Psychic-Assisted Suicide

This would be how a psychic mutant pulls off a Klingon Promotion.

Quentin: No. You don't want to mess with me. I can make your mind shut off! You'd be dead in an instant!
Laurie: So that's how you would kill yourself if you were suicidal? Then do it. You're feeling very... depressed. Life's been unkind to you. No one here likes you.
[Quentin's eyes glow white and he collapses]
Laurie: My pheromones can control you completely. And they leave no trace.

— House of M

One of the most dangerous weapons in a psychic's arsenal — the ability to make your enemies kill themselves. While Mind Rape is good for torture, this is a much more permanent solution to your problems, and you can even easily Make It Look Like an Accident. Usually, it requires a Compelling Voice or for the victim to have a weak mind, although there are ways to do it with Phlebotinum or Artifacts Of Doom. The victim can even remain fully conscious and aware of what they're being made to do, while bereft of any Heroic Willpower to fight it off.

Much like a Compelling Voice, this is usually a villain or Anti-Hero power. If caused by Power Incontinence, expect a My God, What Have I Done?. It should be noted, however, that simply saying "Die!" and having your opponent drop dead doesn't count if he doesn't actually take his own life.

There are times where flat-out telling someone "kill yourself" won't work: some psychics are limited by how strongly the subject objects to what they're being forced to do, and self-preservation is probably the single most powerful instinct a living organism has. With a little careful wording or maneuvering, however, it may still be possible to force someone to take their own life or at least do something life-threateningly dangerous.

Subtler variations use types of psychic power other than straightforward mind control. One option is to use illusions to trick the target into doing something lethal. Another is to afflict the target with crushing despair and make him want to kill himself. There can also be cases of More than Mind Control, where the psychic exploits that the target already is struggling with depression and/or has toyed with the idea of suicide before.

This is a type of Murder by Suicide. May turn into a Murder-Suicide if the psychic forces them to take other people with them. See also Compelling Voice, the supertrope for "orders that cannot be refused", and Driven to Suicide for people being driven to suicide through normal means. A possession may lead to it directly or just by leaving a victim who outlived their usefulness in a dangerous situation. Subtrope of Stop Hitting Yourself. Compare Psychic Glimpse of Death, where someone is in another's mind at the moment of death simply as an observer. A character who uses this method of killing frequently is an Indirect Serial Killer.

As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Kubire Oni Ayakashi Triangle uses its Prehensile Hair to marionette people into killing themselves. It makes Yayo jump off her balcony, but Matsuri catches her. This is a slight change from its mythological namesake, who used its Compelling Voice to make people hang themselves.
• The doujutsu from Basilisk (used by Hyouma and Gennosuke) works by turning homicide to suicide, meaning that it only works when the target is trying to kill the user.
• Bleach:
  • In the manga, when Numb Chandelier notices that Orihime and Tatsuki can sense her, she first forces Tatsuki, Chizuru and several others to beat Orihime up, then tells both girls that she'll pull this on Orihime for interfering:
    Numb Chandelier: One: suicide by hanging yourself after the schoolboys rape you in turns. Two: suicide by cutting the rope after stripping naked and hanging from the school roof...
  • Also invoked by Giselle Gewelle from the Vandenreich, who uses her Blood Magic to force a bunch of 11th Division members to commit seppuku.
• In Chainsaw Man, the Falling Devil arrives on Earth by compelling an entire apartment complex's inhabitants to jump to their deaths, then forming a body from their corpses.
• Code Geass:
  • Lelouch Lamperouge/vi Britannia's first use of Geass in both seasons is making a whole squad of soldiers kill themselves. Both were only used on Mooks because main characters are simply more useful under mind control.
  • A cruel inversion happens when Lelouch uses his Geass on Suzaku Kururugi and orders him to "live" in the middle of battle, attempting to save himself from what would've been a suicidal attack. Not only is Suzaku a Death Seeker, the Geass compels him to do awful things to save his own life.
  • Another inversion happens with Shirley Fenette, who Lelouch begs to live after she was shot. It fails.
  • Some side-materials say that Mao did this to a whole village in China, exposing their darkest secrets and then driving them to kill each other over them.
• Code Geass: Akito the Exiled has this as Shin Hyuga Shiang's Geass power; he can use his Geass to implant the desire to die in people. The catch is that he has to love them to some extent; as this power is born from his belief that living is hell and you can only find peace in death.
• In the Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School series, it's revealed that several people were brainwashed into suicide during the Final Killing Game. The victims are: Chisa "Ultimate Housekeeper" Yukizome, Great "Ultimate Wrestler" Gozu, Seiko "Ultimate Pharmacist" Kimura and Ruruka "Ultimate Confectioner" Ando. Subverted for Makoto Naegi, who gets brainwashed to perform the suicide but is saved at the last minute by Juzo "Ultimate Boxer" Sakakura. The same video was used earlier by Junko to make the Hope's Peak Academy Reserve Course commit mass suicide once they had outlived their usefulness.
• Darker than Black:
  • A possessor-type Contractor killed people by taking over one's body, then standing on the edge of a roof or something and snapping back to his old body, leaving the dazed victim to fall.
  • And in the interquels and second season, Yin's Superpowered Evil Side makes Contractors turn their powers against themselves. The (chronological) first time it happened, it was a Mind Control power; she hijacked it so an attacker mind-controlled himself into shooting himself in the head for a double whammy of this trope.
• In Death Note, "suicide" is considered an acceptable cause of death with the titular book. Light uses it to get rid of Naomi Misora (in such a way as for her body not to be discovered) and Kiyomi Takada (self-immolation), and these two deaths are among his absolute cruelest in the series.
• The Enigma of Amigara Fault: The titular fault is a rock face covered in thousands of human-shaped holes. Each of these holes, despite being millennia old, seem tailor-made to fit the outlines of living people. Anyone who sees their hole on the fault, even for a second, will not only feel compelled to seek it out but feel they have no choice but to enter it. This isn't a case of losing free will; the people are otherwise completely lucid and even scared out of their minds about it likely killing them, yet they'll still feel they have to go in. Also somewhat subverted, as it turns out the holes don't exactly kill those who enter...
• In Eternal Sabbath, the immature ultra-powered boy antagonist, Izaku, used this on people that annoyed him.
• Fate/Apocrypha: After Darnic does a Fusion Dance with Vlad III and forces him to become the vampire Dracula and start attacking everyone, Ruler tries to make him kill himself with a Command Spell, but the merged being has become so powerful that he can ignore it.
• Sorta done in the backstory of Fate/Prototype. Enfant Terrible Manaka used her powers to force many girls of Fuyuki City to throw themselves into the Holy Grail and become human sacrifices to it. She also killed her dad in a similar manner, and would have murdered her little sister Ayaka (and the actual protagonist of F/P) had Saber not interfered.
• Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works]:
  • In her backstory, Caster's assholish original Master tried to use a Command Spell to order her to kill herself, but she used her Rule Breaker to sever their connection, allowing her to kill him instead.
  • Kirei Kotomine uses a Command Spell to order Lancer to kill himself. However, even after he impales himself with his spear, he's able to get up and kill Kotomine before expiring.
• Fate/Zero:
  • Gilgamesh found out Tokiomi was planning to do this to him via Command Spell as soon as they won the Holy Grail War. Gilgamesh retaliated by convincing Kotomine to kill Tokiomi.
  • When Kiritsugu holds Keyneth's fiancée hostage, Kayneth is forced to use a Command Spell to order his Servant Lancer to kill himself, which he does by impaling himself with his own spear.
• In Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Arc Villain Aura is defeated in this way. She used a magic artifact called the Scales of Obedience which gave her total control over anyone with a lower power level than her. Unfortunately for her, it works both ways and Experienced Protagonist Frieren tells her to decapitate herself after revealing I Am Not Left-Handed.
• The "latchers" of Ga-Rei -Zero- attach themselves to the heads of their victims and have the ability to reanimate dead corpses or control a living being. In the first episode, one gets a hold of Mami, has her kill her commander, mock her soon-to-die comrades, and then finally shoot herself.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG: Several cyborgs calling themselves the Individual Eleven publicly behead each other on top of a building after a Motive Rant. It's revealed later they were under the control of a computer virus.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Enya Giel's stand, Justice, enters an enemy's body and controls his/her movements until they eventually die. She often uses this to torture the victim, but she attempts to force Hol Horse to kill himself as punishment for allowing J. Geil to die.
  • Likewise, Rohan at one point writes a command in Okuyasu to commit suicide via self-immolation should Jousuke inconvenience Rohan in any way.
  • Also in Part 4, Tamami Kobayashi's Stand is the Lock, an Emotion Bomb that targets and amplifies a victim's sense of guilt. If a person's guilt grows too great under the Lock's influence, they will be driven to believe that suicide is the only option.
• Used at the beginning of Kurobara Alice. Dimitri, who has just acquired his Compelling Voice power after being turned into a vampire, accidentally drives his audience and then one of his girlfriends to kill themselves for him. He later uses it deliberately towards his friend and love rival Theo.
• In MPD Psycho, a body surfing serial killer forced his host to blow his own brains out.
• The witches from Puella Magi Madoka Magica get more powers from pretty much brainwashing people into committing suicide via their "witch kiss". One has even been shown pulling this on a fairly large group of people, forming a ritual suicide cult à la Heaven's Gate. Since witches live in (and never leave) "barriers", tiny parallel dimensions that can only be accessed by Kyubey, his Magical Girls, and other people he chooses, this is the only threat they pose to normal, non-magical humans. Unless the witch in question is called Walpurgisnacht, who can manifest in the real world and physically attack normal people, or Kriemhild Gretchen, who just absorbs everything into her barrier.
• In the Read or Die OVA, the evil plan of the Big Bad is to use a composition of music called the Suicide Symphony as a Brown Note to make everyone in the world kill themselves so it can be repopulated by the people who were strong enough to resist.
• In Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective, the eponymous detective is compelled to order the culprits he's apprehended to go and kill themselves whenever he's solved a case. For some reason, they always comply with his commands, as though hypnotized.
• Telepathic Wanderers has a telekinetic that Nanase befriends force a Serial Rapist to shoot himself in the head with his own gun.
• Kuroi from Thou Shalt Not Die forces a girl to throw herself out of a window with hypnosis, which she does while sporting a smile on her face yet crying her eyes out.
• In the manga version of Tokkô, Yukino is introduced when a phantom Puppeteer Parasite tries to make her commit suicide. She gets a different introduction in the anime version.
• Legato Bluesummers in Trigun is fond of this, as well. In the manga, it's less psychic and more body control through electrical impulses from tiny wires.
• In the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Pegasus does this to Bandit Keith, turning his hand into a revolver and making him shoot himself. (In the anime, Pegasus dumps Keith into the ocean.)

