History Main / ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill

* ''OrderOfTheStick'': [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0639.html Familicide]]

* In the DaleBrown novel ''Act of War'', Zakharov sends several squads of men with anti-tank weapons and a helicopter gunship to kill one man. Naturally, when he goes after bigger targets he scales up accordingly.

** ''AceCombat 5'' also has this with the [[spoiler:Falken's Tactical Laser System]]

* Murder of monk [[RasputinianDeath Grigori Rasputin]] in Russia 1916. He was given four poisoned cup cakes, a bottle of poisoned wine, he was shot on chest six times, castrated, wrapped up on a blanket and thrown into Neva river, and pushed under the ice. His cause of death? Asphyxiation by drowning and hypothermia.

* In ''{{Persona 3}} and {{Persona 4}}'' games, if one of your characters uses a normal attack and lands a critical, they usually strike the enemy so hard or so many times, he not only gets massive damage but also is knocked down, in Persona 4 for more than one round. [[{{The Badass}} Kanji]] is probably one of the best examples - his critical attack consists of throwing his chair/board/shield at the enemy, kicking him and punching down to the ground. [[{{Defrosting Ice Queen}} Mitsuru]] is also similar, she strikes an enemy vertically, launches a barrage of swift strikes and curb-stomps him with boots on high heels. No wonder everyone is afraid of those two characters.

* {{Bleach}} has this when Grimmjow kills Luppi. Grimmjow first punches him through the gut, which would probably have meant that Luppi would have just bleed to death if he let him, but then decides to go and blast off his upper body.

* Any unit in FireEmblem can accomplish overkill by getting a critical hit on an enemy with one Hit Point left. But special mention goes to the Reaver class in Radiant Dawn, with the ability "Colossus". This gives the unit a chance of multiplying damage by three TIMES THE UNIT'S STRENGTH. This can easily take the damage up into the thousands, in a game where the average maximum HP stat is 60.
* WHY ISN'T BARBATOS IN TALES OF DESTINY REMAKE MENTIONED? [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aApNG5RB2s "Item nazo tsukatten Ja NEEEEEE!!!"]] Deals overkill every hit in a combo even with like max stats, just because you used an item. Then, there's nothing like taking a hit from [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxz4gZ2p7_w#t=6m45s world destroyer]] on the whole screen, that's 669,515,520 damage. Even if you stat grind all the way to 9999hp, that's enough to kill you 67000 times.

* WHY ISN'T BARBATOS IN TALES OF DESTINY REMAKE MENTIONED? [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aApNG5RB2s "Item nazo tsukatten Ja NEEEEEE!!!"]] Deals overkill every hit in a combo even with like max stats, just because you used an item. Then, there's nothing like taking a hit from [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxz4gZ2p7_w world destroyer]] on the whole screen, that's 669,515,520 damage. Even if you stat grind all the way to 9999hp, that's enough to kill you 67000 times.

** He was also electrocuted after he fell off the ladder.

* The fate of Cyrus the Virus in ''ConAi''. [[spoiler:He died from being beaten to within an inch of his life by the hero, smashed through a bridge on the extended ladder of a moving firetruck, dumped on a conveyor belt and his head smashed by a piledriver (the machine, not the wrestling move). He doesn't [[IGotBetter get better]].]]

* ''{{Blame}}''! introduces the [[WeaponOfMassDestruction Gravitational]] [[WaveMotionGun Beam Emitter]], a weapon that is incapable of anything ''less'' than overkill. Did I mention that this weapon is no larger than a ''pistol'' and the main character fires it off like farts after a bean casserole?

* ''GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'': 2nd Gig has one of the best examples of this. After spending the best part of 26 episodes thinking he's bulletproof, the scheming [[spoiler:Kazunoto Goda]] gets machine-gunned to death ''at point-blank range [[spoiler:until his [[YourHeadAsplode head asplodes]]]]'' by the Major and Batou. [[{{Fanservice}} Now if ''that'' isn't giving the audience what they want, I don't know what is!]]

