Marked to Die

"Everything is decided here... You cannot comprehend the magnitude - the rapture and the tragedy - of this moment, and yet you must if Nosgoth is to be dragged from the wreckage of its damnation. [...] You must understand, our presence here doesn't alter history. You and I meet here because we are compelled to - we have always met here. History is irredeemable! Drop a stone into a rushing river - the current simply courses around it and flows on as if the obstruction were never there. You and I are pebbles, Raziel, and have even less hope of disrupting the time-stream! The continuum of history is simply too strong, too resilient!"

— Kain discussing Raziel that Kain was forcibly destined to be slain by Raziel in the Sarafan Stronghold at this very moment, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2

Sometimes in works of fiction, a special form of foreshadowing is used that is overt in a way that even the characters can see: something happens to someone that makes them a sure target for being killed off in the near future. Typically the mark of death is not fatal in a Truth in Television-type way; it does not refer to a potentially terminal illness or a life-threatening injury. The "mark", in this case, refers to a signal, either physically attached to the victim or separate, visible or invisible, that denotes that the character's time is limited.

Depending on the nature of the mark, the characters may or may not be aware of their impending doom. Physical blemishes, brandings, and other things applied directly to their body or clothing may seem perfectly innocuous, unless the character happens to be sufficiently genre savvy. The mark may also appear elsewhere, allowing it serve as a form of dramatic irony for the benefit of the audience. Prophetic dreams and visions may also serve as a "mark" of sorts, if it specifically claims that a character will soon die.

Subtrope of Portent of Doom.

See also: Secret Stab Wound, Incurable Cough of Death, Kiss of Death, and Black Spot. Compare You Are Already Dead.

Examples

Anime & Manga

• In the animated version of Ginga Densetsu Weed any time a character has their ear bitten off, it's a pretty sure sign their death is coming up pretty soon.
• Death Note. Anyone whose name is written into the Death Note is marked to die after a period of time. By default this period is only a few seconds, but the writer can specify a longer span if they're so inclined.
  • Humans have an allotted time to live that is displayed above their heads when viewed through the eyes of a Shinigami.
• In Izetta: The Last Witch, Izetta displayed her powers to the allied forces to convince them to help her and friend Archduchess Finé to fight the Germanians. Instead, the allies consider Izetta as great or greater threat than Germania and want her dead.
• Getting the Brand of Sacrifice put on you in Berserk is usually a death sentence of the "getting Eaten Alive by demons" variety. Only two characters to date have survived being branded, and neither of them came out of the ordeal whole.

Comic Books

• In the Astro City mini-series, The Dark Ages, a character is marked for death by the vigilante Blue Knight by the appearance of a crosshairs on the back of his neck.
• In 'X (Dark Horse Comics)', this is X's trademark. A single diagonal slash across your face meant that you were warned and you'd better not break his rules again; if he completed the X, he killed you. No exceptions.

Films — Live-Action

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: A character was marked with a literal black spot on his hand.
• The creatures in the horror movie They mark their victims with a dime-sized sore that houses a long, thin bone. This mark is used to track their victims down when the creatures are ready to eat.
• In The Frighteners, a number appears on the forehead of the person that the reaper is going to come after.
• The Final Destination series is pretty much built on this trope.
• Photos of characters slated to die in The Omen (1976) showed strange marks indicating the imminent cause of death.
• L: change the WorLd: After writing his name in the Death Note at the end of the live action movie, L has 23 days left to live. Using that time to solve cases, L is essentially invincible until his time runs out.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the worst criminals whom Batman kicks the crap out of are left branded with a bat symbol. It's rumored that this constitutes being Marked to Die, as other prison inmates single out anyone thus branded for attack or abuse. The Ultimate Edition cut reveals that it's actually Lex Luthor who has some prisoners bribed to kill one such guy, in order to aggravate the conflict between Batman and Superman.

