Neck Snap / Video Games

• 7 Days a Skeptic, game two of the Chzo Mythos. Particularly noteworthy for being the absolute sickest breaking sound (and therefore most effective breaking sequence in recent memory) despite the King's Quest-like graphics. Also shows up in 6 Days a Sacrifice when the tall man kills the clones.
• In Among Us, this is one of the possible death animations when an Impostor kills a crewmate. The amount of strength needed is justified, since the Impostors are after all shapeshifting aliens.
• In Anarchy Reigns, the Rin sisters can do this if they grapple someone from behind. They jump onto the enemy's shoulders and give the necks a good cracking. However, it's generally not lethal unless said enemy has little health at that point.
• In the opening cinematic of Assassin's Creed: Revelations, the protagonist Ezio snaps a soldier's neck like a twig. Considering that he's a trained killer and pretty darn buff, it's reasonably believable.
  • Not to mention that Ezio can pull this off as an unarmed execution move in Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
• The Big Bad of Baldur's Gate, Sarevok, shows his villain credentials in the opening when he uses his monstrous strength to crush an adult man's neck one-handed.
• Bayonetta: Father Balder No Sells Gomorrah's attack by snapping its neck - despite Gomorrah being a Kaiju.
• The playable Red Hood in Batman: Arkham Knight both plays this straight and subverts it. One of his stealth takedowns from behind just quickly snaps his opponent's neck. However, corner takedown victims lose their balance, giving Red Hood enough leverage for a more powerful snap.
• Bioshock Infinite. Booker can do this to human opponents with the Skyhook device. The game has him do a Neck Lift with the Skyhook on them first.
• Borderlands: The General Knoxx DLC features friendly NPC Athena who is introduced performing one of these on a random Mook, complete with "Oh Snap!" Flavor Text.
• The special move of Keneth from Crisis Beat have him leaping on mooks or bosses and snapping their necks with his legs, accompanied by a Sickening "Crunch!" It doesn't kill them outright, but it does remove a HUGE chunk of life... and if the victim's life is really low when it happens, then yes, it does kill them outright.
• This, along with several other special unarmed attacks, can be used to execute prison guards in The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. What's more, is that you can grab them from the front and do it.
• In Crysis 2 one of the Back Stab animations is this. Alcatraz is using Powered Armor that gives Super-Strength.
• This is one of the ways to neutralize an enemy opponent in Cyberpunk 2077. This method is done by sneaking up from behind the victim without alerting them to your presence by staying out of their field of vision and slowly walking up to them without making enough noise, then snapping their neck to kill them instantly after getting near enough to prompt the action. Interestingly, a non-lethal version of the same method also exists in which your character simply knocks the victim out into unconsciousness with whatever weapon your player character is holding or utilizing an unarmed trick if you don't equip a weapon. However, you still have to move their corpses away from plain sight of their allies, otherwise they will be alerted to your killings and the stealth option will be rendered useless, forcing you to improvise your plans. It is a potentially very useful method of taking out certain enemies such as cyberpsychos but this is rather difficult to do without buying and utilizing certain cybernetic implants and quickhacks. Certain bosses, such as Adam Smasher, however, will not allow you the opportunity to perform this method on them so be prepared to settle things the old fashioned way.
• Two different neck snaps are present as finishing moves in darkSector. One is fairly pedestrian, the other is an unusual and especially brutal variant where Hayden bends an enemy over backward, places it in an upside-down headlock, and lifts up sharply, breaking the neck.
• In Deus Ex: Human Revolution Adam can both do a "normal" snap and a fancy version where he grabs an enemy by the face and spins his mechanical hand a full 360 around the joint. He is a cyborg after all. And then there's the version he can do from the opposite side of a concrete wall.
• Dragon Age
  • In the original game, Riordan does this to a mook to escape from a dungeon cell when you first meet him.
