Press X To Die / Video Games

Examples of Video Games that allow the player to Press X to Die.

• An old book on how to write computer games featured a spy-themed text adventure written in BASIC. The main text pointed out that any valid "eat" or "chew" command would result in death, since the only two edible objects in the game were capsules with a faint aroma of Bitter Almonds and a plastic explosive disguised as chewing gum.
• In Adventures of Lolo you can press Select to die in case you encountered an unwinnable situation. Thankfully lives are meaningless as you have unlimited continues and even they drop you right back off where you last died with literally no penalty. The third game just up and got rid of lives altogether.
• In Age of Empires, pressing the Delete key while you have one of your own units selected kills that unit instantly. As with most RTS, this is useful since you can only have a limited number of units. Killing useless ones frees up space for ones you need.
• In Alone in the Dark, just try to leave the Haunted House through the front door before you've dealt with the Big Bad.
  • There's also De Vermis Mysteriis, which will instantly kill the player if they read it.
  • In the second game, Carnby can obtain a bottle of poison and a bottle of wine, which are meant to be combined and used for a puzzle. The poison has an Eat/Drink option. To make it even more glaring, the wine does not let you drink it...but you can drink the poisoned wine!
  • The third game also lets you drink poison, along with a bottle of what appears to be water (it's heavy water).
• The Amazing Spider-Man on Game Boy featured a level in which you needed to press up and the jump button at the very end to get into a window. Everywhere else, though it may give you a vertical boost, you risk falling to your death.
  The Angry Video Game Nerd: There's a SUICIDE BUTTON in this game?!
• In Analogue: A Hate Story, you can cause the reactor that powers your communication with *Hyun-ae and *Mute to melt down. Looking back, it's quite clear what's going to happen, but that doesn't stop it from being incredibly tempting.
• In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, all you need to do to get the Bad Ending is vote guilty when the game puts you in the role of a juror.
• In Baldur's Gate III, if Gale is in the party at the start of the second act he will receive the ability to unleash the Netherese Orb contained within his chest, unleashing a massive blast of energy that will destroy him and everything in a massive region around him. He is charged to use it to destroy the Absolute and end its threat. It appears on his action bar under cantrips, usable any time you feel like getting a game over for no reason.
• In Banshiryuu, the third game of the Seihou Bullet Hell series, the stage 2 boss can summon several nuclear warheads to the battlefield. If you damage them too much with your shots, they'll detonate, instantly taking you to the Game Over screen regardless of how many lives or Continues you have left. Since the first reaction to anything suddenly appearing in a shooting game is to shoot at it, well...
• In BattleBlock Theater, you have to press a certain key to enter doors in the Hub Level. If you press it anywhere else, it will make your character start trembling and eventually explode. It actually comes in handy in the Insane Mode if you want to quickly restart the level.
• Adventure game Beneath a Steel Sky allows you to die in a number of ways, but there are three stand-outs for self-inflicted fatalities; descending a staircase with a security officer who already tried to murder you standing at the bottom, sticking plastic explosive in a live electrical socket, and opening the door to a nuclear reactor core without wearing protective clothing.
• The Binding of Isaac has several examples:
  • Using The Bible on Satan. Particularly mean as using it on Mom or Mom's Heart kills them instantly.
  • In the original Flash version, having the Best Friend item get hit by certain attacks, due to a bug.
  • Donating all your health to a Blood Donation Machine, Devil Beggar, Confessional, or Hell Game. These are especially nasty as The Lost, who has no health - touch one and it's an instant game over. (You're not even safe if you unlock Holy Mantle for it, since all of the listed items bypass its protection.)
  • Using the Razor Blade too much.
  • Rebirth introduces the Suicide King, a special card that, upon use, drops ten pick-ups (including golden chests)...and then kills you, making it completely useless unless you have extra lives.
  • The Afterbirth+ has the Plan C item, which inflicts massive damage (it's enough to kill the True Final Boss 1,000 times) on all enemies in the room, and then kills you after 3 seconds. If you use it on (almost) any boss on their last lifebar, it still counts as a victory.
• In Blocks That Matter, you can hold down the W key to activate your Tetrobot's self-destruct sequence if you get stuck trying to solve a puzzle.
• In Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge, one item you can pick up is a pack of cigarettes that kills you if you use it. That's its only use.
• Borrowed Time: Just type in "KILL ME" and the game will be happy to oblige.
• From The Bright in the Screen: "Red Buttons. They hurt you."
• If you're crippled in Bushido Blade, you can press the Select button to surrender honourably, allowing your opponent to finish you off.
  • The sequel included the same function, except since the players can't be crippled, the Select button will surrender at anytime, and instead of just waiting for the opponent to strike a fatal blow, there is instead a cutscene of the surrendered character getting their head slashed by the winner.
• Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: Equip Dominus Anger, Dominus Hatred, and Dominus Agony, press Up+ X to die. Ironically, however, you are required to use this exact technique to kill the final form of Dracula, and it's the one instance where you don't die (Albus's soul takes the place of Shanoa's in this case).
  • One of the items you can find is the "Death Ring", which drastically raises all your attributes with the description "One hit kills instantly." As it turns out, the description is referring to Shanoa — taking a single hit with the ring equipped will instantly kill her. Actually quite useful for getting Boss Medals.
• In the "bonus level" in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, An Evening with Infinity Ward (aka the Museum level), there are two objects that, when you aim at them at close range, display DO NOT press X (in the 360 version, the other versions change the use button, and as such, the line). Doing so will bring every exhibit to life, and set them on you.
  • Just to clarify, this means that the various total badasses you just finished fighting through the toughest opposition in the world with, as well as all of the previously mentioned toughest opposition in the world, come to life in a small, confined space, fully armed and ready for action... And each and every one of them is trying as hard as possible to murder you. Good luck with that!
• Inverted at the ending of The Cat Lady: "PRESS ANY KEY TO LIVE."
• Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay allows you (and encourages you with flashing) to try to pick up the DNA-encoded guns. ZZZAP. Although the damage is extremely minor.
• Colossal Cave has plenty of ways to get yourself stuck or killed, with varying degrees of obviousness, but setting off a stick of dynamite while it's in the same room as you is a particularly straightforward one. Releasing an angry bear from its chains has the results you'd expect, too.
• In Command & Conquer 3, you lose if you have no buildings. You can sell all your buildings, including the last one.
  • This can be enabled as an option in Tiberian Sun. Problem is, in this game as well as Red Alert, when the computer doesn't have any production buildings left, it will sell all its buildings to get some infantry and attempt a last-ditch rush with all remaining units...
  • The first game had a suicide command, at least the Win95 version. Just press 'R' and click Yes.
• Commander Keen: In Episode 2, "The Earth Explodes", your goal is to disable the numerous Wave Motion Guns on the alien mothership. Each of these guns has an "on" switch on them. Guess what happens if you press it.
• One of the few deaths that is completely player-avoidable in Corpse Party is reading all five parts of a Victim's Memoir. Unlike other deaths, the game actually stops you and makes you confirm you want to read the fifth part. Reading the fifth part will clarify the story told by the first four, but it also kills you on the spot every single time.
• Crash Tag Team Racing allows you to wander around the park. There are signs you can walk up to and literally press X to die. Each one is different, and you can fill up a gallery.
• In Death and Taxes, if you complain about your job enough, you will be given a chance to quit. Said chance takes the form of a document for yourself, the same kind you would receive for others whose fate you would dictate. Check the "Die" box on your document, and it's straight back to the title screen you go.
• The Death Gate adventure-game. Among the spells you learned along the way was 'Self-Immolate', which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin — using the spell would instantly kill you. It did, however, turn out useful when fighting a mirror image of yourself. Just scribe a mirrored version of the spell's runes — which does nothing — and your copy would dutifully flip it and kill himself.
• Déjà Vu (1985):
  • The game will let you "use Gun on Self":
    Narrator: ...Well, that's one way to go out with a bang. So much for your dreams and aspirations.
  • In addition, you can walk into the local police station at any time. However, unless you bring all the evidence implicating the people trying to frame you and got rid of all the fake evidence they planted, you're immediately arrested and given at least ten years in prison.
• In Devil Survivor 2, you can choose to not be rescued from the trainwreck at the beginning of the game, resulting in a Game Over before your very first battle. In the Record Breaker Updated Re-release, the new Triangulum Arc begins with a helicopter wreck and gives you the same option.
• Disco Elysium occasionally offers you choices that will obviously kill you with absolute certainty. Each of them results in a Non-Standard Game Over.
  • Getting the solution to the "Finger on the Eject Button" thought. The only reward it offers upon completion is giving you the option to kill yourself every evening.
  • You can threaten to shoot yourself in front of Titus, then actually go through with it. To "make a point".
  • Drinking the Spirit Bomb (which is a molotov cocktail made with pure medicinal alcohol).
  • A non-lethal example is that, if Ruby commits suicide during your confrontation, one dialogue option afterwards has you voluntarily quitting the police force.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: In Act III, your patron god will demand that you give your life and Soul Power to them. If you agree in the Dialogue Tree, you die on the spot.
• In Don't Shit Your Pants, typing "shit" in the command line causes you to shit your pants instantly, thus losing the game. Even if you type it in on the title screen.
• Don't Shoot the Puppy is a parody of these: once you've started a level, any action (including moving the mouse by ANY amount) results in failure — the only way to not shoot the puppy is to leave your computer alone. The challenge comes from the various ways in which the game tries to either bore you into quitting, or else trick you into doing something.
• An attempt to use the God Mode cheat from Doom in Heretic results in instant death. Also, using the infinite weapons cheat results in instant depletion of all weapons.
• In .hack R1 Games, the chances of suffering a system error increases the more players use Data Drain due to increasing rates of data corruption in the user's avatar. It is possible to use Data Drain without suffering a system error up until your corruption rate reaches 99% (although at such high levels, you would be lucky to survive the other effects of corruption), but once you use Data Drain again and bump the corruption rate up to 100%, that's it: Game Over.
• In Dota 2, the Bloodstone item's activatable ability, Pocket Suicide, is to kill your character immediately. However the Bloodstone has a number of effects that make death cheaper and killing yourself when under overwhelming attack denies the enemies the money and XP they'd get for scoring the killing blow, this is occasionally useful.
• In the original Dragon Quest, when the Dragonlord tells you We Can Rule Together, you actually can take him up on his offer. This results in him calling you a "pitiful fool," and you instantly lose the game.
• In Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, it's really not a good idea to start firing off weapons inside the support structure for the blimp. Boom indeed.