Audio Plays

• In StrikerS Sound Stage X of the Lyrical Nanoha franchise, all the murder victims were killed by being psychically forced to stab their own throats. Even worse, the victims were fully aware of it happening and could do nothing but scream for help.

Comic Books

• In an issue of Alias, the Purple Man walks into a Denny's and orders 34 people to stop breathing so he can enjoy his eggs in peace.
• Kordax, an evil ancestor of Aquaman committed suicide after losing a telepathic battle to his descendant. Not that their previous mental clash nearly put all sea life into a vegetative state. And Kordax kills himself, just to not flee from Aquaman's superior mental strength.
• In Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Anti-Monitor uses the Psycho-Pirate's emotion-manipulating powers in an attempt to induce this among the residents of Earths-4, S, and X while the anti-matter energy waves are attacking their universes. The heroes from Earths-1 and 2 try to keep this from happening long enough for the Harbinger to use her powers to draw those remaining universes into the Netherverse, where Earths-1 and 2 were located for the time being.
• The F1rst Hero: In Volume 3, after having a bunch of mind-controlled people rob the William Penn Savings And Loan, the masterminds of the robbery (a woman and her eight-year-old psychic daughter), take the money at their rendezvous point. Then they order them all to point their guns at their own heads, wait two minutes, and then pull the trigger as many times as they can.
• Gen¹³: Copycat demonstrates it by mimicking the action of putting a gun to her head, forcing a security guard to do the same for real. CLICK.
• In Iron Man, Technopath-assisted suicide occurs when Ultron takes control over the Church of Yinsen via the S.K.I.N. technology (liquid metal nanites coating their skin) and he makes one adherent shape her hand into a metal blade and impale herself on it.
• Judge Dredd:
  • The Dark Judges have pulled this stunt a bunch of times and forced people to stab or shoot themselves, usually because they required the human they were temporarily possessing as their next host body. While their mind control abilities work just fine on the living, they can only manifest their true forms by utilizing corpses.
  • A Death worshipper is transformed into a new Dark Judge, Judge Whisper, who kills all his victims in this manner. As a psychic, he digs into people's minds to drive them into despair and kill themselves.
• In Justice League: Generation Lost, Maxwell Lord finished off a weakened Magog by forcing him to blow up his own head with his energy staff.
• New Avengers:
  • In the 2nd issue, a cliffhanger occurs during the breakout of The Raft: Killgrave orders Luke Cage to kill all the heroes, then kill himself. The next issue reveals it didn't work because Killgrave's been pumped with drugs to suppress his powers.
  • Daniel Drumm possessed a man and shot himself in the head, making it look like the New Avengers were pulling this trope.
• Preacher: A corrupt sheriff commits suicide after Jesse Custer uses his Compelling Voice on him in the Squickiest way possible, telling the guy to go fuck himself.
  • Later, as he attacks the home of his extremely deranged grandmother, Jody specifically calls him out on it, saying he could tell him to die but won't do it. Even though he earlier caused a bunch of mooks to catch on fire unassisted by yelling "BURN, you fuckers!"
• Shakara: Oberon Sneer crushes an anti-Hierarchy guerrilla movement by planting fake images in the soldiers' minds and turn them against each other. He forces the survivor to shoot himself with his own gun.
• In the Star Trek (2009) follow-up comic Star Trek Ongoing, Gary Mitchell kills his friend Lee Kelso by using telekinesis to have Kelso point his own phaser at his own temple and fire. It's not clear if the phaser is set to "stun" or "kill", but it doesn't matter at point-blank range. In the original timeline, Mitchell remotely chokes Kelso with some cables. It seems Kelso just can't catch a break in any timeline.
• At the climax of Star Wars: Darth Vader, Vader orders his enemy's cyborg-Space Whale-ship to fly into a star. It works.
• In Ultimate X-Men (2001) #47, Mr. Sinister tells Angel to choke himself. Angel survives, and as punishment, Lord Apocalypse (who was depicted as just Mr. Sinister's hallucination up until this moment) has him do the exact same thing while he's in prison. Despite the cliffhanger, a later crossover reveals that S.H.I.E.L.D. stops his suicide attempt and he survives too.
• Wonder Woman (1987): Doctor Psycho lines up a bunch of unwilling jumpers all over the city with tenuous mind control, and then jumps from one to another as Wonder Woman saves them so that he can try to sexually assault her using their bodies, and pass along some information about how he escaped in hopes that it'll help him stay alive a little longer.

Fan Works

• In Child of the Storm Harry very nearly plays it straight on a HYDRA Agent who'd just taken a kid hostage, having pushed over the edge in chapter 74.
• The Choices That Make Us: Regulus and Bellatrix kill Alphard Black by using the Imperius curse to make him take a lethal amount of his drug stash.
• In Crucible, it's revealed that Shepard's ability to talk her enemies to death isn't just because she is a good talker but also due to her tight link to her father, Death. She can control people to not kill themselves in a few cases and actually point a gun to their own head in other cases. However, even if she wants her enemies to live but her father wants otherwise then there's nothing she can do about it.
• Played straight in Death Note Equestria with, well, the Death Note.
• In the Firefly fanfic Forward, the "Inducer" psychics are capable of forcing this on people, though it takes time and effort on their part, as they have to drive the victim to deep despair to the point that they kill themselves.
• In Harmony Theory, Max Cash is able to do this with his voice, but he notes it works best on people who have no connections to others. Without any friends, they will have no ties to the world and it will be easier to convince them to die. At one point, he does it to Bright Lantern, a friendless loser whose career has just been ruined and is expecting to be executed for treason. When he was about to kill himself, Max walked away and casually mentioned he was going to burn down a school. This caused Lantern to snap out of it and attack Max in anger.
• Harry Potter and the Natural 20: At one point, Voldemort uses the Imperius Curse on Milo, then orders him to kill himself. Right before Milo impales himself on his own sword, Sirius Black tackles him to snap him out of it.
• Defied in The Immortal Game by Nihilus, who inflicts Rainbow Dash with a Compelling Voice and gives her the specific order "Do not attempt to take your own life." Played straight on one occasion when she temporarily retracts this order to make a point ("Stop breathing").
• In Just Before the Dawn, a deer soldier forces an Equestrian commander to slit his own throat in this way. Despite a valiant attempt to resist the spell, it ultimately proves futile.
• In Perfection Is Overrated, Hitomi Kirihara uses this as a method of killing people with her Mind Control powers, especially after forcing her victim to kill others.
• Also played straight in World of Ponycraft, where Rarity uses priest Mind Control power to walk an enemy cultist out of a window.
• In a side story of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, a Shiny Aegislash named Dainsleif uses its Mind Control abilities on half the inhabitants of a village, ordering them to slaughter the other half for its own amusement. Once it's done toying with the survivors, it tells them to kill themselves.
• In Son of the Sannin, Obito activates a Kotoamatsukami-induced mental trigger on Danzo, after revealing that the latter had been his Unwitting Pawn to undermine Konoha's effort to retrieve the jinchuriki before Akatsuki did. Once he's served his purpose, he orders Danzo to kill himself, which he does via Reverse Tetragram Seal.
• Almost happens to Spock, of all people, in Shadows of the Mind when the villain tries to get him out of the way. Fortunately,McCoy gets there in time...just.
• Siryn in The Last Son, upon awakening her Compelling Voice mutant powers for the first time, ordered her abusive babysitter to kill herself by jumping off a window. It's later hinted she might have done the same to her parents after she forced them to cede control of their company and assets to her.
• Soul Chess: Lelouch is backed into a corner by Aizen]... but he still has the Geass, so he finds the one command Aizen can't pervert - "Aizen! Kill yourself!" It doesn't stick, but it does put a massive crimp in the plot for a while.

Films — Animation

• In Fire & Ice, a delegation from Firekeep visits the ice palace of Queen Juliana and her son, Nekron. When Nekron rejects their peace offer, the Firekeep delegation foolishly draws swords. Nekron uses his wizard powers to compel the delegates to skewer themselves with their own blades.
• In the Futurama movie Bender's Big Score, when Everybody Loves Hypnotoad is interrupted, the title character forces the producer to kill himself.
  Producer: [Hypnotoad glares offscreen] Please, Hypnotoad, it's beyond my control! No! Don't make me kill myself! [choking] Nooooo-!
• In Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, Punch uses his psychic string to take control of Tobias Whale and force him to blow his own brains out.