  • In Dragon Age II, Fenris does this first to a mook whom he was questioning after pinning him to the ground. Later he crushes Denarius' neck effortlessly with one hand after lifting him off the ground by it. It's justified; his tattoos grant him magical combat boosts.
• One of the most popular Do-It-Yourself modding projects in Dwarf Fortress is to add these as a move in wrestling. It's as simple as going to the anatomy files, finding the neck, and adding the [JOINT] tag. From then on, you can snap a neck like it was an elbow or knee. Realistically enough, this isn't quite an instant kill but still cripples instantly, while the actual kill is done by the ensuing asphyxiation.
  • The game has since been updated to allow blunt attacks to pull nearby joints when attacking a body part. A good blow to the head will not only injure the head itself but will also pull the neck, possibly with enough force to sever the upper spine. This is assuming the head itself isn't destroyed by the attack.
• The third Endless Nightmare game, Shrine, grants you a Tech Glove instead of knives and hammers like the other games. As such, you can execute a special Finishing Move on downed enemies by wrangling their necks.
• In Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, one of Monkey's animations for taking down a turret is identical to a Neck Snap, but done to the turret's barrel.
• In Fable III, one of the fancy counter animations when using a sword has you do a slo-mo forward flip over them. You snap their neck on the way over.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, there is a cutscene exclusive to Dimitri's route whereupon after finding out that Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, he charges forward and fights a bunch of soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. In his rage, he manages to break one soldier's neck with one hand.
• In Gears of War 2, characters dispose of their human shields by doing this.
  • In the third game, the execution move for the Sawed-Off Shotgun has the player opening the loading catch, wrapping around the enemy's neck, and giving it a sharp twist, resulting in a broken neck accompanied by a spray of blood.
• The Godfather: The Game
  • One of the execution styles involves a neck snap from the front on a weakened opponent. Another involves a snap after choking the guy to death.
  • The sequel retains the snap-after-choking, as well as an upgrade that replaces the garotte stealth kill, and is much faster. Oddly enough, though, it is executed by grabbing the victim with your garrote wire. For some reason, your character strangles them with the wire for a second or so, complete with distressed gurgling from the victim, then snaps their necks to kill them quicker.
• Subverted in God Hand. The Cobra Twist Action Command looks like one of these, but not only does Gene need several tugs to do it, it's not even fatal.
• Done several times by Kratos in the God of War series. Most notably in 2018 sequel where he kills Baldur this way, both when he's utterly indestructible and thus resurrects shortly after and at the end, where that spell is broken but it's become clear he's too far gone.
• In the Halo games from Halo: Reach onward, there are assassination animations that utilize this trope against three enemies: the Grunts (in which the Spartan simply cups its head and twists), the Elites (the Spartan leaps on its back, grabs its snout and pulls), and other Spartans (the Spartan knocks his target on his/ her stomach, leans down, and casually twists the head). Fully justified by the Powered Armor they wear.
• In Headhunter, protagonist Jack Wade does a swift, one-handed Neck Snap when doing a stealth kill from behind. He must have some impressive arm strength.
• In Heavenly Sword, King Bohan does this to Whiptail.
• In Hitman: Absolution and Hitman (2016), 47 can snap his targets' necks if he needs them dead and has no weapons equipped. Note that the kill is automatic upon grappling an assassination target in Absolution.
• Horizon Forbidden West: One of Aloy's new Silent Strike animations for killing human targets is a neck snap. Noteably, she rolls over the target's back, then throws them over her shoulder and uses the momentum of their body to break their neck rather than trying to rely on her own strength for it.
• In ...Iru!, this is how one of the students is killed by her Doppleganger.
• In one early cutscene in Jade Empire, Master Li snaps a Lotus Assassin's neck by karate chopping it. It should be noted that his strength was sufficient to shatter a ship with a punch, so breaking someone's neck is really to be expected.
• In The King of Fighters '98 Rugal (non-Omega) has the "Dead End Screamer" which in its SDM/MAX version starts with him snapping the opponent's neck with his feet.
