It's always satisfying to win at a fighting game, but there is an extra layer of satisfaction added when it can be done using a special move or triggering a special event, like a stage fatality.
The Mortal Kombat series introduced stage fatalities with its very first installment, one of them being found in The Pit stage. Several games have followed in Mortal Kombat's footsteps when it comes to stages that are hazardous to the health of both combatants.
7 Mortal Kombat
When talking about stage fatalities, it's impossible to not bring up Mortal Kombat. From the very first game, players have been able to input finishing moves that can launch their opponents off a bridge and into a bed of spikes or a vat of acid below.
In Mortal Kombat Deception, death traps were introduced, which are similar to stage fatalities except that they can be triggered at any point during the match and can potentially get both players. Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 didn't have stage fatalities at first, but gained them via expansion packs.
6 Killer Instinct
Killer Instinct was made with the hope to rival Mortal Kombat and while it's debatable if it did or not, it was an immediate hit that created and maintained a large fan following. Throughout the series, many stages have been created, and several are themed after the characters in the game, like Tiger's Lair for Jago. All of these stages have something appealing about them, but only a few offer the ability for a stage fatality, or, as they are called in Killer Instinct, stage ultras.
There are six different places where players can perform a stage ultra. Depending on the theme of the stage, the stage ultra can be as simple as a player falling off the side of a building. Alternatively, they can be more complex, like in the Village of Whispers stage where players can hit their opponents across the stage so that several spectral arms drag them into the land of the dead. The losing character will pop up from the ground a moment later and then be hit over the head, pushing them back into the ground.
5 Eternal Champions
Eternal Champions was made in 1993 for the Sega Genesis. Following in the footsteps of early 90s fighting games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, Eternal Champions has elements of both games while also boasting a few features that were unique at the time. One of those unique features was that the characters were pulled from different parts of the world and different periods of time.
The plot of the game is about a being known as the Eternal Champion that pulls people from different time periods who have the potential to change the course of history for the better. Pulling them right after their death, the winner gets to return to life and learn how to avoid their death. Every stage in Eternal Champions has a stage fatality, which is called an overkill. Some of these overkills include being burned at the stake in Salem during the witch trials, being eaten alive by an Anubis dog, and being thrown into the blades of a moving fan.
4 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle is sure to please any JoJo fan no matter which arc is their favorite, as every arc is covered. The game also includes 50 playable characters from right across the series. Players can reenact iconic battles from the series or pit characters who have never met against one another. All-Star Battle captures the JoJo art style in both its characters and its stages, which are also taken from the series.
Just about every stage has a stage fatality or a dramatic/situational finish. One such stage is The Battlefield, which comes from the second JoJo arc, Battle Tendency. When the situational finish is triggered, the loser is trampled to death by a pair of vampire horses pulling a chariot.
3 Street Fighter 5
While Street Fighter has never had stage fatalities that allow players to kill their opponent's characters, it does have its own variation of stage KOs called stage finishers. In certain stages, depending on the direction a player knocks their opponent, they'll trigger a stage transition that will show them defeating their opponent in a humiliating way.
For example, in the Lair of the Four Kings stage, knocking an opponent to the left side will show them smacking into a giant computer monitor that then shows some stats about the character that got knocked into it. Knocking them out to the right will force their face into the hand of an M. Bison statue, which then attacks them with his signature Psycho Power move. None of these result in death, but sometimes, total humiliation can be just as bad.
2 Super Smash Bros.
The closest the Super Smash Bros. series has to stage fatalities are its danger zones. Danger zones are lava-covered areas that will instantly KO a player if they touch them, regardless of how much damage they may have taken. Danger Zones first appeared in Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 3DS, where they come in the form of lava-covered spike balls that were located throughout a stage.
Danger zones return in Super Smash Bros for Wii U, but will only instant KO a player if their damage is at 100% or more. Otherwise, it will deal flame damage and heavy knockback. Danger zones in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are the same as they are in SSB for Wii U, except they won't deal flame damage anymore.
1 Way Of The Warrior
Another, but less successful attempt to capitalize on the success of Mortal Kombat was the game Way of the Warrior. Created by Naughty Dog back in the early nineties, it tried to replicate the visuals of the original Mortal Kombat arcade game. It has a few stage fatalities that are similar to the ones in Mortal Kombat too, like being dismembered by blades or impaled by spikes.
One of the most memorable and unique stage fatalities in Way of the Warrior sees players throw their opponent into a pool of lava, causing their opponent's skeleton to jump out of the pool and hit the screen. Interestingly enough, despite the lava being hot enough to melt the flesh from the opponent's body, they still manage to keep their eyeballs.