Films — Live-Action

• In 12/12/12, Sebastian kills most of his victims by taking over their minds and having them kill themselves.
• In the Apocalypse film series movie Tribulation, a man under the mind control of future One Nation Earth agents is driven to throw himself out of the window of a high-rise apartment building after Tom Canboro prevents him from killing his wife, who is a Christian. The same thing almost happens at the same time with Tom's brother-in-law Jason, except that he only falls out of a two-story house window.
• Bird Box: Seeing the creatures drives most people to kill themselves immediately.
• In Black Widow (2021), Dreykov hacks into the suit of one of his Black Widows and activates her "terminate" function, remotely forcing her to kill herself for being expendable to him.
• In the 1944 Captain America Film Serial, scientists and businessmen are made to commit suicide by the Scarab, using a hypnotic chemical called the Purple Death.
• In Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return, Gabriel, a competitor to Isaac's Dark Messiah status, forces one of Isaac's followers to shoot herself in the throat when she confronts him with a gun.
• In Conan the Barbarian (1982), Thulsa Doom shows off his hypnotic powers to Conan by making one of his own followers jump off a cliff to her death.
• Suggested but ultimately subverted in Constantine (2005). At first, it looks as though the demon Mammon made Isabel commit suicide. However, it's revealed (via a visit to Hell) that Isabel knew she was going to be possessed for a vital role in an apocalyptic plot and killed herself of her own free will.
• The Darkest Minds: Oranges have the ability to make people kill themselves or others. Ruby even uses it to make a helicopter pilot perform a suicide attack against Clancy.
• In Dark Shadows, Angelique compels Josette to kill herself with a spell so she'll have Barnabas all to herself.
• Divergent: In Insurgent, Jeanine forces three of the Dauntless cadets who sided with Tris to kill themselves (although two are saved) using mind control implants, and threatens more every day until she turns herself in.
• Doctor Sleep: Snakebite Andi uses her "pusher" ability to make Billy kill himself, as a last fuck-you before she is killed by Danny.
• In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Sinister Strange concluded that all of his alternate selves were miserable and a threat to the multiverse, so he started dreamwalking into them and then jumping their possessed bodies off buildings.
• The title fallen angel Azazel of Fallen possesses several people throughout the film, making some of them kill themselves in ways to frame the protagonist for their "murders"; he makes one commit Suicide by Cop by pointing and shooting a gun filled with blanks at the protagonist.
• This is inverted at the end of Gamer. Castle has Kable under his control when Kable tells Castle to think of Kable stabbing him. Castle does just that, unconsciously, and gets himself killed. It's the Game used for murder.
• In Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, the witch Muriel telekinetically forces a man to shoot himself in the head.
• In Hocus Pocus, the head witch magically commands the adults to dance until they die (the magic wears off in the morning, but hopefully, none of them had weak hearts).
• Inception: Cobb accidentally makes Mal do this by incepting the idea that her world isn't real and she needs to wake up into her head in order to get her to finally leave Limbo with him. The idea sticks even after they wake up, which leads to her eventual Accidental Suicide.
• In Lemon Tree Passage, the ghost psychically compels Maya to commit 'suicide by lake': making her walk off the end of a jetty and into a lake, where she sinks like a stone. She survives.
• In Kill, Baby, Kill! a ghost of a little girl terrorises a village by forcing those who have seen her to commit suicide.
• In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, Ivan Ooze takes control of the minds of Angel Grove's adults, who, once they've outlived their usefulness, are commanded to "leap to their doom" into a massive hole on a construction site. Fred rallies the kids to save the adults as the Rangers battle Ooze, with Fred holding them back with a water cannon (with Bulk and Skull's help), but it's not until Ooze's demise that his spell is broken and the adults are returned to normal.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street:
  • In A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Freddy's first victim is a young man named Dean, who falls asleep at a diner while meeting his girlfriend Kris. In the dream, Freddy slits Dean's throat, but to Kris and the rest of the diner, Dean does it himself with a knife from the table.
  • Subverted in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, when Kirsten dreams of having her arm slashed by Freddy in the bathroom, only to be woken up from sleepwalking by her mother and realize she's cut her wrist with a razor blade. Presumably if Mom hadn't interrupted, she'd have been a victim of this trope.
  • Played straight in "3" with Philip - Freddy forces him to sleep-walk to the top floor of the hospital and throw himself out of the window.
• Nothing but the Night: When Mary throws herself off the cliff, the other trustees who have had their personalities transferred into children, immediately follow her and throw themselves off as well.
• The Omen: When they're not straight up killing people in elaborate ways, the dark forces prefer to send hellhounds to hypnotize them into killing themselves.
• Possessor: Vos tries to make her hosts kill themselves at the end of her using them for assassinating someone, which indicates its standard procedure. They both resist this though and she can't force the action.
• The Pushers in Push use this as one method of dispatching their foes, shown to be used as Psychic-Assisted Suicide or Homicide. To elaborate, a Pusher's main power is to implant (or "push") Fake Memories in a person's mind, such as one that the gun they're about to shoot themselves with is unloaded...
• In The Ring Two, a Samara-possessed Aidan psychically forces a child psychologist to commit suicide by air embolism.
• There are quite a lot of examples in the psychic-centered Scanners film series:
  • Darryl Revok, the villain of the first Scanners, makes one ConSec agent crash his car into a wall (where it promptly explodes) and another shoot two allies and then himself.
  • Also happens in Scanners II: The New Order, when Peter Drak forces the police chief to eat his own gun.
  • And used again Scanners III: The Takeover. Helena kills her father by having him drown himself in a hot tub. She also directs a corporate enemy of hers to jump face-first into an empty pool.
  • In Scanner Cop II, Volkin kills an orderly at the psychiatric institution he escaped from by forcing him to shoot himself and later directs a police officer to stand in front of an oncoming car.
• In The Shadow, this is an often-used technique by the villain, Shiwan Khan. Interestingly, the Shadow himself uses this to off Claymore.
• Red Goddess from Shadow Mask, owing to her powerful psychic abilities where she can take over a person's mind without even looking. One of her cohorts attempts betraying her by pulling his pistol on her, only to uncontrollably move the barrel into his temple instead.
• In the Action Prologue of Sherlock Holmes (2009), Holmes stops Lord Blackwood just as he's about to sacrifice a young woman for a black magic ritual. Blackwood doesn't lay a finger on her; instead the woman is shown thrashing about in a trance on his altar stone, then lifting a dagger to plunge it into her chest before Holmes grabs her hand Just in Time. Given that Blackwood's magic is shown to be mere trickery, he presumably used a combination of drugs and hypnosis on her.
• Snow White: A Tale of Terror: When Claudia discovers that Gustav faked Lilli's death with a pig's heart, she uses her magic to force him to stab himself.
• In Tamara, the title character does this to Roger and her father, the former by cutting off his ear and the tip of his tongue before gouging out his eye (in deliberate reference to the Three Wise Monkeys), and the latter by eating a glass beer bottle, tearing apart his mouth, throat, and esophagus from the inside.
• In Thirteen Women, Ursula hypnotises the Swami and commands him to throw himself under a subway train.
• In Theatre of Death, the killer hypnotizes Dani into writing a suicide note confessing to the murders and then into committing suicide. When she attempts the actual act, she faints.
• Truth or Dare (2018): Anyone who lies or won't do their dare is possessed by Calux, making them kill themselves.
• In Vault of Horror, Moore, who possesses Sympathetic Magic powers based around paintings, compels one of his victims (who has pulled a gun on him) to shoot himself in the head by showing him a painting he did of him, and then, while his victim watches, drawing a tiny circle between the painting's eyebrows in red pen.
• The end of Videodrome. Maybe. The last task given to Max by the Videodrome tapes is to kill himself, which he proceeds to carry on.
• Village of the Damned (1960) is about women who give birth to evil children who cause the populace to torture themselves on their whims. In both the original and its remake, the psychic children often force people to kill themselves in various ways if they displease the children, such as putting their hands in boiling water or garbage disposals or being forced to shoot themselves in the head. In the 1995 remake, one girl causes her own mother to walk off a cliff to her death.
• Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled: The Djinn is commanded to settle a legal case as part of a wish. He calls over to the troublesome attorney, and not only takes over his body to make him sign the agreement that he materializes in front of him, but directs him to pull out his own tongue, cut off his nose, slice up his cheek, and put a bullet in his brain.
• Witch Way Love: Under the mental control of Evil Sorcerer Molok, Mr. Nguyen (the second person to be born under a specific constellation that the good witch Morgane needs for her ritual) shoots himself in the head with a revolver in front of a photo of his children.
• Threatened but not gone through with (or maybe genuinely considered) in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Silverfox makes Colonel Stryker put the muzzle of his empty revolver under his chin, but doesn't make him pull the trigger, instead telling him to walk away until his feet bleed and then keep walking. As the film is a prequel to X2: X-Men United, she couldn't have killed him anyway.

Gamebooks

• Lone Wolf: This can happen to Lone Wolf himself in The Caverns of Kalte if he puts on his wrist the golden bracelet of a mind-controlled Ice Barbarian and cannot resist Vonotar's mental command.