• At the end of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Zant apparently becomes disillusioned with Ganon, knowing that he's not a god after all, and snaps his own neck killing both himself and Ganon.
• Lethal Company: The Bracken will kill you in this manner after stalking you unnoticed for long enough or if you bump into it, attack it, or aggravate it by staring at it. After doing so it drags your corpse away, frequently resulting in teams preoccupied by some task suddenly hearing a muffled cry and then turning to see a trail of blood and a pile of dropped gear where one of their co-workers used to be, without ever having seen what happened.
• Like a Dragon:
  • In Yakuza 0, Goro Majima possesses a Heat Action known as "the Essence of Choking" that makes him sneak up behind an opponent and put them in a chokehold, with a bone-breaking sound effect. The trope is subverted, as on lower-level opponents it's an instant KO, but the bosses can shrug it off, and nobody actually dies from it.
  • In Yakuza 4, Kiryu and Tanimura can both learn the Heat Action "Essence of Hurling", which has them grab an opponent in a guillotine choke and use the position to snap their neck before following into a piledriver. Tanimura also has "Essence of Combos I", where he uses a hook kick to grapple an opponent to the ground with his thigh wrapped around their neck, which he then twists to snap their neck with a Sickening "Crunch!". Of course, since this is the Like A Dragon series, both moves are non-lethal.
• Mass Effect
  • Thane Krios of Mass Effect 2 demonstrates this on one of his target's guards when you first encounter him. In fact, according to the Shadow Broker's dossier on him, it's his preferred assassination technique on any species including the krogan, who have necks like tree trunks. He needs a "running leaping spinning neck-snap" to get up enough momentum for that last one. However, half the time he'll just plant a bomb instead.
  • Shepard can perform one on a mouthy mercenary captain if a Renegade interrupt is taken during Miranda's loyalty mission. Shepard is fortunately both a trained combatant and a cyborg.
  • Basically the first thing you see Samara do on her recruitment mission is snapping the neck of an Eclipse merc with her Combat Stilettos.
• The Matrix: Path of Neo has this in some versions, most notably if the enemy is near death and Neo does his run up the chest, then kick in the head move which kills the guy. Even with modding, a blow to the neck can still have this effect.
• In the original Metal Gear Solid, the quietest way to kill guards after you have snuck up on them is to snap their necks.
  • This is given a nod in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where it's one of Snake's throws.
• Midnight Fight Express: A finisher Babyface can uses when approaching a stunned enemy from behind or on one that's lying on the floor. He also employs it on an unwary mook at the intro cutscene for the Russian Casino level.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • This is how Shao Kahn kills Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat Annihilation and Kung Lao in Mortal Kombat 9.
  • Speaking of Mortal Kombat, snapping your opponent's neck is just one of the ways to finish off a "Kreate-A-Fatality" in Mortal Kombat Armageddon.
  • Havik can snap his own neck. To regenerate health. He is a freakish undead contortionist thing, so it makes sense. Kinda...
  • In the opening sequence of the Deadly Alliance, this is how Shang Tsung kills Liu Kang.
  • This is actually a rather popular way of finishing an opponent in the series; Hotaru and Tanya both twist an opponent's neck past the point where their head should even be attached (Hotaru with his bare hands, Tanya with her Murderous Thighs) while Quan Chi has a rather lame neck-stretching move in Deadly Alliance, and Scorpion himself has this as his Hara-Kiri and as the final blow for one of his fatalities in Deception. It's also starting to become customary to break a person's neck before ripping it off Sub-Zero style (or breaking the appropriate bones before dismembering them, if not specifically going for the head)
  • Mortal Kombat 4 also has several non-lethal neck snappers. Tanya, Sonya, and Reptile all have a "bone breaker" move that makes them twist the opponent's neck 180 degrees before it snaps back into place.
  • Quan Chi has this as part of his X-Ray move in Mortal Kombat 9, but it's especially notable in that he's controlling the opponent, meaning he's making them snap their own neck.