** It doesn't help that the Japanese for "maximum power!" (zenryoku zenkai) is phonetically the same as the Japanese for "Total Annihilation!"
*** I always figured "zenkai" in this context was "complete destruction" (the homophone that uses the 'kowasu/kowaeru' kanji), given Nanoha's proclivities. I just now found out it was the other one (zenkai with the 'aku/akeru' kanji), meaning "full throttle".
** It should be kept in mind that the reason she never bothers holding back isn't because of any blood-thirstiness but rather because she's a master of [[StunGuns nonlethal attack magic]]. You have to get her ''really'' pissed for her to hit you with a lethal spell.
*** And it's her way of showing people that [[DefeatMeansFriendship she loves them]].
** As much as we love flanderization and jokes, let's try to be fair here. Nanoha used that much power when attacking Quattro because Quattro was half a ship away on the other side of several walls. Not to mention that Nanoha was trying to make sure Quattro STAYED unconscious. There's also the fact that Quattro was being abusive to Nanoha's adopted daughter. As for using five Starlight Breakers on Vivio, it was the only way to free her from both the relic and the Cradle's systems. And back in season 1, when she blasted Fate, bear in mind that Fate's just as powerful. Meaning a blast like that would be the only way of inflicting ANY damage, let alone getting a knockout blow. Ditto with blasting Vita in season 2.
** ''A's'' has Reinforce using a Starlight Breaker with a city-sized AOE to try to off [[spoiler: Nanoha and Fate.]] From the PSP game you have her delivering the area-bombardment Diabolic Emission as her super move against lone targets. You may wince now.
* TengenToppaGurrenLagann and its [[ThisIsADrill GIGA. DRILL. BREAKER!]]
** [[ThisIsADrill GIGA...DRILL...MAXIMUM!]]
** [[spoiler:King Kittan!]] [[BeyondTheImpossible GIGA! DRILL! BREAKER!]]
** How could you forget CHOUGINGA! GIGA! DRILL! BREAKER!, and its 2000 kilometer long drill? To wrecked battleships? It's the definition of overkill.
** And topped off in the movie, with CHOU TENGEN TOPPA! GIGA! DRILL! BREAKER!, and it's evil knockoff. When [[spoiler: Simon pulls out a drill hundreds of times larger than the enemy mech (and his own, for that matter),]] you know they're well into overkill territory. When said [[spoiler: clash of giga drill breakers implodes the universe as a '''''side effect''''', the term, overkill, just isn't enough to describe the situation any more.]]
** [[WaveMotionGun Infinity! Big Bang! STOOOOOOOOOOOORM!]]
** On a related note, Kamina once told some enemies he was going to kill them and follow them to hell so he could kill them a million times over after [[LawOfDisproportionateResponse repeatedly being denied seeing the girls naked]].
** [[http://www.youtube.com/user/MaxAndEmilytate This fellow]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwKEQSYnYnY these]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE-ImfgY_tU two]] videos of [[NoGirlsOnTheInternet his]] show what happens when you put the above two together. May not be available in your country. [[spoiler:[[WhatTheHellHero What The Hell, Hayate]]!? Why'dchu have to make the nice and clean Vivio-kill go SuperpowerMeltdown and cause [[DoctorWho THE! DESTRUCTION! OF! REALITY! ITSELF!]]]]
* ''{{Hellsing}}''. ''Come on.''
** Often Subverted, in that what appeared to be Overkill (Like Alucard being riddled with bullets from several machine guns in the first episode), Didn't actually work.
** Played straight when it's Alucard pulling the triggers. Or when Walter is using his 'death floss'. Or when Seras is firing her enormous gun. Alucard vs. Anderson fights are especially overkill.

* In {{DragonBall Z}} to make sure Frieza is finally dead after chopping him in half with his sword Trunks proceeds to chop off his limbs and tail, chop his two halves into smaller pieces, and finishes it by incinerating his remains with a ki-blast.
** Possibly justified in that Frieza was notoriously hard to kill on Namek. Cut into three pieces was bad enough, having the planet explode on him was worse. He survived to be reassembled into a cyborg by his dad. Trunks may have just decided to be thorough.
*** Arguably the most enjoyable 15 seconds of the entire anime; especially if you eagerly went home every night and ran to the TV to avoid missing Frieza's death on Namek. I spent almost a whole month doing so.
*** Also clipped wholesale and used as the climax for a Trunks tribute video set to the song ''"Stupify"'' by Disturbed. And, given the Cell Games, making damnsure an enemy stays dead is just GoodBusiness.

* Yasuo Umetsu's ''Kite'' manages to top a lot. [[spoiler:However, one sequence deserves special mention: After Sawa assassinates a particular target, one of the bodyguards she had dealt with earlier (by shooting him a bunch of times, I think) tackles her out of the window of a multi-story skyscraper. She manages to turn it around so she's hiding next to his chest, making his wild retaliatory pistol shots useless, and the two of them fall and fall and land on a car on an elevated freeway...]]''[[spoiler:making the car fall through the freeway]]'' [[spoiler:and land on a truck in the street, making]] ''[[spoiler:that]]'' [[spoiler:fall through the street and into a subway station. As Sawa clings to the edge of the pit leading up to the normal street level, a falling electrical sign shaped like an arrow falls and crushes the bodyguard and causes the two vehicles to [[{{MadeofExplodium}} f***ing explode]].]]