Literature

• In Animorphs, Visser One does the possession variety — her last command to a host she needs to dispose of is to breathe (they're underwater at the moment.)
• Area 51: Brainwashed human agents of the Airlia can be forced to kill themselves after completing their missions.
• In Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, demon warlord Leon Abbott begins to suspect the imp N° 1 of being a warlock whose magic could threaten his authority, and tries to mesmer him into throwing himself into a volcano. Said volcano has what’s essentially a rift in spacetime in the mouth, but that typically only means most (not even all) demons who jump into there die from exposure (due to ending up in space or on the moon) or starvation (as the rift is unstable and makes them hop around in spacetime every few seconds).
• In Autumn Visits, the Envoys can lead most people into following their commands. This usually makes the person incapable of complex independent thought. This power is most used by Mary, the Envoy of Good, who uses it to force others to do her bidding and then kill themselves, all in the name of Good. In fact, at one point she tells the driver of a car she stopped to get a lift to drop them off and then accelerate to 200 kph and slam into a gas station. Obviously, she believes in There Is No Kill Like Overkill, as this would also kill numerous innocent bystanders. Mary's justification? They're all going to Heaven for their sacrifice. There is a reason why all the other Envoys consider her to be the most dangerous of them all, and two of them used to be Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler!
• In The Braided Path, the Weavers can and will do this.
• In Carrion Comfort, the mind vampire villains make a game out of forcing people to kill themselves.
• The Darkest Minds: Ruby recalls several instances of other Oranges making PSFs commit suicide or kill each other at Thurmond.
• Darth Plagueis: A young Hego Damask (who grows up to be the titular Plagueis) does this to a youth that he disliked. When the youth pushes past Hego, Hego touches his arm, locks eyes with him, and tells him to jump out the window. They later discover his broken body in the courtyard.
• Deryni:
  • When Morgan, Duncan, and Kelson visit Brion's tomb to retrieve the Eye of Rom the night before Kelson's coronation, they're surprised by Lord Rogier, Earl of Fallon. Morgan and Duncan use their powers to make him sleep until they leave the crypt, then send him safely on his way with his memory erased. The next morning, Rogier is found stabbed to death by Brion's ransacked tomb, "with his own hand on the dagger and a terrible expression on his face, as though he fought whatever it was that made him do it," as Nigel puts it.
  • Minions sent by Deryni often have death triggers or death compulsions implanted in their minds. To give only one example, (from King Kelson's Bride) the assassins who attacked Kelson and Liam outside the Hort of Orsal's palace both had these, as well as mind-wipes to prevent anyone from reading their memories after they died.
• The Dresden Files: The Skavis family of the White Court of vampires are Emotion Eaters like all White Court vamps, with their particular preferred emotion (which they can also induce in their victims) being despair. While normally even the Skavis would have reason to keep their victims miserable but alive (can't drain the dead, after all), in White Night, one of them does, in fact, use magically induced depression and implanted suicidal thoughts as a convenient murder weapon.
• In Eisenhorn: Malleus, an Alpha-plus psyker compels Eisenhorn to shoot himself in the head. He can’t resist the command and survives only because an outside force prevents the gun from discharging.
• The Elminster Series: Elminster almost falls prey to this in the first book, when a mage who's taken control of his mind compels him to run over the edge of a cliff. He manages to save himself with magic.
• The Empirium Trilogy: On two different occasions, Corien either forces his target to commit suicide (Garver Randell) or urged them to go through with it (Queen Genoveve).
• This is Despaire's power in The Faerie Queene.
• A villain in Fingerprints tries forcing this on Rae. Rae only survives because the villain's desire for Disproportionate Retribution leads to them trying to inflict a long, slow Death of a Thousand Cuts instead of just shooting her.
• In the Firebird Trilogy, when the Shuhr are not interested in playing with their victims, they often resort to this to remove those who are no longer of use to them. To accomplish this, they weave the desire to commit suicide into the victim's mind, reworking any bits of their personality that would object to suicide.
• In Firestarter, the head of a fictional secret U.S. government intelligence agency muses about using the protagonist's powers of mental domination to "suggest in a low voice of utter conviction that suicide was the best answer" to Teddy Kennedy.
• In Forced Perspectives, the villain is guardian to a pair of psychic twins who have the ability to mentally compel others. It's revealed that he gained guardianship of them by manipulating them into mentally compelling their parents to commit suicide.
• The first chapter of The Garden of Sinners opens with several schoolgirls throwing themselves off a particular abandoned building to their death, without any clear indications of their reasons. Shiki eventually discovers that a spirit haunting the building was magically compelling them to do so.
• In Genome: Dances on the Snow, the Big Bad tries this with the protagonist and a girl by using Compelling Voice to force them to jump into molten metal. Captain Stas, a Jedi-like Knight of Avalon, uses the same voice to countermand her orders, turning it into a tug-of-war of sorts. The Big Bad ends up dying before the teens can jump.
• In the Ghosts of Fear Street book Horror Hotel Part 1, a ghost mistakes the protagonist for his murderer due to Uncanny Family Resemblance, and possesses him every night to try to force him to kill himself. The possession only lasts from midnight to 12:15, however, since that was how long it took the ghost to die.
• Gravity Falls: Journal 3 reveals that when Bill possessed Dipper in the Gravity Falls episode "Sock Opera", he was going to kill Dipper as soon as he had destroyed the Journals.
  Note to self: Possessing people is hilarious! To think of all the sensations I've been missing out on—burning, stabbing, drowning. It's like a buffet tray of fun! Once I destroy that journal, I'll enjoy giving this body its grand finale—by throwing it off the water tower! Best of all, people will just think Pine Tree lost his mind and his mental form will wander in the mindscape forever. Want to join him, Shooting Star?
• Harry Potter:
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort forces Wormtail to strangle himself with his new silver hand.
  • Mentioned in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when Moody highlights the horror of the Imperius curse by offering to make the spider he's controlling jump out the window or drown itself.
• There's a heroic (?) example in the Heralds of Valdemar short story "Trust Your Instincts". The Sword That Sings, an ornamental sword used to choose the rightful kings and queens of Rethwellan, exerts an influence on the young man who'd held it a year ago to let it indicate the current queen. Becoming obsessed with the memory of its warm, comforting touch on his mind, he breaks in to touch it again and it rocks him with torturous visions of the country falling to an invader who destroys the sword. Cracking under its continued influence, the young man accepts that it wants him to take it to safety, steals the sword from the palace, and heads unprepared in the direction it wants him to go - an obscure mountain pass, in the winter. He realizes towards the end, as he dies of exposure, that the sword never meant for him to survive and his life was just the means by which the sword wanted to be lost for a time, but he's so addled by its touch that he doesn't mind and thinks he's committing a Heroic Sacrifice. Decades or centuries later in The Oathbreakers, Tarma and Kethry find him and the sword and return it to Rethwellan.
• In The Hour Before Morning, Ahkté unapologetically uses this to further his revolution; he considers the pain he experiences part of the bargain.
• Inheritance Cycle: During one battle, Blödhgarm gets control of an enemy mage's mind, forcing him to kill himself with a spell.
• Known Space: About 1 billion years in the past, the Thrint used their telepathic mind control powers to become the rulers of the Milky Way by enslaving all other sentient life forms in the galaxy. When the slave races rebelled, the thrint used telepathic amplifiers to order them to commit suicide. All of them. Everywhere. Including Thrint. No, the Thrint weren't exactly the sharpest tool in the galactic-conqueror shed. It's notable that they did consider that someone might find a way to hide from the command (and some did!), so they rigged their weapon to go into stasis and come out every once in a while and do it again. It has lost effectiveness over time. It now only works on developed brains, but still blasts the Galaxy every so often.
• Legends of Dune: In Mentats of Dune, Valya Harkonnen is the first Reverend Mother who masters the Voice and uses it to kill her rival Dorotea immediately after Mother Superior Raquella Berto-Anirul's death by giving Dorotea her dagger and commanding her to stab herself in the throat. The supreme irony is that Raquella has just Mind-Melded with Dorotea and gave her the necessary insight to work together with Valya to make the Sisterhood great. Also ironic is that Dorotea has Atreides blood through her grandmother Raquella, something Valya does not know; so Valya unknowingly kills one of her family's bitter enemies. This is possibly the first time someone uses the Voice to override a person's self-preservation instinct.
• Played straight numerous times in the Lensman universe. Some examples:
  • The Arisian Watchman in Grey Lensman forces two of the Eich to destroy their own ship with the missile they had planned to use on Arisia.
  • In the hunt for his arch-enemy Kandron, Nadreck of Palain Seven is seen tabulating and summarizing a number of horrific murder-suicides Kandron brought about by means of his mental powers. Nadreck himself is an expert at driving entire enemy garrisons to suicide or mutual destruction, but he confines his activities to enemy combatants.
  • In an unusual inversion of the trope, Clarissa Kinnison causes an enemy agent to destroy the means by which she would have killed herself to avoid interrogation. Under Clarissa's mental influence, the agent empties her pistols against the far wall and throws her suicide capsule out of reach.
• Medusa's Web revolves around a form of Geometric Magic that can be used for, among other things, temporarily possessing the bodies of others. Some of the practitioners who abuse the power will finish up by forcing their hosts to kill themselves, either to stop them being a problem later or just to have the thrill of taking a lethal action without consequences. The villain of the novel tries to deal with one of the protagonists this way, which leads to her realizing that he's already successfully murdered his own mother, who unexpectedly "committed suicide" at the beginning of the novel, using the same method.
• In The Migax Cycle, the seserance forces Wye to kill himself, and almost succeeds at making Summer slit her own throat.
• It seems that the titular aliens in Robert Silverberg's Passengers sometimes do this to the people whose bodies they possess.
• The Power: Allie uses the Power to control Tatiana's mind into killing herself with a letter opener.
• The villain in Rogue Psi by James H. Schmitz does this to any lesser telepaths who become aware of his location.
• In The Salvation War, it is mentioned that Abigor and some angel once had a competition about who will cause more lethal incidents among humans. Abigor won 106 to 102.
• In a scene from the novelization of The Shadow, the villain is on the roof of the Empire State building when he's mocked by a sailor for his strange clothes — so he makes the sailor climb the fence and jump. It's particularly horrible because the sailor is screaming that he doesn't understand what's happening. In the movie, it's actually Played for Laughs immediately afterward; we cut to our heroes walking down the street, and Lamont, beginning to suss out Shiwan's evil plans, says "It's all falling into place." The Empire State Building is in view, and as soon as he says that, the sailor bounces off one of the ledges like a ball.
• In the Dean Koontz novel Sole Survivor and its TV adaptation, the psychic child SSW 89-58 uses this to kill people. There's a fun scene where he forces someone to jump off a building with the victim forced to scream how much he's enjoying it.
• Averted in StarCraft Ghost: Nova, in which the gang leader obtains through a friend a psychic blocker to prevent Nova from doing exactly this. Unfortunately, he never reads the manual which prohibits the use of the device for more than 18 hours at a time, as it can lead to unbalanced psyche. Time Skip a year, he hasn't taken it off since he put it on. Now, he's completely off the reservation, shooting underlings for a tiny infraction, even ones he imagines. In the end, Nova does a variation of this by using her powers to make the gang leader's remaining lieutenant shoot him.
• Starlight and Shadows: In Tangled Webs, one guy got his severed hand replaced with a slave's by his drow "ally". When he tried to disagree with her, the reason for this generosity became clear — the new hand snatched his own knife and put it to his throat, just to make a point.
• Sword of Truth: Confessors are fully capable of ordering a person to kill himself. However, more powerful ones, like Kahlan, can simply give an order to drop dead... and it will be followed to the letter. Kahlan does it at least once before the series starts, and twice during the books. Jagang has also ordered one of his servants to die, merely to make a point.
• In Those Who Walk in Darkness by John Ridley, this is why psychics are considered to have won the Superpower Lottery. Their standard method is to have targets shoot themselves, "the ultimate fuck-you".
• In Time Streams, Barrin defeats the Phyrexian demon Gorig by casting a ray of command on him. This spell compels Gorig to fly straight downward at top speed, where he slams, headfirst, into the deck of the Weatherlight. The results aren't pretty.
• Villains Don't Date Heroes!: Rex (as Shadow Wing) tries this on Night Terror when Night Terror thinks she's immune to his mind control. The fact that CORVAC didn't even try to warn her is a big clue that something's up.
• In Wings of Fire, Darkstalker killed Arctic in the backstory of the series by making him disembowel himself using his animus powers.