  • The culmination of Jax's second fatality in Mortal Kombat X ends with a Neck Snap...but not after he already ripped out his opponent's ribs and jammed them into their temple.
  • Also from X, one of the Faction Kills you can get is making the opponent gets possessed by a black cloud and snap their own neck, similar to Quan Chi did in the past game. Appropriately, you can only get this one if you're a member of the Brotherhood of Shadows.
  • One of Kano's Brutalities in Mortal Kombat 11 has him snap the opponent's neck while strangling them.
  • Also in 11, Nightwolf in one of his Fatalities completely twists the opponent's neck 180 degrees, yet somehow they're alive before being torn apart by his bear spirit.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, you can cut the githyanki high commander's post-defeat ranting short by breaking her neck.
• In Nidhogg, you can score a kill on a downed opponent this way if you attack them while standing near their head.
• Oni:
  • Konoko does this in one of her more elaborate attacks. It involves running up to your opponent frontally, simultaneously grabbing them by the neck, jumping in the air, and using your momentum to do a 360° spin kick, with the guy's neck as a pivot axis. Since his body only goes about 180°, you get rewarded with a satisfying crack. Did I mention you can use it to knock down multiple opponents if they are clustered together?
  • Muro (who can be controlled in certain levels with a cheat code) plays this one straight if you sneak up behind an opponent and use the default grapple.
• In People Playground, you can break a character's neck by grabbing, then quickly rotating it. They will die without spilling any blood.
• Early on in Planescape: Torment, if your Dexterity score is high enough, you have the option to use this on anyone who stops you while trying to escape from the Mortuary. Things go better for you if you just bluff your way through, though.
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within lets you do this in combat if you only have one weapon, usually vaulting over the enemy, stunning it in the process and strangling it. If it's already critically wounded, you then disarm it and execute it Anakin-style with both your and its own weapon — otherwise, you just take a long, long time twisting its neck which potentially makes you vulnerable to its friends.
• The protagonists in both [PROTOTYPE] games can do this as stealth kills. Heller can even do it by walking up to them and just shoving their head back by the chin. This is justified given both characters are strong enough to throw tanks around.
• Quantum Replica: One of the stealth kills the Player Character can perform is by grabbing the enemy's head and twisting it until his neck breaks.
• Resident Evil:
  • In one of the first cutscenes in Resident Evil 4, Leon demonstrates his new badass upgrade by breaking a villager's neck, using only his foot and the mook's own weight (at least if you hit the buttons on time). But don't take our word for it.
  • In the mercenaries mini-game, HUNK's special move is the neck breaker...But it's quite noisy this time. Although it kills the target instantly, the mook will still shout out or sigh; on top of that, they'll bleed out of their mouths. Not sure whether that makes it more or less realistic.
  • When Chris or Jill performs a neck break-in Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, they simply fall down silently. In Chris's case, they don't even try to resist and will simply stand straight up with their arms to their sides when grabbed, but that's because they've been stunned by a solid hit beforehand.
  • In Resident Evil 5, Wesker can perform a 180-degree neck snap on Chris mid-acrobatic leap if the player misses Press X to Not Die.
  • Several enemies will do this to Leon if he misses a cutscene button prompt, specifically Mendez and U3. Mendez does it with one hand, although right before that he bends heavy steel rods together and throws you twenty feet, so it's not too surprising.
  • Ashley gets her own well deserved one if the player can't escape the mook's grasp in time while playing as her.
• In the Fight Club activity inside Saints Row 2, you must finish off your opponents in this way. It is portrayed as being rather difficult though, as it will later involve a lot of Button Mashing to kill, and it is done in a full rear chokehold like in Metal Gear Solid. This is also how human shields are disposed of when unarmed or equipped with a rocket launcher.
  • In the sequel Saints Row: The Third Killbane, leader of the rival gang The Luchadores, does a one-handed version to Kiki DeWynter after she provokes him by calling him by his real name.
