Empress' throne, or reenact that one scene from Salome with a severed head. London's nobility is easily scandalized, seems like.
  • Do note that there are a whole bunch more of these (especially for Wounds) for those Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name, but those don't entirely count; the whole quest amounts to mashing X to repeatedly die and generally suffer in horrible ways while the narration begs you to stop.
• The first two Fallout games feature notorious examples of this trope. Critical hits can do ridiculous amounts of damage, often killing the target instantly (and messily) by applying multiple multipliers and ignoring armour. A certain perk also makes it possible to get an instant kill regardless of damage — even with zero damage^note The "instant death" result on the critical table does not automatically ignore armour. This can lead to strange situations: a character in full power armor might take zero damage from a critical hit and then die instantly from the pain.
• For the King: The special ability of the Astronomer character class is an attack that causes a black hole to form and compress one opponent into a small black orb, immediately killing them regardless of what their health bar was at or what defenses they had. It has a couple of trade-offs: One is that the black orb is the only item dropped after the opponent's death; you don't get any of the money or items that would have resulted from killing the opponent normally. The big catch is that the attack can not be deliberately invoked but happens at random: when a player instructs the Astronomer to attack a single opponent, there is a small percentage chance that the Astronomer will use the black hole attack instead of whatever attack the player chose.
• Mass Effect:
  • Enemies in all three games die instantly if they get knocked into areas that enemies cannot walk on (e.g., chasms). The biotic power "Pull" gets a lot of use out of this.
  • In-universe, if another ship is hit by a Reaper's main gun, it doesn't matter how big, armored or powerful it is. You can say goodbye to that ship.
  • In Mass Effect, any infantry enemy will die instantly if you even hit near them with the main cannon on your Mako, a light tank.
  • Mass Effect 2:
    • The M-98 Widow Anti-Materiel Rifle in Mass Effect 2, with enough upgrades, leveling up, and the right armor, can regularly do this to most enemies as an Infiltrator Shepard, even being able to kill Harbinger in one hit. Granted, this is a Sniper Rifle that, per Flavor Text, is designed for fighting "armored vehicles and krogan."
    Harbinger: ASSUMING DIRECT CONT—*boom*
    • The M-920 Cain heavy weapon, informally known as a "nuke launcher." On Insanity it will still kill most enemies in one hit, in a very large blast radius, and it will probably kill you for the same reason. And it still won't do very much damage to the final boss, who (if you're really unfortunate) will be moving around too much for you to easily hit it anyway, especially considering that the final-boss area doesn't really have a whole lot of walls for you to just aim the Cain at and hope for splash damage. The Cain returns in 3, where Shepard kills an Anti-Air variant of the Reaper destroyer with it during the battle in London.
    • Thankfully Geth Rocket Troopers can't one-shot you on Insanity difficulty like they could in Mass Effect.
    • A level 4 Heavy Reave biotic attack can wipe out an enemy's health in one shot, although unlike most examples it will take a little bit of time for them to actually die.
    • Generic Husks, and to a lesser degree Abominations, are incredibly susceptible to directed force biotic attacks. A simple Push, Pull or Slam can wipe one out instantly, and a Shockwave can clean out entire groups in a few seconds.
  • Mass Effect 3:
    • The game introduces the Banshee, Phantom, and Brute, elite Reaper units capable of soaking tons of damage and dishing out just as much. All three have some form of instant-death attack that will end your game on the spot (although this only applies on harder difficulties). This is particularly aggravating in multiplayer, as the instant-death attacks prevent you from being able to be revived, which can end a game in very short order.
    • Cerberus Atlas Mechs can also do this, but it's so rare and easily dodge-able that most of the time you don't have to worry about it.
    • Unlike in Mass Effect 2, when introduced in the Retaliation Multiplayer DLC, Praetorians and Scions can also do perform similar moves.
    • "Priority: Tuchanka" and "Priority: Rannoch" each have a landed Reaper destroyer as the final boss, and in each case it has an attack that will one-shot Shepard: being stepped on in the first case, or taking a hit from the main cannon in the second. Justified, considering they're 160-meter light capital ships and their attacks are designed to be able to kill other ships.
    • ME3 also introduces the Grab, where you pop out from behind cover, grab a nearby enemy, and stab/pound them in the face. Only Armored troops (and the Phantoms) can avoid being killed by the attack (you used to be able to do this to Geth Pyros, but that's been taken out). It's a bit situational, but there are multiplayer levels where you can funnel them in such a way that it's almost like they're waiting in line for you to pull them over and smash their faces in.
    • The M-98 Widow is back, but it's no longer the scariest weapon. That is a competition between two weapons: the Claymore and the Javelin, either of which is capable of inflicting obscene damage in the hands of a cloaked Infiltrator Shepard. The big difference is that the Claymore has higher raw damage, capable of one-shotting basic enemies even on the hardest difficulty setting, while the Javelin has superior range, accuracy, and the ability to vaporise people's heads through walls.
• Neverwinter Nights inherits a few from Dungeons & Dragons, mostly spells like Slay Living and Finger of Death. These can lead to hilarious moments such as one-shotting a blue dragon in Undermountain in "Hordes of the Underdark"; while it has a decent save bonus, it still has a chance of failing and does not benefit from Contractual Boss Immunity.
• Ultima:
  • The spell "Armageddon" from Ultima VI, anyone? It's one hit kill to everything in the game.
  • It did the same thing in Ultima Underworld, except it was more of "despawning" everything in the game than killing everything in the game (no corpses).