• Episode 4 of Duke Nukem II takes place inside of a spaceship in deep space, and one or two levels have airlock doors that you can shoot open, causing Duke to get sucked out into space and die (though this can easily happen by accident, making them a huge annoyance).
• Dungeon Crawl:
  • Q (quit). Score list entry: "committed suicide"
  • Walking into deep water (unless the character is merfolk), "drowned".
  • Walking into lava, "burned".
  • Setting yourself to fire (walking onto magical fire, scroll of immolation), "burned".
  • Casting magic accidentally on yourself (by aiming *)...
    • Note that the game will usually not let non-merfolk walk into deep water, unless you are confused, and even then it's nice enough to ask for confirmation before moving while confused and next to deep water. It will also warn you before you walk into flaming or freezing clouds.
• In Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, you can type "/death" into the chat/command box to kill your character. This can be useful for teleporting to a distant tavern that you've asked to be resurrected at (although your equipment will be damaged if you /death outside of a tavern). It can also be used while incapacitated, occasionally handy if you won't be rescued but a resurrection shrine is nearby.
• The text adventure Dunnet accepts suicidal commands.
  eat lamp
  You forcefully shove a lamp down your throat, and start choking.
  
  You are dead.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind:
    • The Scrolls of Icarian Flight are this if used without proper protections. They are scrolls that boost your Acrobatics to the point where you can easily leap across the entire island of Vvardenfell. However, they wear off after only a few seconds, meaning you'll no longer have the power to land safely. (Which is precisely what happened to the scrolls' inventor and previous owner, who you witness crashing and dying right in front of you...) You can avert this, however, by using a Slowfall spell, Levitation spell, or a second scroll before you land, or simply land in deep enough water.
    • A sidequest in the Tribunal expansion requires that you kill Gedna Relvel, a lich and notorious Damage-Sponge Boss. You can loot the legendary Robe of the Lich from her corpse. It has a nifty enchantment that boosts your Magicka by 300 points...but drains your health by 600. Equipping it is instant death for all but the beefiest Player Character, which your typical mage, who would benefit most from the Magicka boost, certainly would not be.
  • In Oblivion, you can eat poisoned apples which kill you near instantly. The reason is because you gain a permanent "Poison" enchantment. The poison never wears off. For non-vital NPCs, they will re-spawn with the buff, causing guards and civilians to spawn and die almost immediately. For vital NPCs, because they cannot die, they will fall from loss of HP, wake up, and fall unconscious again. (These can become a Game-Breaker if used properly against people you really want dead.)
  • In Skyrim, there's a similar item called Jarrin Root. You're informed of its massively lethal properties when you receive it as part of a Dark Brotherhood quest to assassinate the Emperor. If you still choose to consume it, well, you've been warned.
• The freeware Roguelike game Elona has the nuclear bomb. Detonating it results in a cutscene that shows a nuclear mushroom seen from outer space, and then back to the game field, NPCs are dying left and right, "cheerfully" saying "I hate this planet" and so on. This is in a game that allows you to keep a little girl as pet, complete with leash. But the nuke does have its use and you can cheat the death as well as the bad karma, if you know how.
• In Enchanted Scepters, you can commit suicide by typing "Jump" on the cliff path.
• In Equestria at War, the player is explicitly warned that putting Hempstrand's Socialist Agrarian Party in charge of Farbrook is a bad idea unless he likes getting game overs. Turns out, Hempstrand's Luddite policies cause a massive famine which result in the country becoming dependant on foreign powers for food in the best scenario, and in the death of the entire Farbrookian population in the worst one.
• A literal example in the Escape Velocity series. Holding down Cmd-D (Ctrl-D on Windows) for ten seconds triggers your ship's self-destruct. It's possible to survive this by having an Escape Pod or a Fighter on board and pushing the eject button, or having a Auto-Eject system.
• Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem features a room with a large switch on the floor that, when stood on, causes a large stone slab to crash down on the switch, helpfully demonstrated by a Zombie wandering into this trap. There is nothing to stop the player character from standing on the button.
• Europa Universalis, being based on history, has a number of events where one country can chose to merge with another (eg. Lithuania merging with Poland to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). If the player happens to be controlling the country in question, choosing to merge is an instant game-over.
• In the SNES game E.V.O.: Search for Eden, at the end of almost every stage, you are given the option of allying with the then-current Big Bad. Doing so always results in a Nonstandard Game Over for your character.
• There is a similar game called Execution by Jesse Venbrux. The only way to "win" is to quit. Restarting results in an "it's already too late" message and shows you the failure screen, even if you delete and reinstall the game. This is because the game records your loss in a part of your computer's registry that's not deleted when uninstalling.
• In E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, players who accept the Immortal King's offer to join the army of the dead are instantly killed. Luckily, Death Is a Slap on the Wrist.
• Fahrenheit: Lucas can kill himself by taking pills with alcohol, which nets you the achievement "Warning Label". There's also a sequence where he's being questioned by the police in connection with the murder he commits under mind control at the start; during this time, Lucas is under psychic attack that makes him hallucinate giant bugs. QTE prompts show up, but if you hit them, Lucas reacts to the bugs - which the detective questioning him can't see, so his sudden reactions look like suspicious tics.
• The makers of Fallen London could not settle for making a simple "press to die" button. Instead, they concocted an entire sidequest of nothing but "press to die (or worse)" buttons — Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name. Every step of the story warns the player that pursuing the name is a terrible idea that will cost them everything and earn them nothing. Every step of the story drains the player's inventory, severs their social connections, drives them mad, sends them to prison, steals and soils their soul, kills them, permanently reduces their stats, or all of the above. Word of God has joked that the story may or may not at some point require the player to give Failbetter Games their home address and permission to destroy their computers with a stick. Naturally, it's quite a popular storyline.
  • During this storyline, you are given the chance to pay 50 Fate (bought with real money) and 5 carnival tickets to ride a particularly interesting ride in a warped version of Mrs. Plenty's Carnival; the game warns you — in one of the biggest disclaimers you will ever see in a video game — that if you do this, your character will be deleted. No second chances, no way back. Notably, three people did this and found that the quest was actually bugged (or just never properly implemented because they didn't expect anybody to choose it) and didn't have any permanent effects, and at least one of them bug reported it. In the finished version of the quest, it's an aversion, as the ride instead gives you the Scorched by the Sun quality.
  • At one point, you are given a choice. To acquire St. Erzulie's Candle, you can sacrifice your tattoos, Destiny, Notability, Profession, and even Ambition. These will all be lost forever, and you can never replace them. Or you can just take the candle without paying anything. The second option works exactly as advertised - no tricks, no traps. You lose nothing and there are no negative consequences. People still take the first option.
  • As of June 2016, one player has completed Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name, and their account has been rendered permanently unplayable as a result. [1]
  • The spin-off game Sunless Sea has the similar-looking (and completely hidden) questline of seeking Salt, which again consists of multiple self-destructive actions that costs you your possessions, plenty of your stats, and forcing you to go to the depths of Frostfound and Kingeater's Castle amongst others. The semi-final step includes deleting your character's Legacy, meaning that you essentially delete everything you could leave behind to your next captain (stats, charts, money, items, legacy items) and starting the next character over again from scratch. Subverted in that the final ending you get is actually quite optimistic, despite having cost your character everything, as you become the second person ever to go East and join Salt.
• Fallout:
  • In Fallout, you can set the timer on a nuclear warhead to 30 seconds. Try to outrun that fireball.
  • In Fallout 2, you can try to manually arm a nuclear warhead. While a high science skill character will succeed at this, a character without... won't.
  • In Fallout 3, when you obtain the GECK, there is an option to activate it. Should you try, the device will helpfully inform you that, when activated, it will destroy everything in a large radius for materials. You can then turn it on anyway.
  • After being captured by the Enclave, you can tell Autumn the code to the purifier, after which he executes you by gunshot.
  • In the Mothership Zeta DLC, try taking off your space suit during the space walk.
  • During "Who Dares Wins" in the Broken Steel DLC, there are some Deathclaw pens in the Enclave stronghold Adams Air Force Base. At this point, you may have a device that lets you take control of Deathclaws the Enclave has rigged with mind-control devices. There are terminals that let you open the doors. And that's when you realize this is where they keep Deathclaws before the mind control procedure.
  • In most of Bethesda's PC games, you can select a target in the console and use the "kill" command on it. Well, you can choose yourself as that target...
  • Fallout: New Vegas has one implemented for plotline reasons when playing through the Dead Money expansion. You are warned that if you use a terminal to read Sinclair's Notes while in the Sierra Madre Vault, you will become permanently trapped. If you do so anyway, it will lead to a Non-Standard Game Over wherein you starve to death and your likeness becomes a hologram in the Madre. However, just because you are warned about it doesn't mean you can't spring the trap on Elijah... In the other non-standard game over, you join forces with Elijah and release the Cloud to kill everyone else in the Mojave.
  • In Fallout 4, you meet a Chinese ghoul who asks you to help him repair and refuel his nuclear submarine. During the refueling stage, you're told that if you don't follow his instructions in exactly the right order, the submarine will explode. Even if you try to outrun the explosion with Jet or cheats, you'll still be killed.
• In one of Peter's levels in Family Guy Video Game!, you can see God talking to a woman. Attacking Him will cause Him to smite Peter, instantly killing the latter.
• Fatal Labyrinth has a hunger stat, which results in gradually draining HP if it drops below a certain value. At the same time, however, eating too much food can impede you, and if you eat enough food to bump your hunger stat above 99 points, it's Death by Gluttony.
• At one point in the Fate route of Fate/stay night, the main character Shirou is brutally mauled by one of the villains. Your choices at this point are either to stand up or not stand up. If you choose the latter, of course, you die, and the game's hint corner berates you for your complete lack of gaming savvy.
  Ilya: You... (executes a 203-hit combo on Shirou) ...fuckin' chicken grill!
  • Similarly, you get a choice in Unlimited Blade Works that is essentially between 'kill yourself' (although you take the Big Bad down with you) or 'try to stay alive'. Predictably, if you pick the former, you die. The game's hint corner at that point assumes you picked that one out of perverse curiosity and gives you a hint about how to get the route's second ending instead of how you can avoid that death.
  • The Fate route has a possible bad end in which Shirou is killed by Saber in a terrible lapse of judgement if the player hasn’t raised enough affection points. Like before, the Have a Nice Death sequence blatantly calls you out on the fact that given how hard it is to fail that check, you probably went for that end on purpose.
• Fear & Hunger:
  • Fear & Hunger: Getting below 50 Mind for the first time grants a overworld skill bluntly called "Suicide". Select it and the protagonist promptly slits their own throat.