Live-Action TV

• The 4400:
  • In "Becoming", Oliver Knox used his Compelling Voice to convince Philip Lopez and Charlie Staley to commit suicide. Lopez hanged himself and Staley stepped in front of a truck, though it managed to stop before it hit him.
  • In "Wake-Up Call", the six-month-old Isabelle compels Reverend Josiah's son Owen to shoot himself in the head.
• Alphas:
  • The Ghost does this twice during the premiere episode. He forced one victim to jump off a building and a minion who was 4 minutes late to a meeting to drink bleach! He also carried out assassinations offscreen by using proxies to cause a fatal accident such as by crashing their car into his target, killing both.
  • In "Bill and Gary's Excellent Adventures", Nina reveals that she was afraid that she did this to her ex-boyfriend when she yelled in anger for him to kill himself. Fortunately, it's revealed at the end that it wasn't her, he was just Driven to Suicide instead.
  • In season two, we are introduced to Kimi Milard, an alpha with a similar ability to Nina's who just LOVES to do this to people.
• In American Horror Story: Coven, Marie forces 2 cops to shoot each other in the head.
• The Angel episode "I've Got You Under My Skin" features a demon possessing a child trying to get him to walk in front of a moving car. Unfortunately, it turns out this was a regular suicide attempt — on the part of the demon, who was trapped and unable to do anything inside a psychopathic host.
• Telepath Lyta Alexander of Babylon 5 forces a Drazi hitman to shoot himself after he tries to kill her in "Movements of Fire and Shadow". It shows her increasing power after she was Touched by Vorlons.
• In Batman (1966), the Siren can control men with her Compelling Voice. Whenever she decides that she doesn't need them anymore, she usually tells them to jump into a lake or off a building. Fortunately, each time this happens, the victim is saved by Batman, Robin, or Batgirl.
• Birds of Prey (2002): After she's given an ability to hypnotize people by a scientist in her pay, Harley tests it by forcing him into jumping from a window, which kills the guy.
• BrainDead (2016): The bugs have Abby kill herself rather than be taken into custody by Anthony to get examined.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • One of the Potentials did this after The First did some Mind Rape, preying on her insecurities and essentially talking her into killing herself.
  • This seems to be The First's favorite method of getting rid of people it considers threatening (or, in poor Chloe's case, of better use to it dead):
    • It attempts to convince Willow to kill herself in "Conversations with Dead People" by pretending to be speaking for Tara and declaring her wishes from heaven. Willow, knowing how gentle her girlfriend was in life, doesn't buy it.
    • In The First's Early-Bird Cameo in "Amends", it tries to mentally torture Angel with the intent that he'll either kill himself or turn into Angelus and try to kill Buffy. That does work, almost.
  • And previously in "Once More, with Feeling", the demon Sweet forces people to sing and dance until they burst into flames.
• Charmed (1998): Darklighters are shown to do this to potential Whitelighters. If they kill the potential, that just makes the potential become an actual Whitelighter, but if the potential kills herself, then the suicide taints the soul and makes it unfit to become a Whitelighter. The Darklighters mostly work by making their victims' lives completely unbearable, but there seems to be a Compelling Voice element to it as well.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Terror of the Autons": The Master hypnotizes Jo into suicide-bombing UNIT HQ. A slight subversion, since he doesn't expect the bomb to succeed — it's part of his plan to lure the Doctor into a trap.
  • "The Green Death": The BOSS computer brainwashes people into committing suicide.
  • "The Christmas Invasion": The Sycorax threaten to do this by taking control of about a third of the Earth and making them all march to the nearest high place, planning to order them to jump if their demands aren't met. It turns out to be a bluff — the form of mind control used can't overcome the survival instinct.
• Dollhouse: Boyd is hit by a mind-wiping device and given a personality that obeys Echo's order to strap himself to explosives and blow up Rossum HQ. He always tries to be his best, you know.
• In The Flash (2014), Grodd threatens Joe with this in "Grodd Lives", forcing him to point his gun at himself before tossing it away using telekinesis. He almost succeeds later in "Attack on Central City" but Barry manages to stop him. DeVoe forces several security guards to kill themselves as well later in season 4.
• Gen V: Courtesy of Cate Dunlap. The first victim slashes their throat. The second is made to eat an explosive device (Your Head Asplode results during a livestream), all just in Season 1.
• The Gifted (2017): It turns out that Esme not only has telepathy, she's also (combined with her sisters) capable of causing Turner's entire convoy to kill each other and also themselves.
• Gotham:
  • Jervis Tetch frequently hypnotizes people to either kill themselves or others and then themselves. One of his prospective victims was Jim Gordon, but he eventually managed to snap out of it through Heroic Willpower.
  • Nyssa Al Ghul orders General Wade to "execute failsafe" after she's done with him, which it turns out is to shoot himself. He does, as he's been hypnotized to obey her.
• Adalind does this to a Verrat soldier in Grimm using Mind over Matter powers. When asked, she admits that the goal was to get him to drop the gun instead of putting it under his chin and firing, but Adalind has only recently regained her powers and is out of practice. It's also possible that it was Adalind's baby who really did the act.
• The Haunting of Hill House (2018): Hill House/Olivia's ghost uses an illusion to make Nell think she's putting on a necklace, only for it to turn out to be a rope, resulting in her being hanged.
• Haven:
  • "Burned": Ginger tells a man "I hate your guts!" He takes this literally and commits Seppuku. Granted, Ginger didn't know he would do that.
  • "The New Girl": Tyler can possess other people, then make them kill themselves, snapping back to his original body at the moment of death.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: In "Hercules and the Amazon Women", Hera possesses Queen Hippolyta and attacks Hercules. As he is in love with her, he defeats her without killing her and tries an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight. It doesn't work, then out of spite, Hera makes Hippolyta jump off a cliff to her death. Fortunately, Hercules figures out how to press a Reset Button and prevent the events from happening.
• Heroes:
  • Eden attempts this on Sylar, and her backstory involves accidentally doing it to her abusive stepmother.
  • Doyle, the puppetmaster, uses this ability several times in a tie-in graphic novel displaying his backstory. When the Power Nullifiers short out, the first thing he does is make his jailer shoot himself.
  • Matt attempts to do this to Sylar while Sylar is in control of Matt's body and Matt is partially in control of his own mind, with a healthy dash of Suicide by Cop thrown in.
  • Sylar attempted this in his first appearance, by telekinetically making Matt's partner turn the gun to her head. Matt interrupts before s/he can pull the trigger though.
• Heroes Reborn (2015): "Send in the Clones" has Matt force two of the Harris clones to kill themselves when they try to take Taylor from him. In "Company Woman" he uses the threat of it, making Taylor pick up his gun and put it to her head so Erica will give his family passes into Gateway.
• In Jessica Jones (2015), Kilgrave seems to love doing this to people. He makes multiple people off themselves in cruel ways, like slitting their own throats or impaling themselves through the face on garden shears, and uses it as a threat to control others such as Jessica.
• In Kamen Rider Agito, the Overlord of Darkness can force the Lords to kill themselves if they violate the taboo to not kill normal humans.
• Key & Peele shows that Jaleel White, actor for Steve Urkel, was able to enforce his authority over the show due to being a psychic capable of inflicting this on anyone who displeased him, such as producers and costars.
• Killjoys: Pawter forces people to run into the wall surrounding Old Town by reconfiguring its force field to drive them into a rage against it until they short this out due to the impacts.
• Legend of the Seeker: Anyone confessed can be ordered to off themselves. While this normally doesn't happen (though we see Kahlan order one murderer to do this), a variant happens in the first season, where Richard, with the power of Orden, orders four Mord-Sith to kill each other. They do so in unison. Richard also orders some D'Haran soldiers to do this with the same means.
• Legion (2017): When Charles Xavier is being choked to death by a Nazi soldier, he implants the telepathic command "Kill yourself" into his attacker's mind as a form of self-defense. The Nazi then lets go of Xavier's neck, picks up the latter's service pistol, and blows his brains out.
• An episode of Lois & Clark has Lois seemingly undergo an Alien Abduction (and yes, she responds to Clark's Arbitrary Skepticism by pointing out that he is an alien), after which she occasionally goes into a trance and deliberately puts her life in danger (e.g. walks out onto a busy road). Naturally, Supes has to save her every time. As it turns out, she was kidnapped by a group of criminals who implanted post-hypnotic suggestions triggered by a watch, which would make her do this to distract Superman, while they pull off a daring heist.
• Lost Girl: In "Blood Lines" Aoife orders one of her thralls to commit a suicide bombing against the fae elders.
• The Magicians: Renard forced the doctor Julia went to get an abortion from into killing herself, as a means of thwarting this.
• Motherland: Fort Salem:
  • A member of The Spree revealed to be Scylla casts a spell at the beginning of the pilot that enchants people to walk off of balconies en masse, killing them. It's called a "suicide bombing" later in media reports.
  • Scylla later casts a spell on her ex-boyfriend, Porter, which makes him jump to his death off a building. It is later revealed that he knew what was aware of was going on but was powerless to stop himself.
  • In "Happy Yule!" Vira (Scylla's ex and member of the Spree) uses a spell to force Sterling Woodlot into stabbing himself with a knife.
• The Watcher on No Ordinary Family uses a telekinetic variant, forcing Dr. Chiles to ingest a fatal dose of medication and write a suicide note in his own hand.
• Nos4a 2: After failing in the task Hourglass sent him on, the male FBI agent shoots himself under his influence.
• October Faction: Alice makes people shoot themselves on different occasions by controlling them with telekinesis.
• The Outer Limits (1963):
  • At the beginning of "The Special One", Mr. Zeno uses his mental powers to make a man jump out a window to his death. Near the end of the episode, he tries to do it to another man but is foiled by the man's son.
  • In "The Inheritors", one of the men with the meteorite fragments in his head uses his psychic powers to force a man to almost take his own life as a warning.
• Painkiller Jane: In the pilot, the neuro antagonist's power is mind-controlling people so they'll kill themselves or others.
• Barely avoided in Paranormal Witness, in the episode "The Good Skeleton". A family of three moves into a haunted house, and at a later point a poltergeist starts possessing the wife, provoking her with nightmares urging her to drown herself in a lake. One night while possessed it makes her walk into traffic to get there and she's almost run over by a truck. They later find out that the reason behind it was the spirits haunting them had died in a car accident in front of their house.
• The Despair Squid from the Red Dwarf episode "Back to Reality" releases some sort of hallucinogen which causes anything exposed to it to fantasize a reality which ultimately convinces them to end their lives. It even works on fish.
• Sense8:
  • Whispers has Niles kill himself after he kills Dr. Metzger. Later he takes control of a woman to kill the Chairman and assault Will, then has her kill herself.
  • Multiple members of a cluster Angelica birthed suffer this. Angelica herself burns Raoul to death, and Whispers is implied to hang Todd after using him to commit mass murder.
• Smallville:
  • In the episode "Hug", CEO Bob Rickman ends an investigation of his company when he used his handshake-induced mind control power to make an agent of an EPA-like organization who was onto his corrupt practices jump out of a window. Later, he and Kyle Tippet, who has the same power, wrestle for control over a handgun while engaged in a battle-of-wills using their powers to make the other kill himself, a battle which Bob loses.
  • Molly Griggs developed a mind-control computer program and can email instructions to a person to kill someone. At first, she isn't powerful enough to override the human survival instinct to make them commit suicide, but in "The Vengeance Chronicles", she tries to make Lex Luthor kill himself using the program.
• A Monster of the Week sandman on Special Unit 2 once used the possession variety.
• The Star Trek: The Original Series pilot "The Cage" has the illusionist variation: the Talosian Keeper threatens to destroy the Enterprise unless Pike releases him, and Vina confirms that they are capable of doing so by using their illusions to fool the crew into operating the wrong controls. (Fortunately, while he wasn't bluffing about his capability, the Keeper was bluffing about his willingness to carry out the threat.)
• Supergirl (2015): In "Myriad", Non is able to brainwash the entire city except for Supergirl and a few others. To demonstrate his power, he forces James, Winn, and a third CatCo employee named Kelly to jump off a building. Supergirl is only able to save James and Winn, while Kelly dies. Non warns that he'll kill more unless Supergirl backs off.
• Supernatural
  • In "Simon Said", Dean is about to shoot himself in the head because of Webber's mind control until Andy shoots Webber. Webber also makes other people kill themselves.
  • In "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2", the Winchesters, Ellen, and Bobby go up against Jake, the last of Azazel's psychics besides Sam. Jake effectively holds Ellen hostage by using Compelling Voice powers to make her hold her gun to her own head.
  • In "The Werther Project", a cursed box nearly convinces Sam that he must empty his veins in order to destroy it. The box has also convinced multiple other people to kill themselves. Supernatural loves this trope.
• A non-supernatural version in the Taggart episode "Black Orchid". The cops suspect the victim was hypnotised into suicide, but are told hypnosis can't make someone do something they don't want to do. Jardine asks if hypnosis can make someone believe they're not in a situation that could kill them.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): Implied in "Devil's Alphabet". On November 2, 1897, Andrew hung himself from a high ceiling in his house. However, there was no chair found in the room, so it is a mystery how he reached the rafters. The implication is that he was assisted by the occult forces with which he and the other six members of the Devil's Alphabet Society had unwittingly entered a bargain that transcends death.
• Twin Peaks: Once Leland is outed as BOB's host, BOB forces him to kill himself. It's unclear if this was necessary for BOB to leave his body, done to prevent him from aiding the others in following BOB, or just another of BOB's random acts of cruelty.
• Uchu Sentai Kyuranger: In Episode 31, Naga (in the middle of his Face–Heel Turn) tries to do this to Echidna (the woman from his star-system sent to kill him for acquiring emotions), but gets interrupted by the Kyurangers.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • In the episode "Plan B", Jenna is compelled by Katherine to kill herself but survives.
  • In an early appearance, Elijah compels a vampire to stake himself.
• Watchmen (2019): Will Reeves hypnotized Judd into hanging himself with a strobe light.
• Whodunnit? (UK): In "Final Trumpet", hypnotist The Great Mesmer claims to have killed the Repulsive Ringmaster Brandon by putting him into a trance and compelling him to stab himself. It was actually a False Confession because he thought his beloved Nola had committed the murder and he wanted to protect her.
• It happens at least once in the Russian mini-series Wolf Messing: Seeing through time, based on the (heavily criticized) memoirs of a Real Life psychic by that name. The first time he does this is as a child out of fear, when he is on a train bound for Warsaw without a ticket and is confronted by a conductor. At first, Wolf makes the man believe that a random piece of paper is a ticket. A few minutes later, though, as Wolf is crossing into another car, the same conductor once again asks for the ticket. The scared boy induces the man to jump off the moving train, although the fall doesn't appear to be bad. The second time was deliberate, as the man in question (an SS officer) has hounded Wolf all his life and shot two of his friends in front of him. When Wolf sees him among the POWs at a Soviet factory, he forces the guy to assault a guard and run, resulting in him being shot. Wolf is wracked by nightmares afterwards, though, especially since he still remembers a promise he gave to his rabbi as a boy not to abuse his powers. His wife tells him that the Nazi deserved it. Interestingly, this is the first time Wolf is able to use his abilities to influence the man, who possessed a strong enough will to resist earlier attempts. However, by that point, he is clearly a broken man in the hands of the hated enemy with Germany on the verge of losing the war. He is clearly horrified when he sets eyes on Wolf, and this (coupled with Wolf's desire for revenge) is likely what allows Wolf to overcome his mental defenses.
• The X-Files:
  • This is used by the serial killer Robert Patrick Modell (episodes "Pusher" and "Kitsunegari"). Modell possesses the ability to "push" his will onto others and demonstrates it several times. When captured by police, he causes his driver to crash into an oncoming truck. Later, he talks an armed SWAT team officer into dropping his weapon, picking up a can of gasoline, dousing himself and the surrounding area with it, and lighting himself on fire. He doesn't even have to be there in person - he talks the lead detective hunting him down into a heart attack over the phone. At the climax of "Pusher", he talks Mulder into playing Russian roulette, which Mulder obeys but shoots Modell as soon as Modell tries to make him pull the trigger on Scully.
  • In "Die Hand Die Verletzt", Mrs. Paddock forces Shannon to slit her wrists, and then the Satanists to kill themselves, all using sympathetic magic.

