1000 Ways to Die is a docufiction anthology series that aired on Spike from May 14, 2008 to July 15, 2012.
Each episode of the show consists of several recreations of stories of people dying in spectacular, gruesome and often stupid ways. Names were changed to avoid lawsuits, but the stories are based on actual events — mostly. Many of the people die because of dumb mistakes, some die as a result of their own misconduct, and some third-party innocent victims die because someone else did something so idiotic that the poor victim's death probably kept the other stupid person from killing themselves through pure incompetence in being alive. In a lot of these cases, you're not surprised the person died — you're surprised that they lived as long as they did. The deaths are also accompanied with commentary from various experts on the science behind the deaths, as well as CGI animations that illustrate the extent of injuries down to bones being broken and organs being damaged.
Given how grim the show's subject matter can be, it tempers the mood somewhat by taking a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek approach to its stories; expect liberal use of Black Comedy (particularly from its narration, with retellings of stories often ending with puns on popular figures of speech, on top of each death being given a Pun-Based Title) and Artistic License (embellishing or changing certain details for greater entertainment value).
At the end of all of the first season's episodes, the show completely inverts its premise for the last segment, and instead of showing someone dying, they show someone who miraculously survives an event which, under normal circumstances, they should not have lived through. These segments can usually be distinguished by changes in video quality, as they use actual footage taken with personal recording devices at a lower resolution than the show.
Thom Beers (owner of Original Productions, the company that produced the series) narrated the show's two pilot episodes. Ron Perlman took over as narrator when the first season began regular weekly airings in February 2009; starting with "Tweets of the Dead", "Shotgun" Tom Kelly assumed narrating duties until the show's end (Perlman's voice was still used in the disclaimer and title sequence).
See also the Darwin Awards
, which are based upon essentially the same thing. The main difference is that the Darwin Awards emphasize the "stupidity" aspect, whereas 1000 Ways usually favors the "got what they deserved" variant (though there's some overlap, as there are a lot of stories on the show in which the victim was killed by their own stupidity).
There was going to be a spin-off, 1000 Ways To Lie, which would have showed how karma bit frauds and cheaters in the butt. The pilot aired only once and the spin-off never kicked off due to negative reception.
Now has a recap page.