* The fate of Cyrus the Virus in ConAir. He's the bad guy in a Bruckheimer movie, so I don't need to spoiler that he dies. His fate is impressive nonetheless, being [[spoiler:beaten to within an inch of his life by the hero, smashed through a bridge on the extended ladder of a moving firetruck, dumped on a conveyor belt and his head smashed by a piledriver (the machine, not the wrestling move). He doesn't [[IGotBetter get better]].]]

* ''InBruges'': Ray kills [[spoiler:the priest]] with many, many gunshots, even though he was at close range. This troper actually had a few seconds to inwardly comment that it was far too many and quite unnecessary...before it was revealed that [[spoiler:a few of those unnecessary shots had gone off-target and ''killed a little kid.'']] See? Less is more.

* The StarWarsExpandedUniverse novel ''DeathStar'' describes its use as "overkill in the most horrifyingly literal way possible". And indeed, blowing up a pacifistic planet just to KickTheDog is clearly overdoing it.
** Also, the Death Star's main gun is over five orders of magnitude more powerful than the minimum amount of energy actually required to destroy an Earth-mass planet. Talk about overkill. You could destroy a planet 27,000 times the mass of Earth with that kind of firepower. It'd be like using an H-bomb to destroy an outhouse.
*** This level of overkill is actually required since the hard part isn't destroying planets, it's punching through the planetary shields which are much stronger than the planets are.
***Also that is a serious over-estimation of the Death Star's power, because if the wikia is anything to go by a 1/3 power shot isn't even enough to destroy a planet smaller than earth (Despayre has less than .75 eaerth gravity), so a planet the size of earth is going to take somewhat more power than that. Also, I shouldn't think Alderaan's shields were 'that' powerful, I mean we're talking something running on city generators here, not some sort of tectonic plant.
**** The [[http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ds/index.html#power Star Wars Technical Commentaries]] make a good analysis of the Deathstar's actions in the film. Unless the film's Canonicity is in dispute?
** Which was kind of the point of the Death Star--an engine of death so horrifically destructive that its very existence would cow anyone into compliance.
** Another example of overkill in the Expanded Universe is Base Delta Zero, a naval protocol dedicated to rendering an entire planet's crust into molten slag, or even eradicating the topsoil of a planet.
*** I think you have the last two clauses in that sentence in the wrong order. Melting the planet's crust would require much more energy than simply destroying the topsoil.
** For that matter, the Expanded Universe seems to have a good amount of overkill--the Sun Crusher fires a pulse torpedo into a star to cause it to go supernova, killing the star system at large; the Centerpoint Station does this by firing a pulse blast ''through hyperspace'' to hit its target!
** Given how many of these were designed and built at the behest of Emperor Palpatine, his Sith name might as well be Darth Overkill. In fact, one could argue that if he had spent less time building unnecessarily powerful and complex 'technological terrors' and invested the money into some good PR or the economy, he might not have been so unpopular, OR if he were still invested in the whole tyrant/emperor thing why not just build a few thousand more Star Destroyers for that money. Either way, a more effective use of time and resources, and he would also have likely had a much easier time dealing with the Reb. . .a bunch of disgruntled teenagers.
*** It makes a bit more sense if one considers that the Emperor is (unknown to almost everyone) a black magician. A Death Star isn't just a military weapon or a propaganda tool - it's a sacrificial dagger the size of a moon, with Palpatine's bony hand on the grip. It ''kills worlds''. Think of the power of such an act of blood magic: "Millions of voices crying out in terror [...] suddenly silenced."
* Perhaps the ultimate example of this trope in any form of media is found in [[{{Ringworld}} The Ringworld Throne]]. Tunesmith, the Night Person Protector, uses the {{Ringworld}}'s meteor defense to shoot down invading starships. Said defense is an X-Ray laser powered by magnetically-fluorescent solar flares (yes, you read that right), creating a beam with enough width and power to vaporize - not "cause to explode into tiny chunks, but ''convert from solid into gaseous state'' - a planet.

* No mention of ''Ender's Game?'' Color me shocked. In that book, the M.D. Device, known as the Little Doctor, causes one atom to explode, then spreads to every other atom around it, causing it to explode. Ender uses this to destroy a planet and two entire fleets.