  • Fear & Hunger: Termina: Again, "Suicide" is made accessible upon first depleting your Mind down to less than 50. Earning affinity with Alll-mer and Vinushka also allows you to learn "Inverse crown of thorns" and "Spontaneous combustion" respectively, which are both just fancier versions of "Suicide".
• Picking a fight with an Adamantoise in Final Fantasy XIII (unless you're REALLY overleveled, or you taught Vanille "Death"). Oretoises are very slow and absolutely huge, making it impossible to not see them coming. If your system doesn't load them fast enough before you make contact with their hitboxes, it's probably because you're riding a chocobo, in which case it will immediately throw you from its back without initiating the battle. You can't accidentally get into a fight with these.
• Two of the spells you can learn as a Blue Mage in Final Fantasy XIV are the Bomb monsters' "Self-Destruct" and "Final Sting". Both spells can inflict a lot of damage to enemies (in a radial AOE or to a single target, respectively), but will kill the caster on the spot. It's even possible to cast Self-Destruct in cities where you're not supposed to be able to come to harm.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: In the side quest "The Port of Badon", your goal is to reach the enemy leader, Fargus, and talk to him, thereby winning his "game" and the use of his ship. He is still an enemy unit, though, meaning you have the option to attack him instead. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to do this, and no matter what happens next, you get a Nonstandard Game Over — either you don't kill the Purposefully Overpowered pirate captain and he withdraws his offer of aid, or you do and he can't help you on account of that whole dead thing.
• In Fist of the North Star: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment, Shin has a Fatal KO attack that causes him to slump away from his opponent before throwing himself to his death, in reference to his demise after his fight with Kenshiro. Use of this Fatal KO counts as a win for the opponent.
  • It does have a minor utility: since it's a Fatal KO, Shin will recover all 7 stars in his Star Gauge, instead of the usual 2.
• Sierra's game Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist has all means of offing oneself with unnecessary medications, noxious gases, and horse poo. The best one, though, is trying to use the guns on yourself, which prompts the game to quit to DOS and mock you.
• Pressing the R key during a song in Friday Night Funkin' will instantaneously result in Boyfriend getting blue balled, making you have to restart the song all over again.
• All of the FromSoftware games let you attack the friendly NPCs, either intentionally or by simply bumping the trigger. Do enough damage to them, and they will become hostile and try to kill you back. Even if they succeed, they will just aggro on you again when you return. In the Dark Souls games, you can eventually find a "pardoner" character who will, in exchange for souls, "absolve" the player and reset the NPC's hostility. In Demon's Souls, there was no such option. Accidentally bump the trigger while trying to talk to Stockpile Thomas or Ed the Blacksmith and you might as well erase your save file and start the whole game over.
• A literal example in FTL: Faster Than Light, where pressing the "X" key will open all the doors on your ship and depressurize every compartment. If you do not close the doors on the outside of the ship (or just press "Z" to close all doors), your crew will asphyxiate and die (unless they're of the Lanius race). Doing this in the tutorial results in a Nonstandard Game Over.
• One level in the Futurama game contains a working Suicide Booth. Step inside and press the interact button.
• Even the old Game & Watch games with LCD screens and so on had this. In Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., you had to leap for something hanging at the end of the course, either a crane hook or a key on a string. You had to jump for them by pressing the jump button. You could also walk off the platform you were supposed to jump from, which resulted in you falling to your death. This wouldn't count in a modern game, but Game & Watch games, with their limited graphics capabilities, typically didn't allow for a lot of freedom of movement...
• You can invoke this in any game you make in Game Builder Garage by connecting an Input Nodon to a Destroy-Object Nodon, setting it to destroy the player character's Nodon and then linking the latter two together.
• God of Thunder:
  • 'D' is a suicide command, used if you get stuck in a puzzle. It's explained by Odin in-game as Thor calling upon the Valkyries to grant him a second chance at life, followed by a description of what it actually does for the player.
  • After collecting a foul-smelling shrub, you can try to 'use' it — which will result in Zeus asking why you would eat a poisonous shrub, and you die.
• Golden Sun: After the prologue dungeon, when asked by Mister Exposition if you are willing to take on this dangerous quest to save the world, you can just say no and walk out of the house, resulting in a Non-Standard Game Over where the game tells you that the world began drifting towards its end due to your choice.
• Inputting the original Konami Code^note Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A in the SNES version of Gradius 3 while the game is paused results in you exploding. If you press L, R, L, R instead of Left, Right, Left, Right though, the Konami Code works as normal.
• At a certain point in Grand Theft Auto III, you'll learn that a car you were supposed to pick up has been rigged with a car bomb. You can still go get the car, which predictably ends up with it blowing up with you inside.
• Your character menu in GTA Online has an extra option which is not present in the character menus for either of the three main protagonists: "Commit Suicide".
• In Gruntz, there is a Big Red Button on the interface that, if pressed, will start a countdown and will make all of your gruntz explode once it reaches zero. The game suggests to use it if you want to restart the level.
  • There is also the MPBOMBAGE cheat that does the same thing minus the countdown.
• In Guild Wars, at the end of the Nightfall campaign, players can use the /dance command to start dancing in front of the giant boss. Who then starts dancing back. Which immediately kills EVERYONE on your team. You got served indeed.
• In Half-Life: Opposing Force, you can get an electricity-firing weapon called the shockroach. You're fully capable of firing it underwater, despite the fact that doing so kills you immediately.
• In Half-Life 2, at some points, killing yourself in a way that couldn't possibly be unintentional will net you a special failure message: "Subject demonstrated extremely poor judgment."
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream:
  • As Nimdok, if you stab the Nazi Anesthetist, then get caught by the guard, you're told that you will be punished like all enemies of the regime. You're then shown an image of a chamber full of fire. Nimdok can also die if the golem is commanded to attack him.
  • Gorrister can also kill himself by puncturing too many airbags in the blimp (causing it to crash), drinking punch that smells like gasoline (poisoned), firing the gun at anything (it results in a giant explosion).
  • If Ted leaves the castle door open dire wolves will come in and eat him.
• In Homeworld, all of the player's ships have a scuttle function. Including the mothership.
  • Averted in the quasi-sequel Homeworld Cataclysm. Attempting to scuttle your mothership results in the voice of the captain replying in shocked, hushed tones, "I... will... NOT!"
• House Party (2017): Stealing booze in front of Frank and stealing anything in front of Madison will get Frank to beat you up, and stealing in front of Derek will get him to beat you up, ending the game immediately in both cases. An even easier way to die is telling Frank that you're plastered (even if you haven't had a drop to drink), and he beats you up immediately. This is subverted in the updated game that introduced a combat system, where you can fight the characters back and knock them out, but it's not likely you'll win if it's early in your run.
• Impossible Mission II has "Press C (or Alt+ F1) to Die", if the player character is caught in a no-win situation.
• In Illusion of Gaia, you at one point have to win a game of Russian Glass to advance the plot — you and your opponent take turns drinking from a row of glasses, one of which is spiked with a deadly poison. Of course, Will is psychic, so if you actually pick that glass, he freaks out and makes you confirm drinking it with a yes/no dialogue, which you don't have to do if you picked one of the safe glasses. But if you say "yes"...
• The Impossible Quiz:
  • In multiple levels, the button that ends the game is the only object you can interact with initially, but goes away soon after and the player can easily pass the level when the game gives them a much friendlier button to press.
  • On one level, it insidiously disguises a Press X to Die as a Press X to Not Die.
  • At least one version of the quiz does the reverse, disguising a Press X to Not Die as a Press X to Die (but a literal reading of the instructions does function as a Press X to Die).
• In Pursuit of Greed has two instances of this:
  • The second level of the first world features several airlocks. Activating one of these triggered a special animation and the Player Character had to restart the level.
  • Later, in the second world, the player had a first battle with that world's boss. After his defeat he retired to his personal chamber. The following level featured this chamber, and if the player found it and wanted to pass the doors, another animation triggered with the resting boss and two of his henchwomen, the boss fried the player character with an energy ball, and the player had to restart the level.
• In the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game, when Indy meets Hitler, one of the options is to have Indy punch him. The armed German soldier standing behind Indy doesn't find it as amusing as the player probably does. Although this is an obviously and spectacularly bad option, it is required for 100% Completion.
• IndustrialCraft, a Minecraft mod, allows you to make machines powered by electricity. You could use copper cables to route the power to these machines. Not using rubber to insulate the cables would cause you to get an electric shock. (Naturally, some savvy players use this effect to create an electric fence.)
• Almost all Infocom games let you kill yourself just by requesting it ("kill self" or "die"). Unfortunately, some Infocom games default the player as the noun when one isn't given; what that means is never type "kill" because the game will fill your name right there on the form...
• Initial D Arcade Stage has a toggle that allows the player to force-quit their current play session by pressing the Start and View Change buttons at the same time.
• I Wanna Be the Guy: "This is the safest room in the game. Only "Q" can kill you." Of course, "Q" still kills you anywhere else.
• In the Interactive Movie based on the Johnny Mnemonic film, you try to access the internet, you die instantly. Note that there's an internet access port on nearly every screen of the game.
• The Journeyman Project has lots of these:
  • Going to the wrong destination in the transporter, resulting in you being Ret-Gone by the temporal distortion wave.
  • Walking up the maintenance transport tunnel and getting run over.
  • Turning the wrong way when the Mars robot tells you "out of my way, human, or die!"
  • Going into the Mars Maze before disarming the bomb.
  • Going to NORAD VI or the airless parts of Mars without the oxygen mask.
  • Attempting to remove the shield generator bomb before disarming it.
  • Walking into areas with humans and getting captured.
  • Taking the gas canister in Norad VI.
  • Selecting the "manual" option for the loading arm when the Norad robot is trying to break through the sub dock window.
• Karateka has a hilariously infamous ending where the player can get the girl the main character's trying to save... to kick said MC to death by approaching her while still in combat stance.
• Karoshi 2.0 has a room entitled "Press Q to quit."
  • A few of the puzzles literally involve pressing X (or at least a different key) to die. Of course, since dying is the whole point of the game, this is a good thing.
  • Super Karoshi has "exit" doors in several early levels. Touching them displays the message "Exiting" and some elipses before dumping you to the menu.
• In the adventure game KGB, you can use your gun on yourself. The game even asks you if you really want to do it. Of course, if you do, you die.
• The Lord of the Rings parody adventure game Kingdom 'O Magic contains a Thermal Detonator as a collectible item. Using it anywhere plays a cutscene of a nuclear explosion followed by the standard death sequence.