Podcasts

• In The Adventure Zone: Balance:
  • Cpt. Bane is subject to this. As he's trying to poison Tres Horny Boys, The Red Robe appears and possesses him, making him knock the poisoned drinks from their hands, before forcing him to drink the poison himself.
  • In the same arc, Taako gets possessed by one of his opponents during the Battlewagon-races. Under the influence, he's forced to climb onto the roof of the car, take off his safety harness, then leap off the edge. Fortunately, he's caught by Klaarg the bugbear.
• The Magnus Archives has a variation of this: if Jon uses his Compelling Voice to ask someone a question that they cannot answer, this is what happens to them. Notably used on Peter Lukas in episode 159.
• Pretending to Be People has the Number Plague, a Mind Virus which transmits itself via perception, drives its victims to indulge in seemingly-random obsessions, then kill themselves with whatever is on hand.

Tabletop Games

• Call of Cthulhu, being the kind of game it is, has at least one mind control-type spell for which this may ironically be one of the most effective applications, seeing how it gives the caster complete control over the subject's actions if successful, no worries about pesky self-preservation reflexes getting in the way...but only for one combat round, and at a magic point expenditure that makes it impractical to cast repeatedly.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Generally averted with most forms of mind-control, with which obviously self-destructive orders won't be followed. And even if never instructed to, dominated characters will still fulfill their basic survival needs, like eating or sleeping. It is still quite possible to cause harm indirectly, though, for example by forcing them to attack dangerous monsters.
  • The suggestion spell states that the command has to be "reasonable". No telling them to impale themselves on a spear or anything like that, but you could suggest that a pool of acid is nice refreshing water and they could use a bath right now (this is, in fact, the example the game itself gives).
  • The Bard spell puppeteer (from the Spell Compendium) force the victim to mimic whatever the caster is doing. This can include suicidal actions, although those grants a new saving throw.
  • The spell black karma curse (from Player's Handbook II) compels the target to hit itself with its most damaging attack, but just once.
  • A power in the Psionic Handbook is called death urge. As the name implies, it activates a latent suicidal impulse, causing the victim to immediately turn their weapons upon themselves. This Play-by-Post deserves mention, if only for the sheer levels of Overkill involved ^explanationBecause the attack(s) from death urge is an automatic critical hit and the opponent has an ability that grants him an extra attack upon scoring a critical hit, he is forced to continue attacking until he runs out of ammo.
  • There are also powers that disrupt the victim's autonomic processes so that they have to actively make themselves breathe — if they forget to, they start suffocating.
  • Several powers in Fourth Edition either force an enemy to attack any creature of his choice or apply the dominated condition which can likewise force attacks. These forced attacks may include the person making said attack (unless the selected attack requires targeting an enemy), and it's easier to force a self-attack than it is to force someone into a pit or damaging terrain.
  • The Unearthed Arcana spell puppet can be used to send involuntary targets plummeting off any convenient ledges or windows, much to their own horror. Oh, and drop their weapon before doing so.
• Hero System:
  • While it's pretty hard to get a victim to straightforwardly do this with Mind Control, if such an attack connects and beats the target's EGO score by at least 30 on the effect dice total the controller can have the target perform actions they would normally be "violently opposed" to doing, which explicitly does include attempts to kill themselves. That said, the victim gets a roll to break free of the control again before actually performing the first action and then more over time, meaning that they might snap out of it before they actually manage to kill themselves.
  • Alternatively, the Mental Illusions power could be used to lure a subject into suffering an "accident" rather more easily. Making "major" changes to the setting as perceived by the target (say, by letting them "spot" a child playing amidst real traffic while having them fail to notice the one car that's about to hit them) is technically only an EGO + 10 effect...
• In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas: The Demon Prince of Heavy Metal and his followers have this as a specific power: the victim will execute any order, but it must finish by committing suicide.
• Magic: The Gathering: Zig-zagged. The effect of the card 'Mindslaver' states "You control target player's next turn." However, the errata explicitly states you cannot make them concede the game with this effect. That being said, it is quite possible to force the player to have the opponent kill themselves this way, most commonly by casting direct damage spells while choosing themselves as the target.
• New World of Darkness games mostly averts this.
  • It's made very clear that the human survival instinct is too strong to just willingly give into commands that are blatantly suicidal ("Blow your brains out") without immense amounts of power. Stupid commands, on the other hand, tend to have more leeway. ("Pull your gun on that cop", "Swim in this pool" when they don't know it's acid, "Punch the vampire in the face"...)
  • There are a few powers across game lines that do this. Vampire: The Requiem features a bloodline known as the Children of Judas (typically Embraced right before — or in rare cases, right after — committing suicide) who have a bloodline-based Discipline that allows them to drive people to despair and, in time, suicide attempts.
  • Sin-Eaters can do the same thing with the highest ranks of the Stygian Curse.
• An image of a Mind Melter in Rifts shows him standing behind a soldier who is on his knees, soaked in gasoline, and holding a match with a dazed look in his eyes.
• Plutomancers in Unknown Armies can give someone a sudden urge to hurt themselves. Appropriately for their school's money-based theme, the spells used for this are called Mercenary Will and Bankrupt Will.
• In Warhammer 40,000's background, psykers with mind-controlling or compelling abilities can force people to kill themselves. Tabletop sorcery tends to be more straightforward in its methodology, but the old Slaaneshi "Lash of Submission" psychic power, which could move an enemy unit up to 12 inches, was perfect for convincing a foe to leave that dirty old trench and stand in a nice open field, right in front of your firing line.
• Like in the New World of Darkness examples above, Vampire: The Masquerade long held to the rule that Dominate powers cannot be used to make a target willingly harm themselves. However, Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition brings this into play with the high-level Dominate power The Terminal Decree, which allows a vampire to command somebody to harm or kill themselves.

Theatre

• Depending on the production, Rudolf's death in Elisabeth can look like cold-blooded murder, normal Driven to Suicide, or this.

