Best Deaths In Horror Games

Death comes for us all, but it becomes infinitely more imminent to protagonists and antagonists alike in horror games. Gory kills and jarring character deaths are part of what makes horror games the titular sub-genre that they are. Without them, horror games just wouldn't be the same experience.

Over the years, horror games have given players some of the goriest, grueling deaths to ever grace their screens. But, they've also mastered the art of making those hard-to-watch deaths meaningful. Whether they make the player feel overwhelming relief that they've killed off the big bad antagonist terrorizing them, or sad that a beloved protagonist has had to die in such a horrific manner: horror games have done it all.

10 Death By Lawnmower: Lucius

Lucius is a survival horror game that was released on October 26, 2012. It was immensely popular around the time it was released, being played by a number of content creators, including Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg. The game was as much interesting as it was bloody, with the player assuming the role of six-year-old Lucius, the son of Lucifer.

One of the final kills of the game has the son of the devil possessing one of their gardeners and making him shove his head into the blade of a lawnmower. The kill isn't graphically gory, but it's bloody and hard to watch—the perfect kill to top off all the murders the player has committed around the mansion.

9 Emily: Until Dawn

Until Dawn is riddled with gory deaths and torturous quick-time events that put characters' lives at stake. That said, one of the most memorable potential deaths happens after Ashley, Mike, and Sam discover that Emily had been bitten by one of the Wendigos.

Players need to take that moment of doubt and decide whether to shoot Emily or to take the chance that the bite turns her into a Wendigo. If players decide to, they're rewarded with a harrowing, gory sequence where Mike shoots Emily through the eye.

8 The Scooping Room: FNaF Sister Location

The climax of the real ending to Five Nights At Freddy's Sister Location ends in the player being lured to a place dubbed "The Scooping Room" by the deceptively sweet voice of the animatronic guiding them there.

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While it's normally used to remove endoskeletons from their shells, in this final sequence it's used to scoop the insides out of the main character, so that the tangle of wires and animatronic parts, Ennard, can slip inside the fleshy shell of the player and take their place in society.

7 Dr. Trager: Outlast

Dr. Trager is just one of the sinister, torturous antagonists that players will encounter within the halls of Mount Massive Asylum in Outlast. But after he straps the protagonist, Miles, into a wheelchair and cuts some of his fingers off using garden shears, players really want to see him suffer.

They don't have to wait long for Dr. Trager's painful demise. After Miles shuts himself into the elevator after escaping some inmates, he encounters Dr. Trager yet again. This time, the two of them tussle for a moment before Miles shoves him out of the elevator door and leaves him to be agonizingly crushed to death between floors.

6 Nagito Komaeda: Danganronpa 2

Nagito Komaeda is notably a fan-favorite character in the Danganronpa series. His cheerful, often laid-back demeanor makes him an immediately likable, and even sometimes relatable, character to those playing the game.

That said, his death in Danganronpa 2 is one of the most bewildering and brutal. His body is discovered tied up with his mouth duct taped, cuts on his thighs, a spear through his torso, and knife wounds on his hand. The brutality of his death isn't offset by the signature pink blood that nearly covers the screen. But what makes his death even more bewildering than brutal is knowing that he inflicted all of those wounds on himself.

5 Joel: The Last Of Us Part 2

The Last Of Us Part 2 is generally considered to be one of the most highly anticipated sequels in gaming history that had been bogged down by bad plot decisions and game leaks. The worst of it all comes to head with Joel's untimely and out-of-character death.

Throughout the first game, players see Joel enter every situation, especially one with people, with distrust. Yet he and Tommy immediately place their trust in Abby and her group the second they meet them. This leads to a full-on ambush where Abby reclaims revenge for Joel killing her father back in the first game. Except she doesn't just shoot him, she beats him to death with a golf club. Ellie even barges in and watches her father figure take his dying breath. This death was disappointing to players and fans of the series, but it doesn't make it less brutal in nature.

4 Dylan: The Quarry

Dylan quickly became one of the most well-liked characters in The Quarry, with his cute romantic sub-plot with Ryan, witty sense of humor, incredible voice acting, and believable character arc. His status as one of the fan-favorite characters makes a potential death sequence in the junkyard so much more painful.

If the player fails the quick-time events while the werewolf climbs up the crane and breaks through the window to attack Dylan, he displays one of the most heart-breaking expressions of true fear before being mauled to death by the vicious werewolf.

3 Chainsaw Decapitation: Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil 3's remake got a fair amount of backlash for censoring and cutting certain gory, gruesome scenes that fans had been hoping to see remade. The remake of Resident Evil 4 comes out in March 2023, and fans are left to speculate whether the bloody chainsaw decapitation makes the final cut.

In the original game, if Leon Kennedy is caught off guard by the Chainsaw Man, he'll slice off Leon's head. This action is bloody, slow, and brutal, leaving the beloved protagonist laying headless on the ground in a pool of his own gushing blood.

2 Adam Shepherd: Silent Hill Homecoming

Pyramid Head is a ruthless, brutal killer in every piece of media he's in. That's no exception in Silent Hill: Homecoming, where Pyramid Head collects one of his most brutal kills when he slaughters a strung-up Adam Shepherd in cold blood.

While apologizing to the protagonist, his son Alex, for his horrible childhood, Adam is impaled with Pyramid Head's large knife, then sliced completely in half. The death is mostly off-screen, but players are left to see the carnage that remains when the camera pans out.

1 Mayu: Corpse Party

Corpse Party is a game-turned-anime-adaptation riddled with gory, horrific deaths. Some are inescapable, such as Seiko's suicide, while others are preventable by making certain choices throughout the game. One of the inescapable deaths is the sudden death of Mayu Suzumoto.

While under the spell of the ghost children, Mayu's classmates Yoshiki and Ayumi attempt to free her from the hold of the ghost children by letting them listen to the recorded apology of the man who supposedly murdered them. Although it was meant to be a kind gesture intended to free the spirits, it instead angers them. The ghost children take Mayu and launch her down the hallway at an inhuman speed, splattering her body on the wall in a mess of gore.

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