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • You can try to talk to Calo Nord after watching him effortlessly kill three gangsters. He reacts to you in precisely the same manner. If you don't back off before he counts to three, you get a Hopeless Boss Fight.
  • Pleading guilty to your attempt to break into the Sith base on Manaan will get you executed.
  • There are several computer terminals throughout the game that let you hack into various security systems. Most of them offer the ability to activate security systems or overload terminals in various rooms, eliminating any enemies in the area. There's nothing to stop you doing this to the room you're currently standing in.
• La-Mulana, PC version: Equip F1 Spirit 3D and Contra. Take any damage. Makes one serving of dead Lemeza. Equipping them in the reverse order rapidly eats Lemeza's health before your very eyes. Either way, good night, sweet prince.
  • The One-Hit-Point Wonder ability is a clear callback to Contra. As for F1 Spirit, the developers just really hated the game.
• La-Mulana 2. Throughout the game you are given a few warnings that "excessive power" is not to be used, with one tablet that states this also depicting an image of all of the Mantras being invoked at the same time. Sure enough, if the player attempts to invoke all the Mantras simultaneously, Lumisa immediately dies unless you've collected all the Dissonance into the Beherit.
• While tailing a suspect car in L.A. Noire, you can activate your siren, spooking the suspect and causing your partner to chew you out.
• In The Last Express, pulling the train's emergency brake at any time (or letting anyone else pull it) results in an instant game over, since your character is a fugitive from the law. Except after the Serbs hijack the train, when it does nothing since they cut the wires.
• The Last Ninja: Press Run/Stop to commit seppuku.
• In Left 4 Dead, the developers left in a suicide command for players who had gotten themselves stuck. The problem was, when players were Boomers, that command caused them to explode instantly, preventing the Survivors from stun-locking them with the melee shove. This was quickly patched out.
  • You can intentionally trip car alarms to call a swarm of Infected upon yourself.
  • It is still possible to trigger suicide as an Infected. However, now this is only possible if the Survivors are really, really far away. It's mainly done so you can catch up.
  • In Left 4 Dead 2, there is the part with the Bride Witch. If you decide to check the radio nearby, the Witch plus a horde will attack you.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Link can equip metal gear. If he does so outside during a thunderstorm, he'll arc with electricity for a moment before lightning strikes him. At low HP, this is effectively suicide, and the arcs last long enough for you to have time to change out.
• Leisure Suit Larry:
  • If you flush the toilet in the restroom of Lefty's Bar in Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards, it overflows and causes you to drown. Other easy ways to die are shoplifting, neglecting to pay the taxi driver, or wandering into a dark alley.
  • Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places): Typing "give onklunk" any time you have the onklunk, which means that the precious onklunk containing the secret info either ends in the hands of Doctor Nonookee or in those of KGB. You traitor!
  • In Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!, you could attempt to open an underwater door from the inside. Larry does not survive the following increase in air humidity.
• The Armageddon button in Lemmings and its sequels changes all Lemmings to Bombers. This helps end the level quickly.
• Lethal Company: Making too much noise around the Company Monster (including talking and placing too many noisy objects near it) will make the Company Monster upset, sometimes reaching a tentacle out to violently grab and kill the closest player to them.
• Let It Die: Go ahead, eat a Boomshroom. What's the worse that can happen?
• LittleBigPlanet has a self-destruct option... mostly so you can get out of a dead end (and with the focus on user-created content, it's not uncommon for a level design to fail catastrophically, necessitating such a thing). It helps to ease the pain that Sackboy just holds his breath like a stubborn child and pops like a balloon.
• Just about every version of Lode Runner has a suicide button in case you get stuck.
• While fighting a T-rex on the second boss level in The Lost World: Jurassic Park for the Sega Genesis, you have to hit your vehicle on it while it is stunned to send the dinosaur into an electric fence. Try to bump into the dino without stunning it and you'll get eaten.
• In the 8-bit Magic Knight games (Spellbound, Knight Tyme and Stormbringer), one of the spells you can cast is "Quiticus Gamus". Unsurprisingly, casting it ends the game, with a message similar to: "I expect you realised this is a spell to quit the game but pressing the Break key is much quicker!"
• In the Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest games, pressing 2 will instantly kill your character and bring you back to the latest checkpoint.
• Mega Man Powered Up In the Mission mode, you can press the Select button on your PSP (or modified PS Vita) to have your character immediately self destruct, if you get stuck on a mission and you are impatient or can not escape any other way.
• In Maniac Mansion, you can blow up Ed's beloved hamster in the microwave. And then give it back to him. He reacts poorly. And you can nuke the mansion by draining the swimming pool, pushing the Big Red Button, or setting off the security system.
• In Mass Effect 2, you meet Morinth, an asari with a rare genetic defect that kills anyone she has sex with. You have the option to have sex with her. The result is what you expect.
• Max Payne 3 is pretty good about using invisible walls to prevent you from falling off places to their death. The game won't stop you Shootdodging off them, though.
• In MechAssault, in the multiplayer Grinder mode, if you play with a friend, you are able to walk around as a regular human. Press a certain button? Ludicrous Gibs!
• In the Mechwarrior series, you have a self destruct command. In most of the games, using it just forces you to start the same mission again. It can potentially have use in Mercenaries and multiplayer though.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has a suicide pill that you can take to fake your death and throw off an enemy pursuit. You can take a revival pill to return to action once the coast is clear... or not, wait a while, and watch Snake die for real.
  • After the cutscene where you knock out Ocelot for the first time, you can shoot him. However, this results in a "time paradox", a Nonstandard Game Over. There's an achievement for this in the later ports — "Problem Solved, Series Over".
  • There's quite a few of these in the series, like shooting a bomb in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, or pumping a few SOCOM rounds into Meryl while she lies bleeding under Wolf's line of fire in Metal Gear Solid (you even get a few bonus Codec conversations for doing this). You can also shoot Baker through the hole in the wall before encountering Ocelot.
  • You can also touch the wires binding Baker to the beam (which sets off the C4) in MGS, take a brief dip in the water in Vamp's boss room (brief as in you drown) in MGS2, screw with the Marines in the holds (causing you to be caught in most cases) in MGS2, and many more things. The Metal Gear series has a lot of these.
• One brief puzzle in Metroid: Other M involves Samus cornered up an elevator shaft by a large chameleon-like creature. At the top is a busted elevator, which can be set loose with a missile to crush the foe. Simple! Small print: it will crush Samus as well. (Fortunately, there's a small alcove in the wall to hide in.)
• More like "Press X To Face A Wrongful Death Lawsuit". In Mini Putt 2, if the Death Ball option is on, clicking when the circles are red causes the ball to go out of control and either decapitate another golfer, brain another golfer, or cripple another golfer. You are booted off the course.
• Most of the bad endings of Mogeko Castle are reached this way: the player is explictedly warned beforehand that taking a certain action will result in Yonaka's death, then asked if they want to do it anyway.
• Mother 3: While playing as Duster in Osohe Castle in Chapter 2, in order to get inside the castle, you must open a hole to get to the floor below. Fortunately, there's a conveniently placed statue holding a large iron ball. Dash into it, and it'll drop the ball, which crashes through the floor. Dash into it from the right, and it'll drop the ball, which crashes through you.
• M.U.G.E.N has the F1 key, which immediately KOs Player 2. Someone even made a F1 character based off this.
• Screwed yourself over in N? Press "K" to die. In the "sequel" N+, you literally Press X to Die.
• The early Nancy Drew games had a lot of Press X To Game-Ending Screwup opportunities, although they've become less common as the series developed. These rarely resulted in death, but the game would tease you about the stupid move before offering a chance to return and try again.
• This may be more due to player incompetence, but: In some versions of the NCAA Football video game for Xbox, the X button caused your player to "dive". Usually it gets pressed accidentally while running in the open field, in which case it has the effect of "fall down" (thus killing the play). There was also a "throw ball away" button that invariably caused an intentional grounding penalty, and a "celebrate" feature that drew a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct.
• The 2005-2008 Need for Speed games Most Wanted, Carbon and Undercover, pressing the reset button during a police pursuit with a police car chasing to you, you're instantly busted. This is used to prevent cheating whenever you're trapped by being surrounded by police cars especially during higher heat levels.
• Aaah, NetHack:
  • Among many, many other ways to die, the game allows you to teleport to a negative level; and immediately fall thousands of feet to your death. Unless you can fly. (Your game still ends, though.) If you go to level -10 or above, you go to Heaven instead. Though it won't save you from death by teleporting to level 0:
    NetHack: Go to Nowhere. Are you sure? [ynq] (q) y
    NetHack: You scream in agony as your body begins to warp...—More—
    NetHack: You cease to exist.—More—
    NetHack: Your possessions land on the floor with a thud.—More—
    NetHack: Do you want your possessions identified? [ynq] (n)
    Score List: Player, committed suicide.
  • Throwing rocks at the ceiling and taking damage when they hit you on the head.
  • Hurting your leg when you kick something immobile.
  • Falling down staircases because you're carrying too much.
    • Getting stoned because you tried to go down stairs while wielding a cockatrice corpse and carrying too much.
  • Choking by trying to eat a boulder made of meat.
  • Shooting yourself with a wand of death. There's a reason the game coined the term Yet Another Stupid Death.
  • There are no less than forty-five ways to get yourself killed by a cockatrice — and only a few are from enemies.
  • It's even possible to attempt to mount your horse, slip off, and kill yourself... on the very first turn!
    NetHack: "Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 zorkmids."
• In The Neverhood, the player character Klaymen cannot die and always makes it out of whatever dangerous situation unscathed... unless you make him jump through a Bottomless Pit that appears at one point in the game, which is clearly marked with signs saying not to jump through it. Jumping through that pit is the only way to die in the game.
• The New Order: Last Days of Europe:
  • In older versions, if Göring has control of Germany, he has a variety of war plans to execute to fulfill his idea of a Forever War to keep Germany great... but if he reaches that far, it's recommended one doesn't pick Fall Rockwell (invade the USA), Fall Schwarz (invade the SS State of Burgundy), Fall Dämmerung (invade Japan) and in some cases even Fall Rot (invade Russia, be it what's left of it or recently reunified). It will lead to an inevitable nuclear exchange, which chains into inevitable thermonuclear war and the end of the world at large. Then again, if he doesn't push through the War Hawks in his government will cause a collapse and the Second German Civil War, so he's fucked either way.