Video Games

• In the MUD Achaea a few Classes have the ability to briefly take control of other players - the Serpents via hypnosis, and the Monks via telepathy. Both styles are mostly used for theft, by forcing players to hand over their backpack - but can also be used to force people to commit suicide, most popularly by making them kick the nearest (unbelievably overpowered) city-guard.
• In the Assassin's Creed series, this is one of the powers of the Apples of Eden. As artifacts of the First Civilization, they were originally used to dominate mankind, but in the modern era, the Templars have sought them out to use in their own world domination schemes, and when an Assassin gets his hands on one... things get deadly.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Ezio uses the Apple to incapacitate or kill legions of Templar soldiers. Some go mad, some die when their brains melt from the inside, and some kill themselves.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Revelations, an aged Altaïr uses his Apple to defeat waves of attacking Mongol soldiers by conjuring phantom Assassins; the implication is that the Mongols are convinced that they have been killed, so they die.
  • In Assassin's Creed III, Desmond Miles enters Abstergo's headquarters in Italy to rescue his father. Rather than hand over the Apple as Vidic demands, Desmond uses it to dominate Abstergo's security guards and force them to shoot Vidic, and then themselves.
• In Baldur's Gate III you have the opportunity to make a Gnoll warlord named Flind kill the rest of her pack and herself using Mind Control powers granted by your Illithid Puppeteer Parasite.
• BioShock:
  • From the first game, "Would you kindly go get stepped on by a Big Daddy." Words directly toward Jack from Fontaine, but they don't work because Jack had already taken the antidote to the Mind Control serum. Unfortunately, Fontaine had another failsafe - Code Yellow. "I just told your heart to stop beating. The heart's a stubborn muscle, though, so it'll take a while."
    • An earlier scene has Andrew Ryan, while undergoing a Villainous BSoD, tell Jack that "a man chooses, a slave obeys" before using the above code phrase to order Jack to kill him, which he does, with a golf club. An interesting variation in that the psychic assists his own suicide (although Atlas had already used the phrase to order Ryan's death earlier).
  • The intro to BioShock 2 involves Sophia Lamb taking control of Subject Delta and ordering him to shoot himself in the head. Eleanor Lamb revives him with a Vita-Chamber ten years later.
  • BioShock Infinite has a Vigor (Columbia's version of plasmids) called Possession, which causes enemies to briefly become allies. With the right perk, it will then make Mooks (even strong ones, but not heavy hitters) kill themselves when the Possession runs out, which they do in various graphic ways depending on the weapon they're equipped with.
• It's possible to force one of your opponents to kill themselves in Board Game Online, by using the Hypno Glasses to take over a person's turn when they're about to shoot someone and pick themselves as the target.
• In Clive Barker's Undying, the spell Invoke allows you to reanimate monsters and destroy undead. If you use it on a living human being, they will jerkily turn their weapon on themselves as they beg for their life in terror, slitting their own throat or blowing their brains out. ^note Note that it only works on the Trsanti, the evil gypsy-like enemies; the malevolent, primitive humanoids from Bethany's private realm are actually monsters and so it doesn't work on them.
• In Control, this is an implied punishment if The Board finds someone wanting if they pick up the Service Weapon. It's deliberately unclear what happened to Director Trench: if it was The Board doing it, or if The Hiss did it, or if a Hiss-possessed Dylan made Trench do it. However, the second DLC provides evidence that it was actually none of the above, and that Trench simply committed suicide of his own volition after realizing that the Hiss manipulated him into letting it loose on the world.
• In The Crooked Man, while playing as Paul, you have to stop David from killing himself. During this, you see the Crooked Man's arms around David holding the gun to his head, and while they're only there briefly it's enough to show that David is being manipulated and isn't fully in control of his own actions.
• In Cry of Fear, this is one of the methods the "Drowned" enemy type uses to attack you - if you're in their sight for long enough and you're carrying a loaded firearm, it will attempt to force you to aim said firearm at your head as it uses its right arm to point at you and if you fail to shake off the suicidal influence, it'll instantly kill Simon after a few seconds of him whimpering via a fatal headshot.
• In Cyberpunk 2077 a variant occurs in which it's possible for the Player Character to hack a Cyborg's nervous system and force them to kill themselves with whatever they have on hand. It's only partial Mind Control as while the cybernetic body is under your control, their conscious mind is aware of what's happening and powerless to do anything about it. However, with the Target Analysis cyberware mod you can subvert the trope and make them incapacitate themselves instead.
• Bishamon from Darkstalkers has a special move that makes the opponent catch his blade and is then forced to commit suicide with it. Of course, like many of his moves that cut the opponent in two, it doesn't stick unless you end the match with it.
• In Dead Space 2, it appears that Nicole, an apparition of the Marker, is trying to kill Isaac, but in reality, it's trying to use this trope.
• This happens in a cutscene in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The culprit is a hacker remotely guiding the augmented thug. When discovered by Adam, he overrides the thug's augmentations, forcing the guy to shoot himself.
• In Dishonored, there's an achievement for "causing five unintentional suicides". Actually doing so takes a bit of work. While Corvo can possess enemies briefly, he can't make them use weapons — only move around and open doors. So, what he can do instead is to goad an enemy into shooting at him, stop time while the bullet is in midair, possess the enemy that just fired, move into the bullet's path, and release the possession so that Corvo doesn't die himself. Simple!
• Divinity: Original Sin II: The treacherous Evil Sorcerer Mordus mind-controlled a large group of his erstwhile boss's minions and established himself in a remote cave, where the minions are ordered to guard Voidwoken eggs and then feed themselves to the hatchlings. If you kill the minions, some of their spirits are grateful to have been spared that fate.
• Idunna, an "Apostitute" at the Blooming Rose in Dragon Age II, tries to do this to Hawke but fails, either by resisting it with Templar Training if a Warrior, shrugging it off if a Mage, or by being rescued by one of the Mages in their party.
• Upon obtaining the Ultimate Insult in Escape from Monkey Island, Ozzie Mandrill orders his henchman Pegnose Pete to "take a long walk off a short pier."
• Etrian Odyssey: Hexers have the ability Evil Eye, which grants them control over an enemy. Once dominated, they can follow up with Suicide Word, which forces the victim to attack itself.
• Far Cry 5: Towards the end of the Henbane River campaign, Marshal Burke is taken control of one last time by Faith Seed, who drives him to shoot Vergil, unlock all the doors of the Hope County Jail, and then blow his own brains out.
• Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water has a few occasions where the ghosts attempt to make characters kill themselves in the same manner that they killed themselves. Some are successful.
• Fire Emblem Fates has this happen to Prince Takumi in the Conquest path. Made worse because he had been under More than Mind Control for a while already before the Greater-Scope Villain, Anankos, forced him to kill himself to later use him and his dead body as the Final Boss. It's also speculated that Gunter's Interrupted Suicide in Revelations was actually Anankos's last shot at him after he managed to break off from his More than Mind Control. In any way, it fails.
• In Hearthstone, the Priest has a number of spells that take control of an enemy minion for one turn. The most common use of these is taking one minion and ramming it into another, usually killing them both.
• The demon Alastor in Heroes of Might and Magic V is feared for his exceptional grasp of mind-control magic, and demons who upset him often find themselves 'accidentally' walking into fire-pits.
• In Hogwarts Legacy, Token Evil Teammate Sebastian Sallow does this with the Black Magic Imperius Curse to a goblin about to murder his sister, making it fall on its sword with a Gory Discretion Shot. His sister sees him as a Terrifying Rescuer and his uncle disowns him as the curse is labeled "Unforgivable" for a reason.
• In Lucius, Lucius develops the power to possess weak-willed people. He uses it to make one of the maids throw herself off a balcony, the gardener place his head inside a lawnmower, and his tutor blows his brains out with a revolver.
• Inverted in Mass Effect with Fai Dan and Saren. Both are Brainwashed and Crazy by the Thorian and Sovereign respectively and are trying, or can be persuaded in the case of the later, to kill themselves as a form of Heroic Sacrifice so they can't hurt others.
• Metal Gear:
  • Psycho Mantis of Metal Gear Solid tries this, and succeeds if you don't knock Meryl out before she does it.
  • Screaming Mantis in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots tries the same thing with the same character, but Johnny's well-timed return foils it.
  • The Man on Fire in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is made to do this in Episode 30 under the influence of the Third Child, who upon being taken control of by Eli forces him to walk into the path of the transport platform carrying Sahelanthropus.
• In Metro 2033, this is the last resort of the Dark Ones, who try to force Artyom to throw himself from the top of Ostankino Tower.
• Mortal Kombat
  • In Mortal Kombat (2011), Shang Tsung and Quan Chi can take possession of opponents and manipulate them into breaking their own necks.
  • Mortal Kombat X has Quan Chi kill opponents by forcing them to walk towards a levitating knife until it stabs them through the head.
  • Mortal Kombat 1 gives Quan Chi another Fatality in which he possesses his foe and forces them to kill themselves — more specifically, by mutilating their face before twisting and then ripping off their own head.
• In the Oddworld series, when Abe possesses a Slig or Glukkon, you can always get rid of them by jumping into one of the nearest Bottomless Pits, walking them head-long into a landmine to clear a path for you, or diving into a meat grinder or deathtrap just for kicks. Even simply releasing them from possession makes them explode — this doesn't happen when Abe releases a Scrab or Paramite implying it's a conscious decision of his, and if Sligs and Glukkons crying for help when you make them leap to their deaths is any clue, they're conscious when you do it.
• Nick Scryer, the protagonist in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy can use Mind Control to make enemies commit Suicide by Cop.
  • A secret key combination^note Inventory and Sniper Zoom keys (PC)/both analog sticks (console) held at the same time for several seconds can make them put their gun in their mouth as well.
  • The first boss tries to do this to Nick after being defeated, however, the explosives Nick was planting around the base detonate killing him before Nick can pull the trigger.
• One of the symptoms the Neurax Worm can evolve in Plague Inc. is driving their hosts to suicide.
• In Receiver 2, the Threat has corrupted several of the tapes you can find. The recordings, each one the last words of a person about to commit suicide, will cause the player character to turn their gun towards the screen. The player must immediately clear their weapon of all ammo so it doesn't go off. There's also a musical cue and a message on screen warning the player that this is going to happen, and it's pretty easy for a moderately skilled player to safe their weapon before the Threat dry-fires into the Receiver's dome. After a few unsuccessful tries to make you kill yourself, the Threat gives up, and the player character resumes normal control. ^note Removing the magazine, holstering the firearm, or engaging the safety is not enough. The gun must be emptied of ammunition or have malfunctioned. With a semiautomatic pistol, drop the magazine (and we mean drop the magazine, on the floor or in an inventory pouch) and rack the slide to eject the round in the chamber. For a revolver, open the cylinder and dump out the contents.)
• Second Sight doesn't allow this directly, but nothing prevents you from jumping off a cliff while possessing someone. The game even tracks how many times you've killed a host. Like just below, start shooting at an enemy while possessing someone. Eventually one of them will die, and the other will be weakened enough to be easily dispatched.
• According to numerous sources ^note including Jung himself in The Secret World, the last henchman who tried to kidnap Jung ended up being very politely mind-controlled into forgetting how to breathe.
• The Dnyarri in Star Control 2 have the limitation that, if anyone actively under their compulsion is hurt, they will feel it. What can happen, and will if you confront one without protection, is forcing you to go "get lost in a bad neighborhood".
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, on Nar Shaddaa, if you've upgraded the Jedi Mind Trick to "Dominate Mind", you can force two thugs to give you all their money and then go jump off the walkway to their deaths.
  • In The Force Unleashed II Starkiller can also cause Imperial Stormtroopers to do this.
• In the remake of the classic Syndicate you can perform this in two ways. The suicide power forces the targeted enemy soldier to pull the pin from a grenade and stand there screaming and holding it, with predictably messy results; it's best used when soldiers are part of a group. (We aren't told what happens if the target doesn't have grenades to pull pins from; no enemy you can inflict suicide on doesn't). And then you have persuade, which forces the targeted enemy soldier to fight on your side. If their former allies don't manage to kill them, when the effect ends they'll shoot themselves in the head — while screaming, natch. Granted, you aren't doing this as a psychic — rather, you are hacking chips implanted in their brains, but still.
• The Witch and Coven Leader in Town of Salem can pull it off in specific cases, as they can order a Vigilante to kill himself, or a Vigilante to kill another town member, which will cause them to commit suicide out of guilt. Another variant is to send someone into an Alert Veteran. The Witch actually has an achievement for forcing a Vigilante to execute a townie, and another one for forcing 3 townies to die by visiting an Alert veteran in the same game.
• In Tyranny, Sirin doesn't have the power to do this; her Compelling Voice is too limited by her helmet. It was this that led to the helmet in the first place, though: she tried to assassinate Kyros, the single most powerful known being in Terratus, this way. And nearly succeeded; the only reason Kyros didn't kill Sirin was that that would mean admitting they were vulnerable to Sirin's power.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, the 3rd and 5th level Dominate abilities involve this. One is single target, the other gets people to do it en masse.
• Fail to save Shiokawa from Ygothaeg in World of Horror, and the city's population will drown themselves in the sea.
• There's an Easter Egg scene in World of Warcraft involving some Mind-Controlled ogres. One will sometimes break free, be mind-controlled again, and forced to jump off a cliff.
  • A Priest can replicate this, though it doesn't work on NPCs under most circumstances, and when it does work the affected characters usually die by falling. PvP on the other hand...
  • Mentioned by the Klaxxi in an idle conversation. At one point, Rik'kal the Dissector, curious as to how Kaz'tik the Manipulator's pet Kovok became so strong so quickly, speaks about possibly taking some samples from Kovok. Kaz'tik shuts Rik'kal up by pointing out that the latter has no protection from Kaz'tik's sonic manipulation techniques, and contemplates having Rik'kal vivisect himself.
  • Players fight the prophet Zul on a raised platform. He has an ability that allows him to mind control people, forcing them to walk to the edge and jump off unless their fellow raiders can dispel the effect.
• This is a fairly viable tactic in the X-COM games if you can find a Psi-vulnerable foe with a blaster bomb launcher or the aquatic equivalent.
  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown: While you can't order one of your brainwashed foes to eat their gun, you can order them to 'throw' their grenade a few centimeters away from them.
  • XCOM: Chimera Squad: You can order a hacked killer robot to explode. By punching itself in the head.