  • The series is also famous for its glass swords. One hit kills both the enemy and the sword.
• If you're doing a Genocide run in Undertale, you'll be inflicting this on most (if not all) of the mooks and all but one boss. Though the Final Boss of this run will dodge your attack repeatedly, making it difficult to get that one hit in. They also have a sneaky trick up their sleeve that will always result in this for you.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, the Dominate, Dementation, Thaumathurgy and Animalism disciplines all have an insta-kill spell for non-bosses:
  • Dominate has Suicide allowing to inflict an Psychic-Assisted Suicide to an enemy, and Mass Suicide, allowing to inflict this to several people. Possession also cause an enemy to fall under Mind Control, then die from cardiac arrest.
  • Dementation has Vision of Death, which causes the victim to die instantly, and Berserk, which causes the victim to turn into a psycho attacking everything in sight and then drop dead. Both are slightly less effective against supernatural beings, however.
  • Thaumaturgy has Blood Boil, which as suggested by the name makes the target's blood instantly heated to boiling, causing it to literally explode.
  • Animalism has Spectral Wolf (which causes a wraith-like wolf to appear behind the target and maul it), Bloodsuckers' Communion (which summons ghostly bats to attack the target and drain it from its blood before delivering it to their master) and Pestilence (which summons insect swarms to devour the target's flesh). The last two are technically not designed to be one-hit kills (they can be used against bosses to do regular damages), but considering how low most of the enemies' health is in the game, they might as well be.
  • Discipline aside, feeding can also be used as a One-Hit-Kill against a lone opponent if you manage to grab him and drain him of his blood without getting interrupted by another enemy, since the target has no way to defend itself once you are sucking its blood.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise has Kenshiro (naturally) able to perform a variety of such moves. To use them, you first stun the opponent by hitting a Pressure Point. After meeting with Toki, this gets an upgrade — by hitting the Action Command to hit said pressure point with the right timing, you kill the enemy instantly, without having to carry out the follow-up move. Naturally, this doesn't work on bosses, though getting the timing right does shave off a considerable portion of their health.
• Getting uppercutted by a Leader cannibal in The Forest will either instantly knock you out or kill you.
• Foxhole permits a melee attack to be a One-Hit Kill, given that you need to reach melee range under enemy fire to deal it. Previously it was the fist that instantly killed enemy soldiers, this was Nerfed in version 0.2 when the bayonets were added so that bayonets would be an upgrade over punching somebody — including a Dash Attack to get into range easier.
• The Grand Theft Auto franchise has its share of One-Hit Kills:
  • The water in Grand Theft Auto 2 can instantly kill as soon as the protagonist falls into the water, compared to 3D era games like Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories as those protagonists will slowly drown to death.
  • Explosions in the classic GTA games and the HD games will kill the player on contact.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, impacting the ground while freefalling in parachute can instantly kill CJ, even with maximum health.
  • The Rhino tanks in the 3D games can instantly destroy any vehicle if it's driven by the player or the military.
  • In V, a high speed car crash can easily kill the protagonist.
  • Also, in V, there are animals that can one hit kill the player, such as the cougars and sharks.
  • In V stalking another protagonist, he will lose his patience and punch you (Michael and Franklin) or headbutt you (Trevor), killing you instantly.
  • In San Andreas, there are Non-Standard Game Over events, such as shooting inside in the plane and causing it to explode in Stowaway, falling off of the plane without a parachute in the aforementioned mission. There's also being trapped in the freezer in "The Meat Bussiness".
  • In Grand Theft Auto Online, tossing a sticky bomb onto an NPC (not even blowing it up) kills that NPC instantly.
• Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven and Mafia II: The player can get killed instantly if rolling over while driving a convertible.
• [PROTOTYPE]:
  • Alex's defining move — eating people. The simple grab and Consume move will kill any normal military or infected enemy, and heal you in the process! Not so for the hunters, though, which need to be weakened before consumption.
  • A fully-charged Blade Air Slice is a One Hit Kill for just about anything but hunters, and his devastator moves are OHK for everything in the area of effect.
  • Supreme Hunter's Tendril Barrage Devastator is this for Alex — the attack deals high damage each second and lasts long enough for your Adrenaline Surge invincibility to wear off, after which it will kill you.
• In Red Dead Redemption, the two sniper rifles will usually kill any mook in one hit if its in the head or chest area. Also a headshot with any gun will do this too. There's also the throwing weapons always kill whatever they hit. Multiplayer-spawned cougars can also inflict this on unwary players.
• The Saints Row series has a few of these.
  • In the first two games, if the car you're inside explodes before you can bail out completely, you will die instantly. Never mind your awesome ability to withstand gunfire in person; get blown up in a car and you're dead.
  • In Saints Row 2 you can grab anyone within melee range into a headlock, then hold them as a meat-shield or deliver an instant execution. (Or you could let them go, but where's the fun in that?)
• Terraria:
  • The Dungeon Guardian deals more than enough damage to kill any player^note 9,999, when the maximum possible life is 600, as the enemy used to prevent anybody from entering the Dungeon before killing Skeletron.
  • 1.4 update introduced another boss with similarly excessive damage potential — but this one, you actually can fight. The Empress of Light is normally a relatively tough hardmode boss, but fight her during daytime and all her attacks will deal 1000 damage, requiring you to dodge every single shot. And unlike the Guardian, victory carries an actual reward — the most powerful summon weapon in the game.

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