  • The All-Russian Black League's end goal is the Great Trial, an all-out genocidal war against Nazi Germany to avenge twenty years of brutal oppression and humiliation committed against Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, even if it means marching through a nuclear winter to stomp on the ruins of Berlin while they still glow hot, and nothing will make the League back down. Their war strategy even hinges on the knowledge that Germany has nukes, and the League prioritizes developing underground bunkers and its own nuke arsenal. For this reason, the moment Omsk unifies Russia, the world's fate is sealed.
  • If Célestin Lainé takes over Brittany, he has two ideological paths available to him. If he adopts National Socialism, he expands the Breton black market into less savory areas such as drug running and human trafficking. If he adopts the Burgundian System, he draws Brittany closer to Burgundy... at which point Burgundy will invade Brittany, a war that Brittany has no chance of winning.
  • A very much delayed example: if Sergey Taboritsky takes over Komi and then unifies Russia, his Holy Russian Empire will collapse when he inevitably dies. No matter what he does, Alexei will never return (because he died in 1917). You even get a literal "Press X to Die" button with the mission "The Reckoning", which speeds up the Doomsday Clock that counts down to the end, which can be handy if you've reunified Russia ahead of schedule and you want to access the post-Taboritsky content.
  • If you're playing as Long Yun, after you unify China, you get the choice to continue your war against the Japanese Empire by invading it through the Korean peninsula. Do so, and you'll end up triggering Thermonuclear War.
  • The Toolbox Theory update now gives you the option to immediately fire your nuclear arsenal if you have one, causing... exactly what you think it does. You also have the option to print loads of more money, immediately causing an economic meltdown that won't destroy your country but will incur a fiscal crisis on the nation with severe penalties to nearly everything, and there is hardly any good reason to use this mechanic.
• In New Super Mario Bros. Wii's multiplayer co-op mode, you can press the A button to go into a bubble and let your friend(s) continue the level, then have one of them pop the bubble to bring you back into the game. This can save you a life or two when going through tight spots, as only one player needs to surmount the challenge. BUT... the A button is not disabled when everyone else is in a bubble (or out of lives), so if you press it then, you'll be stuck in a bubble with no way to pop it, and you'll have to restart the level! Which, of course, came in handy for Maxwell Adams' hilarious prank.
  • This can actually come in handy sometimes — if you're on your last life, everybody else is out of lives, and you're plunging to your doom, letting yourself die causes a Game Over and you have to reload your last save. But going into a bubble will only make you restart the level and bring back the other players.
• A sizable fraction of NieR: Automata's twenty-one joke endings are gotten by trying blatantly counterintuitive things, only to have the plot react to them by ending abruptly, even having the credits shoot by in under two seconds. First among them is how the game lists game functions as taking up the same memory as upgrade chips (2B's an android). One of them is her OS chip, which carries the warning that removing it is fatal. Guess what happens when you remove it like any other powerup?
• No Umbrellas Allowed: If you're accused of Avarice Crimes by AVAC, you must pay the fine or else you'll be arrested and Fixed, resulting in a Game Over.
• Octopath Traveler II has a cutscene where Throné and the slaver play a Russian Roulette game of drinking. When it comes to choosing from one of the last two cups, the correct answer is the cup at the right, and the game tells you that the cup at the left is poisonous by putting bloodstain on the "Left" option. Choosing it will have Throné poisoned and lead to a Non-Standard Game Over, though loading the save file afterwards will bring the player back to the same choice, so it's not a big deal.
• The second title of the Oddworld series, Abe's Exoddus. FeeCo Depot has an info station in the very first room where a Slig (Enemy Guard) hosts an infomercial for the player. At the end, he refers to a lever right next to the player should they have any questions. If the player pulls the lever, a boulder drops and kills the player instantly. Thankfully, this is done right at the start of FeeCo Depot so as not to undo progress. And considering the game so far, it should be obvious to players.
• The Omega Stone lets you "use" an electric fence, press the big red button on what turns out to be an explosive device, and so on.
  • This follows the precedent of the preceding Riddle Of The Sphinx, in which you could die by choosing the wrong one of six pairs of slabs, trying to pass an uncharmed cobra, etc.
• In OMGWTFOTL, you always have the option to [X] GENUFLECT (which always results in the main character getting killed). And by "always", we mean "including the game's main menu". Forget Press Start to Game Over, you can get a Game Over before the Press Start bit!
• Taken literally in the original release of One Shot, where if you close the game by clicking the 'X' button on the title bar, Niko dies and the game modifies your computer in an attempt to keep it that way. This is averted in the rerelease, which instead saves your progress and puts the game world into a stasis until you return.
• In The Oregon Trail II, the Green River is only about 5 feet deep (still too deep to ford), but the Mississippi and Missouri are about 20 feet deep, like the Green is in the first game. The treatment options for diseases usually have an option that increases the likelihood of death for the patient. Venturing through the desert without water containers or through winter weather without appropriate garb also pretty much guarantees a Total Party Kill. And don't try to climb a steep hill without using ropes or double teaming. And hit 5 or so rocks on the Columbia and your leader WILL drown (oddly, everyone else usually survives), no ifs ands or buts about it.
  • In the fifth edition, don't try crossing a desert by day, or everyone will die of thirst, even if you have water kegs.
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door you can choose to read a ghost's diary after promising not to (although you have to dig through a bunch of "are you sure"s first) or, later, accept the Big Bad's We Can Rule Together. Both result in a Nonstandard Game Over.
• Super Paper Mario:
  • You can die before the game even officially starts. Just tell the character telling you about the rift in the world that you don't want to do anything about it. He will ask if you're sure and tell you the world will end without your help. Say yes and he asks if you are REALLY sure. Say yes again and he then says something like "Well... I guess there is nothing to be done about it then. This world and all who live in it will be destroyed." And you get a Game Over, even before you can officially control your character.
  • When you enter level 4-1, which is set in outer space, you can choose not to put on your air helmet. Do that 3 times and after Tippi mocks your ineptitude, BOOM — game over.
  • Another We Can Rule Together happens in the next-to-last chapter. Cue another few "Are you sure"'s from the same character from the previous example before leaving you at the Big Bad's mercy.
• Papers, Please: EZIC gives you an envelope with poisonous powder one day to apply to a target's passport. There is nothing to stop you from touching the powder yourself. Not even the warning label reading "DO NOT TOUCH POWDER".
• In Pathways into Darkness, you can set the timer on your nuke too short, set it too long, or oversleep. The formermost results in burning atomic death, the latter two in a Fate Worse than Death by way of Eldritch Abomination.
• Peasant's Quest lets you simply type "die". The game insults your intelligence, then carries out the command. So do Thy Dungeonman and its sequel Thy Dungeonman II.
• Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners: It is possible to shout loudly (thus opening your mouth) in the middle of a Gas Chamber requiring anyone passing through to hold their breath. Predictably, this causes you to suffocate to death.
• Perfect Dark had this in one of its multiplayer modes. One player plays through the mission, while the other plays as a Mook, trying to impede Player 1. When changing weapons, the mook player could select "Cyanide Pill" which would instantly kill you. However, this actually served a purpose; you would respawn at a different point on the level, so it was helpful for letting you catch up to the player.
• Persona 5 has this come up during a late-game boss battle. If you attack Shadow Sae while the roulette wheel is spinning, she'll hit back hard: if you don't die outright, you'll be damned close to dying afterward.
• Guess what happens if you type "pick up phone booth" in the text adventure Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die?
• Pickory: Similar to its inspiration I Wanna Be the Guy, pressing Q anywhere causes you to die, even on the title screen. However, it is actually required to defeat one Puzzle Boss, where you control the boss, who is otherwise invincible.
• PixieMUD had a Line of Death. "Do not cross this line or you will die." When someone invariably did — and did — it announced their folly to all other connected players.
• This is inverted in Planescape: Torment — as the point of the game is to more or less figure out why you're immortal, and find a way to die.
  • To get a Nonstandard Game Over, you can kill the only source of information on how to save yourself from everlasting reincarnation. You can also anger a being of godlike power twice in a row. Or accept a position with a lifetime term. Or annoy a Medusa.
  • You may also receive a blade which is specifically designed to kill you, and only you — "It looks like it couldn't cut butter." This comes in handy during the endgame...
  • Or, if you have Wisdom 25, you can try to will yourself to death.
  • Then there's the throne of the Silent King (the aforementioned lifetime term), which is inescapable once sat in, and by all evidence has killed the last person to sit on it. Nameless can choose to take the throne himself, with predictable results.
  • It also subverts this trope in that willingly taking mortal damage can prove beneficial:
    • A woman who wants to know what murdering another person feels like offers The Nameless One a thousand coins to allow her to stab him in the heart.
      Jolmi: "Somewhat disappointing, I must admit. Ah, well... coin well-spent, nonetheless. Farewell."
    • The Nameless One can talk someone out of committing suicide by snapping his own neck, coming back to life, and telling the unsure person what's on the other side.
    • The Nameless One can also humiliate an evangelist talking about the wonders the afterlife holds by challenging him to die — he'll agree if you die first. After snapping your own neck and coming back to life, you can ask him to hold up his end of the bargain, which he'll backpedal on. You can then draw a dagger and stop just short of killing him, causing him to audibly soil himself.
  • To get through your own tomb, The Nameless One has to repeatedly die.
  • And of course, there's the easiest way for The Nameless One to sneak back into the Mortuary...
  • All that said, this part of the trope is eventually played straight when it becomes apparent that every time The Nameless One should die, someone else dies in his place — and becomes a shadow that will hunt him down relentlessly.
• Pokémon:
  • In the mainline games, you can have your last Pokémon use Selfdestruct or Explosion. Guess what happens next. You can't force a draw with this. If you try, you'll lose, either against AI trainers or in competitive scenarios. The AI, however, will win if it does the same, due to gameplay limitations prohibiting you from walking around with a fainted party.
  • In the first generation of games, you can deposit or release Pokémon in such a way that your lineup has only fainted Pokémon. The game will not warn you, and once you log off the PC, the same gameplay limitations will kick in and boot you to the last place you healed up. Twitch Plays Pokémon once discovered this after assuming that you still had to keep a healthy Pokémon.
• Police Quest had one part where you could give the jail bondsman your keys, badge, gun, or even UNIFORM. All of these result in a Have a Nice Death message, even though you didn’t die. You could also kill yourself by firing your gun in its holster; same for the second game.
  • You can take off your clothes for an instant game over, even at the very first screen. The option exists because there is a locker and shower room in the police station, and it will be necessary to remove your clothes so that you can take a few showers. However, if you get naked when you're not at your locker (which even then has to be open while you're looking inside it), you lose.