Visual Novels

• This happens twice accidentally in Doki Doki Literature Club!, in a weird sort of way. An entity with Medium Awareness and a limited ability to alter the game's contents is trying to manipulate the player's choice of which characters to romance. One thing the entity does is modify some of the characters' personalities, making their negative traits stronger in an effort to drive the player away from them. Unfortunately, with one character suffering from depression and another one having a propensity for Self-Harm, exaggerating their traits to the point of Sanity Slippage drives both of these two to kill themselves, one crying and the other laughing.

Web Animation

• In the Happy Tree Friends episode "Tongue In Cheek", this happens to Sniffles in the most horrifying way possible.

Webcomics

• Attempted in Black Rose by a Handwaver on invading soldiers in issue one. A good portion of them nearly did it but the attempt failed after the Handwaver was shot by a soldier who maintained control of their mind.
• In Charby the Vampirate, Kavonn threatens a gun-toting character by making him turn his gun on himself.
• Dominic Deegan had a particularly nasty version. A cult called the Chosen had set themselves up within a town and placed a curse on the entire townsfolk as well as some travellers with the goal to make as many people sacrifice themselves by hanging from a tree. Even the main characters very nearly got killed as a result, if not for Dominic's necromancer brother killing everyone involved.
• Girl Genius:
  • Other!Agatha stumbles across her Dragon Vrin, shackled to a post. Deciding that she can't let Vrin be captured, Agatha simply says "Vrin, die." Which she promptly does, off-panel, with a choked gurgle.
  • A popular theory is that the voice is also what killed Omar von Zinzer, rather than Agatha's locket. Made worse by the fact that he was told to die "slowly, like the rats you are!"
• Homestuck has resident psychic psychopath Vriska force Tavros to jump off a cliff. Do you want to flyyyyyyyy, Pupa? She also forces Terezi to stare at the sun until she goes blind.
  • A straighter example would be the numerous trolls Vriska mind controls off a plank, into the mouth of her hungry Giant Spider of a mother. Or the numerous ghosts she forces to serve as bait for the Big Bad while she tries to find a way to defeat him.
• In Last Res0rt the Celeste are capable of using Tone to kill. As seen when Chairman Viage wipes out the Star Org unit assigned for his "protection". Only for them to rise as zombies.
• MS Paint Adventures has the stump, across multiple adventures. A peculiar aura of misery surrounds it. There seems to be some powerful cosmic magnetism toward suicide that surrounds the stump.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Redcloak commands a group of undead to kill each other once they have Outlived Their Usefulness.
  • A vampire uses his hypnotic gaze to attempt to make Belkar leap off the airship they're both travelling on.
• In Shadowgirls, Max was once ordered to "put that gun against your head and pull the trigger until it goes click". Fortunately, her arm has a mind of its own.
• Spinnerette gives us Roberta Lee, a voodoo-skilled Neo-Confederate, attempting this on the Nazi Super-Soldier Maus while taunting him with "Maus, why don't you follow your leader's example?" Maus was saved by his boss, Nazi magic user Kugelblitz, who, true to his name, fried the gun with lightning.
• Unholy Blood: When cornered, the vampire Sahan threatens to force a crowd of hundreds of people to rip their own hearts out if the heroine Hayan does not surrender to him.
• Unknown Lands: The Unknown Champion is introduced forcing her attackers to kill themselves and each other.
• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic: Testing out his new rings of power, Lewie the Lich orders an orc to kill himself in his name. The orc promptly stabs himself.

Websites

• SCP Foundation: SCP-2128, also known as the Liars' Cradle, will fatally incinerate anybody who tells a lie while inside it... most of the time. When someone tried to invoke a Logic Bomb by saying "The Liars' Cradle is going to inflict physical harm upon me right now", the subject wasn't incinerated, but instead mysteriously broke into tears and committed suicide as soon as they exited the Cradle.

Web Videos

• In Critical Role, during the battle at Fort Daxio, Xanthas tries to order Vex to walk off the ledge of a tower. While still controlled, she does walk off the edge, but lands on her flying broom because he didn't tell her not to use the broom.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • In "Mortal Folly", the Lich manages to mind-control Finn when his magical amulet falls out, and tries to compel him to walk into his well (which would likely turn him into something undead and evil, if not just kill him). Fortunately, he's able to resist when the Lich accidentally reminds him of The Power of L-L-Liking Someone a Whole Lot.
  • In "Normal Man", Finn gets stuck with a thorn from a mind-controlling plant that nearly causes him to stab himself, but fortunately, Jake removes the thorn and frees Finn from its influence.
• In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Unremarkable Voyage", a shrunken Carl, Frylock, and Meatwad take control of the nerves in Shake's head where he would have a brain and make him gorily kill himself.
• Batman Beyond:
  • Spellbinder uses his illusions to trick Batman into what would have been a fatal fall. Fortunately, Bruce is remote-monitoring and manages to snap him out of it in time.
  • In "Shriek", the eponymous villain tries a technology-based variant on Bruce using a hidden speaker, trying to trick him into thinking a voice in his head is driving him to jump out of the window. Bruce knows the voice isn't really in his head, though, because "Bruce" isn't the name he uses to refer to himself in his own mind.
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Mad as a Hatter", the Mad Hatter tells two thugs who attempt to mug him to "go jump in the river". Since it's a kid's cartoon, Batman catches them right before they jump off the bridge, but it still counts as an attempt.
• Attempted in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Mayhem of the Music Meister!" when The Music Meister compels his brainwashed slaves into dancing into a rocket ship's blast. Batman, who's not affected, has to stop them, allowing the villain to make his getaway (which was his real plan all along).
  And now that Batman's been delayed, your usefulness has passed
  A distraction is what I need, so kick into that blast!
• In the Ben 10: Ultimate Alien episode "Where the Magic Happens", a voice almost convinces Charmcaster to walk off a cliff before Gwen snaps her out of it.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002): In "Siren's Song", Evil-Lyn manages to take control of He-Man, then orders him to jump into lava. He-Man fights it every step of the way, then before he can jump, Ram Man tackles her, breaking the spell.
• In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Alive!", Lex Luthor turns Gorilla Grodd's own mind control powers against him, then forces him to walk into the airlock. Lex then turns off the mind control so Grodd knows just how screwed he is before opening the airlock.
• Korgoth of Barbaria: The dark wizard Specules uses his Mind-Control Eyes to make one Red Shirt jump to his death.
• ReBoot: Daemon's ultimate plan is to do this to the entire Net, subsuming everybody with her Psychic Powers and ordering them all to self-destruct as a twisted Mercy Kill.
• In Rick and Morty, Fart accomplishes this by convincing one of the gear cops trying to arrest him and the titular crew that his wife was cheating on him using visions, causing a huge pile-up that destroys an entire army, all to Fart's David Bowie-esque Leitmotif.
• In the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode "Bedlam in the Big Top", the Ghost Clown attempts this on Shaggy and Scooby after hypnotizing them on separate occasions, only to be foiled both times. He makes Scooby walk across a tightrope and then snaps him out of the trance when he's halfway across, but Shaggy is able to find something to cushion his fall. He turns Shaggy into a lion tamer and plans to snap him out of the trance and leave him defenseless, but Scooby is able to open the cage so he can escape.
  Ghost Clown: When I blow this whistle, you won't be a lion tamer. Just food for a hungry lion! [Evil Laugh]
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • "The Siege of Lothal": During Ezra's first encounter with Darth Vader, the latter attempts to Force-manipulate the former into decapitating himself with his own lightsaber. Ezra only survives because the Sith Lord is forced to stop when Kanan tries to attack him from behind.
  • "Steps into Shadow": Ezra himself gives a demonstration of his new grasp of the Force by making an Imperial AT-DP pilot blast several stormtroopers, then walk off the edge of a platform. His friends are understandably disturbed.
    Sabine: When did Kanan teach you that?
    Ezra: [Kubrick Stare] He didn't.
• Star Wars Resistance: In the Grand Finale, Kylo threatens to kill Tierny and Pyre if they fail to apprehend the heroes again. To prove that he means it, he uses the Force to make them pull their blasters on each other. Tierny and Pyre get the message.
• The Venture Bros.:
  • The Intangible Fancy does this in "The Revenge Society".
  • The Monarch attempts to do this to Dr. Venture through a bizarre psyche-invading machine, but ultimately fails; Doc's mind is already so screwed up that something like that barely registers as a migraine to him.
• In Young Justice (2010), Queen Bee threatens to make Garfield "damage himself" to keep M'gann in line. The tie-in comic reveals that she killed Gar's mother, Marie, by compelling her to drive her car off a cliff.

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