Literature

• In Treasure Island, Billy Bones receives "The Black Spot," which means he's about to die.
• Happens in a few Stephen King books.
  • In Insomnia, Ralph is able to tell when people are about to die when they are surrounded by a black "deathbag".
  • In Doctor Sleep, Danny has visions of flies crawling across a person's face when they are about to die or have a serious illness.
  • In King's The Dark Tower series, when a Ka-Tet is about to end, they feel Ka-Shume, a sense that the parting of ways is coming.
• The Last Dragon Chronicles: Ms.Gee, literally, by Hannah. Hannah threw her dead ancestors hand at Ms.Gee, and she caught it, dooming her to a horrible death.

Live-Action TV

• In a third season episode of Criminal Minds, the victims all appear on "Have You Seen Me" posters before they disappear.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Curse of the Black Spot", anyone whose blood is drawn on the pirate ship has a black spot appear on their arm, and is promptly lured in and then disintegrated by a siren. It's subverted in the end: the "siren" is an advanced medical hologram, and the disintegration actually teleports them into a spaceship's sickbay.
  • In "Face the Raven", a minor character receiving one of these - a tattoo of a number which keeps changing, counting down the minutes until his death - drives the plot of the episode. Clara takes the mark onto herself partway through to free the original victim from it; unfortunately this turns out to make the mark impossible to remove and she dies at the end of the episode.
• Agent Demetri Noh in FlashForward (2009); while everyone else has seen visions of themselves six months in the future, he has not, a strong indicator that he doesn't live that long.
• In Cloak & Dagger (2018), one member of the Divine Pairing is destined to die to save New Orleans. In the season finale, flashbacks reveal that the sacrificial member always has some kind of marking on their upper arm (birthmark, scar, armband, etc.)