  • In the second installment of the series, you could fail to put ear protectors on when using the firing range. Shoot twice, and Have a Nice Death.
  • Open Season: Try to leave the convenience store without paying? The owner shoots you. Shoot anyone? You die too. Fail to use the mirror on a stick before entering the door? You get fatally mauled by the Big Bad's dog.
• Portal 2 features two scenarios where doing this will earn achievements:
  • Following GLaDOS's advice about completing the final test chamber will make her seal said chamber and flood it with neurotoxin.
  • Listening to Wheatley and jumping into the pit from the start of The Part Where He Kills You earns you an achievement and kills you instantly.
• In the first Postal game, you can literally press X to commit suicide. Your avatar will then get on its knees, point a handgun under its chin, and pull the trigger, blowing off its own head. Good for a level start-over. In the sequel, you go out with a grenade and a shrug. Great for crowded dancefloors!
• In the PSP version of Prince of Persia: The Fallen Sands, one skill you can acquire is the Prince's ever-popular "launch off a wall" attack. But this is a 2.5D game where some of the wall-runs are parallel to the screen... and you are absolutely allowed to use this attack then. It never does anything but launch you into the void.
• Quake has the Thunderbolt weapon, which kills you when fired underwater, and it also electrocutes anything in a radius that depends on the amount of ammo you have for it. This is (kinda) useful in multiplayer if a bunch of people are in the water with you, or if you're invincible.
• Quest for Glory III introduced a new spell called Thermonuclear Blast, basically as a joke. The description for the spell read something along the lines of: "Everything in a ten mile radius dies instantly. This includes your character, but at least you'll go out with a bang!" The spell would actually develop some limited use in the fifth game, where it could be used to initiate a Nonstandard Game Over in a certain scene. There is one place where the spell is used in a serious way: if you waited too long at the end before destroying the Big Bad and closing the portal, the Greater-Scope Villain got through, and you died in a Thermonuclear Blast.
• In the Map Room of Raiders of the Lost Ark, you use a key to walk from a narrow ledge to a spot below the map, then equip the headpiece of the Staff of Ra to do what Indy did in the movie. But while you're standing there, the slightest movement will send you plummeting to your death in the valley below. You have to equip the key again to leave.
• In Resident Evil 4, you can kill yourself in a number of stupid ways, such as shooting fish in the lake and causing Del Lago to swallow you whole, dropping a boulder trap on yourself, pissing off Luis by shooting him, etc.
• Riven: Trapping yourself in the prison book, or opening the fissure without trapping Gehn first.
  • Subverted in Myst where the brothers, Sirrus and Achenar, tell you not to find the green book since it'll place you in a book prison like theirs. Doing so reveals that their father, Atrus, is stuck within the book, and as it turns out, he has much nobler intentions. Helping one of the brothers winds up with your character switching places with them in one of the prison books. If, however, you enter the book without bringing a crucial item, you do get trapped in D'ni with Atrus.
• Amongst the variety of different ways to die in A Rose in the Twilight, is the ability to immediately kill the player character Rose by holding down the Select button on the Vita (Or its equivalent on Steam). This allows the player to restart a section if it gets impossible to progress. There are also torture chambers located at the entrance of every new location, which Rose has to use on herself to advance the game. Luckily, Rose has Resurrective Immortality on her side.
• Runescape: When the Player Character meets the Elder God Jas and tries to plead their case to allow life on the planet to continue to exist, they have the option of insulting her to her face. If they ignore the game's explicit warning and follow through with it, she annihilates them without a second thought.
• In Saints Row IV, you are given an option at one point to continue in defiance of the villain, which will lead to the destruction of all you hold dear, or you can turn yourself in and save everyone. No prizes for guessing which option leads to your Non-Standard Game Over death.
  ZINYAK LIED
• Samurai Shodown has Seppuku attacks, which instantly cost you the round. These aren't completely useless — using them lets you start the next round with a full POW meter.
• SCP – Containment Breach has a number of opportunities for the player to kill themselves, but the stand-out has to be SCP-294. It's a coffee machine with a keyboard where you can punch in any requested drink, any material which exists in the world, even abstract concepts. Treat yourself to a nice hot cup of lava. Or nuclear fission. Or tachyons. Or literal death. And that's not counting what happened to Joseph the security guard when someone asked the machine for "A cup of joe."
• Since the premise of Scribblenauts is that you can summon anything, this naturally includes spectacularly dangerous things. Some of said spectacularly dangerous things have situational uses, but even then they remain thoroughly catastrophic and impractical:
  • The nuclear bomb. It does indeed blow everything up, including the player character... but also does have limited use on certain levels with some creativity. For instance, on the level that requires you to clean up trash, if you stand your character where the Starite will appear, then nuke the place, your corpse will successfully win the stage because all of the trash is gone.
  • Typing "METEOR" summons, well, a meteor. Drop it from high enough up and it destroys everything, causing near-instant death. Interestingly, puzzle 8-3 from the first game can theoretically be solved by using it: the player needs to "get rid of the skunk and give the astronomer something to study in the sky", and a meteor can indeed accomplish both of those things...
  • "TSUNAMI" does exactly what you'd imagine.
  • In the first game, the Black Hole isn't quite this because you can get rid of it before it does too much damage. However, in Super Scribblenauts, it just grows until everything is destroyed, and can't even be deleted; despite its status as this trope, it can still technically be used to solve puzzle 1-6 ("Cause a new extinction without weapons or asteroids"), but you need to grab the Starite quickly because you're about to be killed by the black hole you summoned.
  • In Super Scribblenauts creating a potion with an adjective and then using the potion on something will add that adjective to the target. "Dead" is a usable adjective, which means that you can make a "dead potion", and if you use that potion on yourself, you die. Meanwhile, in Scribblenauts Unlimited, you can add adjectives directly to yourself, including the word "dead".
• Shadowgate. Just about everything you can do is either necessary to progress, or immediately fatal. One notable exception makes you press X three times to die. Using the torch on yourself:
  Narrator: You now have terrific second-degree burns on your hands.
  Narrator: You hold the torch close enough to cause second and third-degree burns.
  Narrator: You finally set your hair on fire. The rest of your body soon follows!!
• Shadow Madness includes the item "Pandora's Caudron". Its in-game description is "Do not use. EVER!" Using it shows a FMV that ends in an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, followed by a Game Over screen.
• In Shenmue 2, Ryo Hazuki meets up with Zhangyu, a barber offering information on one of the four Wude, which any martial artist should know. He trims Ryo's hair, and suddenly asks you to stay calm. He puts a razor to Ryo's throat and a Quick Time Event appears. Pressing the button will cause Ryo to free himself. This is exactly the wrong thing to do, as the third Wude, DAN, means to "Be brave and stay calm to make the right decisions."
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse has a unique Non-Standard Game Over that can be triggered only on the final battle of the best ending by telling the Greater-Scope Villain you'll serve him, then doubling down by slapping Dagda's hand when he offers it to you. The villain "rewards" you for this by immediately killing you.
• Shinobi games feature a self-destruct ninjitsu, which kills or greatly damages everything on the screen and reduces a life from your total stock, while also giving you another use for a ninjitsu. There's nothing to stop you from using it while on your very last life.
• In Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment, Specter Knight can dash-attack through enemies either up or down depending on his position. There's no reason he'd ever use the down-slash with a hazard below him, but it's still offered in that (very common) situation — and dash attacks override the attack button whenever they're available. You will lose many lives to this pointless option.
• Skweek may have some situations that become impossible (or extremely hard) due to what happens. If so, the player can push the button to reset the level, costing one life.
• In Sonic Shuffle, if you use the Eggman card in battle, you automatically lose against the monster.
• Soul Nomad & the World Eaters includes options like these, though it helpfully labels anything that will result in an immediate game over with a little skull-and-crossbones in the option list. At least one option leads to a different path on a New Game Plus, though.
• In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, the Coon's base has a rubix cube enclosed in a glass jar on a stand. If you smack it, your pals will tell you to cut it out and even warn you that breaking the cube will destroy the universe. Keep doing it and the universe is erased in a blinding white light, netting you a game over.
• Space Quest had quite a few of these.
  • Roger could activate his ship's self-destruct system at any time, though it turns out to be a useful function later.
  • Several games require Roger at some point to go on a spacewalk outside his ship. Naturally, there's nothing stopping you from opening the airlock without putting on a spacesuit first...
  • In one scene, Roger could walk through an array of destructive lasers with no apparent harm, only to fall into pieces seconds later. At which point, at least in the VGA remake, the developers would mock you with an instant replay. And then there's the pool of corrosive acid which can be reached into. You also have the option of smelling or even tasting the acid, which also proves fatal in a hurry.
  • Space Quest I: The escape pod has a big red button marked "Do Not Press". If you press it, the pod is sent through a dimension warp into King's Quest I: Quest For The Crown (or Conquests of the Longbow in the remake), where you either drown in the moat or die in a fiery crash.
  • Space Quest IV:
    • You have the option near the beginning to pick up a piece of "unstable ordinance". If you do, it later explodes and kills you. Picking up the unstable ordinance gives you points, putting it back costs you some, but it is still a net gain. It serves no other purpose, GUIDE DANG IT! Also, if you pick it up after exiting the sewers, you immediately get killed by the Droid-o-Death.
    • There's also a software store where you could pick up items and take them to the counter — or try and leave the store. The first three times you try to leave, you'll be told to pay the clerk or you'll be sorry — the fourth time you try and walk out of the store you get blasted by the anti-shoplifting system.
    • Banging on the change machine in the arcade is not a good idea, though at least the change machine gives you the warning "Banging on the Change Machine will only activate its self-defense mechanism."
      "We warned you not to break into the Change Machine, but did you listen?"
    • Near the end of the game, you have the option of deleting the SQ4 application from the Supercomputer, which causes the game to quit. Just beforehand, if you incorrectly enter the Programming Room code, one of the patrolling security droids will show up via Offscreen Teleportation and blast Roger.
    • The "Taste" command has no useful function for the entire game, except for the narrator's humorous reactions to you licking everything in sight. There's also at least one place where using it has mortal results. (What did you expect when you try to lick a force field generator?)
• Splitgate's portals can be set up in such a way that you can see your own character model clearly. And you can actively kill yourself this way by pumping your own body full of bullets through it; seeing the portal setup you need to arrange for this, you have to be actually trying to end yourself, if only to see if you can. The icing on the cake is that everyone else in your team is Friendly Fireproof, portals or not.
• The Wife ending in The Stanley Parable explicitly requires you to press a button to die before the game will restart.