* Pretty much the logic behind the Bloody Mess perk in the ''{{Fallout}}'' series (Only in 3 does it actually provide any benefits). Normally, when an enemy dies, they fall down, possibly losing the last body part you shot at. With Bloody Mess, other body parts will fall off for absolutely no reason.
** There's nothing quite like detonating a super mutant by ''punching it''.
** Fallout incorporates many weapons designed for overkill fanatics. The original Fallout sported a rocket launcher, a [[MoreDakka minigun]] (and a laser variant), and a turbo plasma rifle (which is the most powerful weapon in the game overall); Fallout 2 had new fun toys such as the H&K [=G11E=] (the best submachine gun for Small Guns users), the Vindicator minigun (an even stronger minigun), a pulse rifle (which is even stronger than the turbo plasma rifle and causes electric death), and a secret [[MontyPython Holy Hand Grenade]] (deals area damage of 300-500, enough to kill many enemies 3 times over); Fallout 3 has the infamous Experimental MIRV, an improved Fat Man that fires 8 nukes simultaneously in a wide spread.
*** To restate that, it is a ''nuclear shotgun'' that does enough damage with each nuke to instantly kill anything in the game. Not recommended for indoor use.
*** Not to mention that just two mini-nukes are enough to kill just about anything on normal. So you're killing the most powerful enemies in game 4 times at once.
** Even without the Bloody Mess perk it was possible in Fallout 1 and 2 to finish off someone with a burst from even a modest submachine gun from point-blank range, which would literally rip his upper torso apart.
** Gauss weapons are great for dealing with armored targets like robots. The Gauss rifle is the logical step up, and both the pistol and rifle are from Fallout 2. But Fallout Tactics takes things towards the logical extreme with the gauss minigun, which has fairly long range for a minigun, tears through huge groups of (high-powered) enemies like they were nothing, and is more powerful than the Browning M2. [[TooAwesomeToUse It also eats ammo like popcorn so you'll be saving it for the endgame.]]
* In SupremeCommander, there's nothing like inundating your opponent's base with Tier 3 stationary cannons situated on the other side of the map, watching as their shields collapse and their buildings explode...unless it's queueing up a bunch of nuclear warheads that overwhelm their anti-missile defenses and reduces their base to a lifeless smoking crater.

* The {{Worms}} series. Your enemy is down to the last worm, and standing on a ledge just begging to be [[CherryTapping poked?]] Nah... still got that [[MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail Holy Hand Grenade!]]

* In {{Painkiller}} a great many of the weapons not only kill the enemies, but sends their limbs flying off in every direction in a shower of blood. Bonus points when done to a whole pack of enemies at once and double bonus points when done in slow-mo.

* In NoMoreHeroes, after hitting a {{mook}} enough times, Travis can perform a special move that decapitaes the {{mook}}, showering Travis in blood and coins. This becomes practical later in the game - said special move can also decapitate/split in half other mooks nearby, resulting in multiple showers of blood and coins. It's CrazyAwesome.

* Surprisingly, ArmoredCore offers you a SadisticChoice (at least in the early games) in terms of overkilling. If you shoot an enemy enough, it will burst into flames. Rest assured, it will die soon. However, until it actually [[NoBodyLeftBehind explodes into nothingness]], it can, and ''will'', keep firing. Do you [[DeaderThanDead overkill]] it (which does speed up its death), wasting your ammo in the process (extremely important in some long missions without ammo boosts), or do you leave yourself vulnerable to its last attacks? Most players TakeAThirdOption, either by using a laserblade (which costs no ammo), or running away real fast.

* The final boss of {{Lunar}} 2: Eternal Blue has a beam attack that hits for over 7000 damage, when your characters can have a maximum of 999 hit points, and most likely have 500-600. As far as I can tell, this is simply so he has some sort of instant-death attack, as you can obtain rings that protect against 'normal' instant-death effects.

** In one of the joke scenes from MetalGearSolid3, The Boss uses the Davy Crockett nuclear missile launcher against Snake. '''From point. Blank. Range.'''

* Suicide bomber in Iraq got headshoted. ''With a .50 caliber sniper rifle''. (google image it but, needless to say, not for the squeamish and somewhat {{NSFW}}).

* Suicide bomber in Iraq got a headshot. ''With a .50 caliber sniper rifle''. (google image it but, needless to say, not for the squeamish and somewhat {{NSFW}}).

--> "Don't say another goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else- word one- I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds it's destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming - as though coming from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.
I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth."

--> "Don't say another goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else- word one- I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds it's destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.
When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming - as though coming from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.

**Justified? Hardly. The Moorwen were just minding their own business when they were firebombed to hell. In fact, that part makes me cry everytime. The aftermath of Moorwen's rage? [[{{TheyHadItComing}}]]

** The episode where they're testing "pouring water on grease fires" and the resulting fireballs. As a finale, and a measure of what amount of water ''can'' put out a grease fire, Adam surprises Jamie by introducing a firefighter ''helicopter'' flying over the ridge to dump gallons of water.