Video Games

• In Azur Lane, Warspite Retrofit's improved Divine Marksman Plus skill will brand whichever enemy is targeted by literally painting a target on their heads. This mark serves as a debuff/buff which makes it more likely for the automatically-aimed salvos of allied Royal Navy battleships to focus on this one target, effectively giving them a death sentence. Moreover, Warspite's kit shines in PvP, where this same skill's intended use is to progressively mark for death and sink the enemy's backline one by one.
• In Devil Survivor, those who possess modified COMPs have access to the "Death Clock" feature, which allows them to see a number above the heads of everyone they meet should a certain condition apply. Namely, if the person in question is fated to die in nine days or less. The Death Clock follows a number of rules:
  • If the person has ten or more days left to live, the Death Clock won't display (in the original version) or it will only display an upwards arrow rather than the exact number (in the Updated Re-release). Almost everyone outside the encirclement has no visible Death Clocks.
  • If multiple individuals with modified COMPs form a group link, everyone but the designated leader COMP's owner will lose the ability to see the Death Clocks. This means anyone joining your party has to rely on the Player Character to break the news of current Death Clock readings.
  • The Death Clocks are estimates and not absolute countdowns, and are calculated based on the most probable cause of death as predicted by the Laplace System. If the person in question successfully averts the cause of death predicted by the Laplace System, they can force their Death Clock number to raise, signifying an extension of their estimated lifetime. Needless to say, your party becomes extremely proficient at doing this over the course of the game.
  • As a corollary to the above, taking certain actions (or even just deciding to take certain actions) will instead cause your Death Clock to go down. In-story this is mainly reflected when someone with a higher Death Clock joins your party, as the main characters are unfortunate enough to have to repeatedly avert their predicted, gruesome deaths. There are at least a couple of instances where your sharing of information with someone leads to them making a decision that drops their Death Clock, which serves as an impetus to go save them afterwards.
  • Following on the above, the Death Clock reading is not only affected by the person's own actions, but others as well. It's thus possible to abuse the Death Clock feature to figure out who's in danger of dying soon and then take the steps to avert their deaths. Failing to do this often results in potential party members dying before they can join (or rejoin in a few cases), and may even close off possible ending routes for that playthrough.
  • As noted by Naoya, merely diverting the path of destiny won't affect the prediction; the cause of death must be decisively eliminated or averted, or else Fate will reassert itself merely by figuring out a new way for the same cause of death to do the deed. So if a specific enemy is gunning for you, you can't solve it by fighting them off; you have to either straight-up kill them or somehow convince them to stop trying to kill you.
  • If a lot of people share the same number, it's indicative of a potential large-scale disaster soon to come. In-game, everyone inside the Yamanote Line encirclement is slated to perish by the final day of the in-game week of events, whether it is by demonic invasion, divine punishment or a secret super weapon that will fry every COMP in the encirclement as well as every human and MAYBE some demons.
• In the Dominions series, it's possible to give someone a horror mark. What does a horror mark do? Every turn there's a chance for someone marked to be attacked by a Horror — and even if they survive (nearly impossible for ordinary humans) they'll likely receive more horror marks, which raises the odds of being attacked and, after enough marks, stronger horrors. They're not removable, so once marked, even the strongest unit would eventually be killed. Resurrecting them won't help, as the horror marks remain.
• Dota 2: Sniper's Ultimate Ability, Assassinate, is an ultra-long range single-target nuke often used to finish off fleeing heroes. For the few seconds while Sniper is aiming, a bullseye icon appears over the unfortunate enemy's head, and then...Boom, Headshot!. Subverted that there may be other interferences that prevent them from dying (having items that nullify damage, healing just in time, or Sniper overestimating the HP of his target)
• Fallen London: This trope is the truth behind the superstition that Blue Prophets chant the names of those who are about to die. They're not predicting anything; rather, they are calling the name of a vessel or person who they believe has overstayed their welcome in life, and the corsairs that listen to them know that someone has to die. If a Blue Prophet chants the name of your ship, you can expect the pirates that overheard it to hunt you down to the ends of the Neath.
• There are many examples of branding in Honkai Impact 3rd, but the one that fits the trope the closest is probably the Raven Mark of Kallen's Sixth Serenade suit. The Raven Mark gradually builds stacks of itself upon enemies hit by her combo attack, ultimate evasion skill or ultimate skill. When the max stack of 3 marks is reached, enemies suffer a rather unique form of Time Lock—in the sense that even if the enemy hit 0 HP, the Raven Mark will actually keep them alive at 0 HP...for a few seconds, whereupon it detonates and finally kills the enemy, as well as blasting nearby targets and potentially killing them too. Moreover, due to 6S applying these marks to any enemy she hits with the aforementioned skills, it's possible to do this to a crowd of enemies at the same time if they were all bunched up, and yes, they all suffer the area blast from each other.
• In Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines, when a character only has a few months left to live, snake-like curse marks will appear on their face. Once the two marks crawl all the way up the character's face, they die.
• The Phantom class in Phantasy Star Online 2 specializes in this with the Phantom Marker mechanic. When they attack their target, they build up Markers on the enemy and is represented by a spiked white reticle with a hazy indigo aura. The Phantom is capable of making them ignite with a specialized weapon action, spiking their target with big damage and restores PP. The Phantom can opt to strengthen the mark further until it turns purple for even stronger damage to ensure their foes die in one fell swoop.

Visual Novels

• Spirit Hunter series:
  • The horror game Spirit Hunter: Death Mark revolves around people who bear the eponymous Mark, who are fated to die after having it for too long, and suffer memory loss in the meantime (which affects their ability to live normally). Marks are the doing of malevolent spirits; they must be dispelled in order to cure their Marked victims. The Player Character has been Marked by a unique spirit in H City, leaving him with a Mark for the game's duration until he can finally locate and dispel that spirit, whoever or whatever it was.
  • In Spirit Hunter: NG, the victims of Kakuya's Game suffer from a particularly gruesome mark; when they get close to the time limit, extra mouths and boils manifest on their bodies. To boot, Akira's enhanced spiritual prowess allows him to hear the Madness Mantra that the mouths spew.

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