• In Star Control 2, using the Utwig Bomb (a tool designed to destroy small planets for easy mining) is not wise.
• In the early 1980s FORTRAN ASCII graphics Star Trek game, the player can activate the Enterprise's Self-Destruct Mechanism. Which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • In some ports of this game, when the Enterprise explodes, it will destroy any nearby Klingon ships. Depending on the port, this can result in a net increase in the player's final score, making it, if nothing else, a reasonable thing to do when all other options have been exhausted. One Commodore 64 port, titled "Space: The Ultimate Frontier" plays it out as a sort of cutscene, evoking Star Trek III.
• Similarly, Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force lets you activate Voyager's self-destruct system. While it gets disabled immediately so nobody dies, it does result in your character's incarceration and a game over. (Ironically, Captain Janeway is notorious for her auto-destruct habit — she uses it three times in Season 2 alone.)
• In Star Trek Online, the player will eventually learn the "Abandon Ship" skill. Specifically, the crew abandons the ship while the captain sets it to self destruct. The resulting explosion can severely damage nearby enemy ships, while the player's ship is free to respawn afterwards.
  • This ability is only usable if the ship's hull integrity (i.e. health points) is below 25%.
• Blowing up your own starbases in the Star Trek Text Game, possibly the Ur-Example from 1971.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the "/stuck" command ordinarily shifts the player a short distance in order to escape being stuck on the terrain. However, if used while in combat, it results in instant death. This can be useful in boss fights where a Total Party Kill has become unavoidable, as it allows the remaining team members to quickly wipe and restart the fight. (Like most other forms of insta-kill, it also does no damage to your gear.)
• In Starship Titanic, you come across a button that says "Press to Disarm Bomb" — which arms it.
  Bomb: "Now this is going to be a fairly large explosion, so everybody should stand back...oh, about twenty-two miles."
  • Subverted in that if you actually wait long enough for the entire countdown from 1000 to expire, the bomb gets cold feet about actually exploding and restarts the countdown. Oddly enough, even though the bomb will never blow up during gameplay, it will explode in the ending FMV if it happens to be armed. At least it got the parrot too.
• Stellaris has a time-delayed version of this in the form of the End of the Cycle. If you choose the psionic ascension path, you can make "Covenants" with entities from another dimension known as the Shroud, who can confer various benefits onto your galactic nation — but always at a cost. The most powerful Covenant you can make is with the End of the Cycle, which doubles your output of research, unity, influence, and all resources, "if we will only bring forth the end". Just to let you know that making a deal with the End of the Cycle is a very, very bad idea, the text for what will happen if you do so outright warns you, in bright red letters above all the bonuses you'll get, "Do not do this." If you make the deal anyway, you will get exactly what you bargained for: obscenely powerful boosts to your empire for fifty years, followed by the total and immediate destruction of your empire when time runs out. All of your planets are turned into uninhabitable Shrouded Worlds, all of your ships and extraterrestrial infrastructure are destroyed, all of your resources are lost, and all you are left with is one little planet on the edge of the galaxy where some people who saw the end coming managed to flee to before it came. A perfect vantage point from which to watch the Eldritch Abomination that just spawned from your former territory feast on the entire galaxy, saving you for last, all while every other nation in the galaxy now has an insurmountable diplomatic penalty with you for dooming them all — meaning that, even if they somehow manage to beat this thing back, they'll be coming for you next. Betcha wish you didn't take the obvious Schmuck Bait now, huh?
• In Streets of Rage 1, throws cannot be performed on the "Big Ben" type of enemy (and in certain cases, boss). However, rather than just disallowing throws on them, the game instead has these enemies crush the player any time they try a throw, doing a fairly large chunk of damage. And just to mock you further, the fat bastards will laugh at you if they squash you... or pretty much taking damage from anything in their sight. It's a bit of an annoyance for people who have played Streets of Rage 2, where the "Big Ben" type enemies were throwable with no ill effects. The exception to this is Skate, who can toss them around all day⁺the manual Hand Waves it by saying it's because he possesses the "Chi of Fire". In the Bomber Games Fan Remake, Max can slam them with no difficulty, but then again, he is a huge wall of muscle.
• String Tyrant You can enter Pygmalie's throne room like any other. The game even tells you that it's full of hundreds of the dolls like those stalking the halls. You get a special ending going in.
• Super Mario Bros. 2 (US) has a suicide code for use in Unwinnable situations, such as the Fryguy glitch where the exit door fails to spawn.
• In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, one of the spells the Dragon Quest Hero can cast is Kamikazee. It is possible to cast this spell even if you're down to your last stock.
• System Shock: Firing the Kill Sat aimed at Earth. Whoops.
• In Team Fortress 2:
  • Select Soldier. Equip Equalizer or Escape Plan. Press G (the default Taunt key). This has the "advantage" of taking out anyone close to you. Your character will grab a grenade and pull the pin, which will then kill you and any enemy who's within 6 feet of the explosion.
  • There is also the old "press 'kill' in console to instantly die" action, though here it's a little more well-known as it's possible to bind any key to any action via console - including the kill command, literally Pressing X to Die. This is known as a "killbind", and because of the physics involved alongside general silliness (dying this way simply causes you to ragdoll to the ground, though equipping the Bombnomicon cosmetic will make you explode instead), creative use of killbinds are a staple of the game's comedic scene.
  • A common prank done during the early days of Team Fortress 2 was making new players type in "unbindall" in the console. For those unaware, this command disables all keyboard and mouse buttons (and in fact, this command is used in the game's configuration files, right before setting the binds in the file). The only way to exit the game after this was forcing it to close through the task manager.
• In the Tekken series, Yoshimitsu has a button combo that allows him to stab himself with his own sword. Sure, you can damage another guy behind you, if there is a guy behind you, but after you stab the other character and yourself at the same time, you can stab yourself again and take away the rest of your health. Still pretty funny, though.
  • In Tekken 2, however, Yoshimitsu could work in one of his several self-stab moves to a nasty technique: firstly pull off a cartwheel kick, screw attack and kangaroo kick combo to launch the opponent into the air. Due to the low gravity of the first couple of games it was possible to be on your feet as the opponent was being launched upwards with about a quarter of their health left — trigger the hara-kiri move at the apex of their flight and they fall down behind you just in time to be skewered by the tip of the blade as it comes out of your back. If the fight has gone on for a while, it forces a draw. If you can do this as your first action, the match is won in less than three seconds.
  • Same with Soul Calibur's Yoshimitsu. It's fun to pull it off right after winning a match.
• In ThunderDome MUD, drinking gasoline was instant death. Since the most convenient way to carry it was in one of the larger canteens, and drinking water is also often necessary, it wasn't an infrequent death. The Implementors themselves would laugh on the gossip line when reading the death logs.
• Pushing the restart button in Time Fcuk causes the player to pop a cyanide pill, which for some reason causes his head to explode. Doing this in the final stage when prompted nets you the bad ending.
• In Tobal No. 1, Hom had a move where he touches the button on his back and shuts himself off, thus losing the round. It had no purpose other than suicide, though sometimes if you're fighting him, he'll do it himself, letting you win.
• ToeJam & Earl has the Total Bummer! present that, when opened, instantly kills the player.
• Swan-diving off a ledge (without Soft Water below) in Tomb Raider is suicide. Saving while standing in spikes results in a Lara-kabob upon restoring. Don't jump in the Ganges River in 3, or you will be devoured by the piranhas, if you don't drown first. Trying to swim in the rapids of Madubu Gorge results in instant drowning. Lara is highly flammable; if you're lucky you can jump in the water before you burn to death. In the glitchy Angel of Darkness, don't go in the alcove with the medkit near the beginning, or you will be mauled to death by invisible dogs. There are countless other instances where you can glitch-kill Lara.
  • For a more traditional example of this trope, try jumping onto the Midas hand in the original game (or the Anniversary remake) and gawk at your solid-gold Lara.
  • And of course there's Tomb Raider 2 and its infamous button sequence that causes Lara to violently explode, often used as Schmuck Bait for dummies looking for the mythical "naked Lara" cheat.
• In Transarctica, when you click the revolver lying on the table in your personal quarters, your character will commit suicide.
• Something of a brilliant subversion in Yahtzee Croshaw's graphical adventure game, with text input, Trilby's Notes. At the very end of the game, when Trilby is severely injured and barely holding onto life, you can decide to just stop trying and enter 'Die'. However, this is actually the CORRECT solution (as your life was needed for a sacrifice).
• The original Ultima Underworld has a spell called "Armageddon." It pretty much does Exactly What It Says on the Tin. When used, it destroys every item (both in your inventory and on the ground), monster, door, and staircase, and sets all your abilities at zero, making it impossible to win. Just doing the first would be enough for that.
  • The sixth and seventh Ultimas also have the Armageddon spell. Casting it kills every living thing in the game except for the Avatar and Lord British. (And in Ultima VII, Batlin.)
• In Ultimate Custom Night, you can collect Faz-Coins from blocking jumpscare attempts that you can then trade for Death Coins, which are used to remove a single animatronic from play for the rest of the night. Attempting to use a Death Coin on Withered Golden Freddy while no other animatronics are active will summon Fredbear to instantly jumpscare you.
• In the Genocide Route of Undertale, about halfway through the frustratingly, insanely difficult Final Boss battle with Sans, said boss will give you the option to stop fighting and spare him. If you choose to do so, he will immediately hit you with an unavoidable One-Hit Kill attack that gives you a game over, requiring you to re-do the first half of the fight all over again. This is a particular case of Schmuck Bait in that, since the Genocide Run requires killing every single monster and not sparing anybody, even players who don't know that the offer is a trap still have no reason to accept it after coming this far on this route, other than the curiosity of finding out what will happen, and are punished accordingly. That said, it isn't entirely Schmuck Bait - before making the offer, Sans genuinely tries to appeal to your better nature, alluding to a time and place in the past where the two of you may have been friends ^note Sans is one of the very few characters in the game who knows that the world is in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, since your ability to save and load is diegetic, and asks if there's any part of that version of you still around and still wants to make things right. Considering it's overwhelmingly more likely for players to go through a more peaceful route before trying the Genocide Route, this is clearly meant to directly target any attachment the player may have to him and the rest of your friends, all of whom you've already killed. If you accept his offer and spare him, Sans himself narrates over the Game Over screen, telling you "If we're really friends, you won't come back." So essentially, when you Press X to Die, you're given one last chance to stay true to your word and Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• Uninvited plays with it by giving you many, many, many warnings that leaping into the den of the resident Giant Spider is a bad idea. Ignoring these leads to your well-deserved death.
  Narrator: Well, what do you know. It's a giant spider.
• Many Death Is a Slap on the Wrist multiplayer games have a Slash Command for this, like Unreal's "suicide", which broadcasts the message "[player] had an aneurysm."
• In Until Dawn, a few times, the player is given a quick-response challenge to shoot or attack something that, if attacked, will become hostile and attack back, while if the player merely waits out the timer, the thing will become calm. This is done to ensure that the player is actually thinking quickly and not merely blindly attacking at the first sign of trouble. Very early on, the game specifically tells you, "Sometimes doing nothing is the right answer".
  • There is also one part of the game in which the character has the option to open a door that will result in instant death if they do. Ignoring the door has no consequences.
  • A box in the sanitarium with a severed arm sticking out is actually a hidden bear trap. If investigated, it triggers a Life-or-Limb Decision where you either break the one weapon you have or amputate two fingers. If ignored, you suffer no consequences.
• Uplink after the Evil Corporation hands you The Virus. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RUN REVELATION LOCALLY.
  • Although creative players can use it as a cheap (free!) alternative to a Self Destruct Device (which otherwise costs a significant amount of money and a hardware slot).
• Urban Dead players camped out in tall buildings have access to the "Jump from a window" command. After confirming that you're serious, the game lets you do this, and you die instantly. The purpose of this exercise is to provide an easy path to zombification, for players who prefer eating brains over having them.
• Early in Victor Vector And Yondo The Dog In The Cyberplasm Formula, the two enter a mostly-abandoned subway line; after meeting with some rebels down there (or rather, accidentally barging into their hideout), you're supposed to exit via a ladder that will take you to the other side of a fence separating the restricted zone from the city. Part of the line is still being used, though, and Victor briefly wonders if they can flag down a train. There's nothing to stop you from attempting that, despite Yondo warning you not to; predictably, they both get run over.
• Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune has a retire toggle; when it's enabled, driving the wrong way for three seconds will end the current play session. This actually has a practical use other than quickly starting up a new round: In Maximum Tune 4 and beyond, retiring a Story Mode stage does not count as a loss for the mode (as opposed to the opponent crossing the finish line, which is obviously a loss); this is important, because there are some rewards for completing a loop of Story Mode without losing on any stage at all.
• Warcraft II and III have a cheat code that results in an immediate Game Over.
• In Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, you're told that a Warp storm is blocking access to the rest of The Empire, and attempting to return would mean certain death. You can give the order to charge ahead anyway, in which you receive very detailed reports of your thousands of crewmen going mad and killing each other. Passing Medicine and Tech Use checks make it possible to escape the Game Over and make a 180, with 60% of the ship's crew now dead.
• WarioWare:
  • Each game usually comes with at least one microgame that tells you to do nothing. You only lose if you push a button.
  • WarioWare: Twisted! has a microgame with an egg that breaks if you turn the GBA, or if the car or bus you're sitting in takes a turn.
  • WarioWare: Touched!: There's a microgame which involves a group of Fronks trying to cross a tightrope. Blowing into the microphone causes them to fall, ending the game in a loss. This minigame is prone to catch you off-guard, doubly so if you're playing it at a high speed, and further when you're playing with the DS's language set to a language you barely understand. Background noise can cause failures in this game as well. Said microgame returns in WarioWare Gold, in which mashing A, the D-pad, or twisting your system also results in failure.
• Wasteland 2:
  • The museum of Ranger Citadel (player's homebase) contains a live Davy Crockett tactical nuke in mint condition, with a blinking red button on it that the player can press (killing the party, wiping out Ranger faction, and ending the game). And you will: the nuke is a Chekhov's Gun, facilitating the happy-end explosion. A more obscure example is the big red button in a dead-end of a sewers complex. The game warns you that pressing it without knowing what it does would be unwise. Earth shakes slightly when you do. Later, you find a small location with a single man and a building containing yet another Big Red Button. After pressing it, Earth shakes again, and the man laments that "You have doomed us all!". Sadly, there are no more apparent consequences, maybe because it's all just a silly, long-winded pun.
  • At the start of the game, you attend a fellow ranger's funeral. There's a shovel next to the grave, and if you attempt to dig him back up, General Vargas will chew you out. If you keep trying, he'll attack and one-shot your party.
  • When entering the Red Skorpion Militia's base there's a disabled robot you can use to blow up the Skorpions' turrets. After repairing the robot, it asks whether you want it to target organics or non-organics. Saying organics results in it exploding and wiping your entire party.
• The game Waxworks (1992) has, in the Egyptian level, the option to knock down a supporting pillar. This is required; however, the game makes no effort to dissuade you from standing beside said pillar while knocking it down. Also, when finding a tripwire that activates deadly blades to descend upon you, you can choose to either "avoid" or "activate" it. Guess what doing the latter results in.
• Witch Hunter Izana: The player can craft charms that transform a character most of the way into a monster type. No points for guessing what happens if you fight a monster type already mostly transformed into one. The statues even have a special ending for it.
• Wolfenstein:
  • Return to Castle Wolfenstein has a Cyanide Pill that kills Blazkowitz, and which you can assign to the X key, of course. It is meant as a quick reset button, but using the standard reset or loading a save file is actually quicker, as it spares you the death sequence.
  • In Wolfenstein: The New Order, it's possible to pick up and use the gun Frau Engel offers you at any point during the "race test" on the train. Doing so despite her warnings that you'll be gunned down by her giant guard robot results in you... well, pretty unsurprisingly getting gunned down and curbstomped by her huge guard robot, though not before blasting her in her ugly face. One of the rare cases in fiction where the third option is the one and only wrong option.
  • Towards the end of the game in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, there is a button prompt to kill Hitler. On one hand, doing so immediately gets Blazkowicz gunned down by Hitler's guards. On the other hand, you get to kill Hitler!
• World of Horror:
  • Should you be unlucky enough to trigger the fight against Something Truly Evil, your combat options are switched out for options that steadily cut into your Health and Reason. Once you've lost enough, the fight ends. Or you can pick "DIE FOR ME", which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • With a little bit of luck, it's possible to get your hands on a bottle full of eldritch blood. Insanely hot eldritch blood. You can try to drink it, which ends just around the way you expect. On the other hand, if you acquire a special goblet and fill that with the blood, you have the best healing item in the game.
• World of Warcraft:
  • During the Chimaeron encounter (one of the few cases in which you can walk up to the boss without pulling aggro), the raid must talk to Finkle Einhorn to activate the Bile-O-Tron, a device that enables players to survive Chimaeron's attacks. If you attack Chimaeron to pull him like most other bosses, the raid will not live past the first Massacre.
  • When jumping from great heights using buffs to slow your fall, you can cancel the buff in midair. Obviously, you go splat if you do this while too far away from the ground. Also, simply jumping from great heights at all without something to save you from death, or jumping into the bottomless void that surrounds the floating continent of Outland. You can also swim into deep sea and eventually drown when your fatigue depletes, or swim in lava (this doesn't kill you instantly, but inflicts some hefty damage).
  • Related to falling off heights, there is also flying mounts. The ability to summon and dismiss one can be bound to any button of your liking, thus making the trope name literal if you dismiss your mount when high up in the air (and don't have soft water or slow fall/instant flying transformation (as resummoning the mount cannot be done mid-air)/instant teleport spell to save you).
  • The game has several spells (like Hellfire that deals damage to you and enemies around) and some items (Dark Rune and Demonic Rune restore mana and drain a lot of life) that can kill you if you use them while low on life. However, only a few appear to have no use beyond killing yourself. Yet, even those that do allow you to die without sustaining durability damage, which led to abuse and subsequent scrapping of the items. Notable among those is the Crystal of Zin-Malor, a quest item, which used to be equippable with this description: "Deals damage and drains 100 to 500 mana every second if you are not worthy." Despite what you might be tempted to think, your player character is NOT worthy. Many players chose to scrap the quest and keep the item to kill themselves if needed (to avoid durability damage or interrupting flight paths) until Blizzard made the item unequippable.
  • The help menu actually has a suicide button. It's intended as a last resort in case you're stuck and can't teleport away using your hearthstone (or it's on cooldown).
  • There is an item for sale in the rogue class hall called "Zanzil's Slow Poison". Its description states: "A slow poison that kills any who drink it after a week. Completely incurable." While it is in fact quite curable, if you don't remove the debuff within seven days, it will kill you as claimed — by doing fifty million damage.
• Worms:
  • Most of the games have an item called the Surrender. When used, the player's team will be removed from the match, although its members remain on the landscape waving white flags and can be knocked around by the remaining teams.
  • The Kamikaze weapon causes the worm who uses it to shoot forward in a straight line before exploding. This can be useful if you've got a worm on its last legs (figuratively speaking) and you want to knock some enemy worms into the water or other hazards.
  • Heck, all weapons can be used to to kill yourself (or your teammates), and it regularly turns out that having one or two worms sacrificing themselves for the greater good is a good idea. Or you just want to show your opponent that you can use your team as a suicide squad and still kick his ass.
• Many of the WWE Video Games include a 'Create-a-Wrestler' section, including the ability to assign moves. Some of the available moves are included as jokes, generally being 'failed' versions of normal moves. If you are cruel enough to assign these moves to your character, you can literally force your wrestler to do things such as climbing the turnbuckle, walking out onto the ropes and losing balance, landing crotch-first on the hard ropes. What is more terrifying, Press X To Die or Press X To Crotch Yourself Into Oblivion?
• In the X-Universe series, try launching a Tomahawk Heavy Missile when you're flying a Commonwealth M8 bomber (or Phantom Missile if you're flying the Terran Claymore) while you're being fired upon. Congratulations, your death wish has been granted. Game over.
  • The same applies if you have a Hammerhead Missile and/or Firestorm Torpedo in your cargo hold and you carry only 1 GJ of shielding or less, then you attempt to launch.
• Yoshi's Story has a suicide code that many young players might discover by accident. To execute it, the player must press Z, L, A and B simultaneously and, if correctly executed, the player will lose the Yoshi they were playing as.
• You Don't Know Jack:
  • The game gives each player a screw which can be used to force opponents into answering a question. You chose who gets to answer but one of the options is yourself. If you select yourself, you lose money and you're out for that question.
  • Some games have a Gibberish or Anagram Question which requires the player to type in the answer correct. If "fuck you" is typed, the game doles out a heavy cash penalty to whoever submitted it. The second player can do the same, except nothing happens. If a third player does this, the host goes into full Rage Quit mode and the program exits.
• In Zone of the Enders, you get a mission to protect one of the structural support pillars of the colony.