  • In Third, this is an optional way of disposing of human shields.
  • Played straight in the optional "Kill Killbane" ending in Third, which is basically an interactive cutscene (his neck's a-breakin' regardless of what happens). Regardless of the type of protagonist design (male, female, skinny, Amazon) it takes some effort to break the neck, and it's rendered somewhat realistic by being done as a legitimate wrestling hold, but one was taken to a lethal end.
• Your player character, Jason's first kill in Shadow Guardian is a distracted mook he kills by wringing the neck. During gameplay Jason can execute enemies from close range by grabbing them, at which point he finish them off with a twist to the necks.
• In Shinobido, this is one of the more popular ways to kill someone with a stealth kill attack. Usually performed in midair (Goh will use his arms, Kinu her legs) or while hanging from a cliff (drag the victim down and break his/her neck). The other ways are usually bloodier (slicing throats and impaling with extreme prejudice).
• Sophitia from Soul Calibur does it with her thighs. To be more specific, she jumps on the opponent's face crotch-first, and gives a sharp hip-twist, with the trademark crunchy noise, though it's a rather weak attack.
• Danette from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters constantly threatens to snap people's necks. When she actually does so, at one point, she manages to surprise Gig, who had long since written it off as mere boasting.
• Despite putting guards in a headlock being his preferred way of dealing with them, it took until Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory for Sam Fisher to learn this trick, as the lethal variant on his new 'death from above' attacks.
• Street Fighter
  • In Street Fighter IV, Cammy caps off Gyro Drive Smasher, one of her Ultra Attacks, with one of these.
  • As does Ibuki with her aptly named "Neck Breaker", which becomes a ''triple'' Neck Break when used in EX mode. in V her back throw became this.
• In Styx: Master of Shadows, Neck snapping is Styx's preferred method of muffled killing when striking from behind. Though this is generally a lot quieter then Styx simply jamming a knife into someone's chest and let them scream (Styx covers his victim's mouth when readying a Neck Snap), the Sickening "Crunch!" of his victim's neck-snapping will still draw the attention of nearby enemies.
• In Super Paper Mario, whenever Mimi transforms into her true spider-like, Rubee-pooping form, she snaps her neck. With an audible sound effect. And it rotates a full 180, turning her head upside down. What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?
• Available as a melee attack in the reboot of Syndicate. You are an advanced cyborg, after all.
• Syphon Filter:
  • Later games in the franchise give Gabe and other characters the ability to do this if they attack mooks from behind with nothing equipped.
  • Gary Stoneman in Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain uses this as a stealth assassination attack, and the main player character can learn it as well.
• Tales from the Borderlands, Sasha does this to one bandit, and Rhys does it to another...but completely fails.
  Bandit: Oh, Eric? Aw, is that you? Wait wait wait, what is this? Is this real or is this—is this a joke?
  Rhys: [on the bandit's back, still struggling] Oh this is real real! [Sasha stands up and giving a smirk look at Rhys]
  Bandit: Wait, wait wait wait, that's not Eric!
  Rhys: No it's not Eric. It's your—doom! Stop squirming!
  Sasha: You need some help over there? It looks like you're struggling a bit. I already took out mine so...I'm not really doing anything.
  Bandit: Nah, nah, nah, don't help him! Come on, let him do it himself! If he can!
  Rhys: Shut up!
  Sasha: Nah, I think he's right. You should handle it yourself.
• Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Hurricane Polimar's level 3 Hyper Combo caps off with him breaking the prone opponent's neck with a slight twist of his foot. It does quite a bit of damage, too.
• In the Team Fortress 2 Supplemental Material video "Meet the Spy", the Red Spy breaks the Blue Medic's neck with a karate chop.
  • The supplemental comics reveal Soldier seems to be a fan of the technique, trying to snap a messenger's neck through the door, and successfully killing a lawyer, Tom Jones and a bear with it. He has even fixed necks he snapped by mistake with the same technique. At one point Soldier even snaps someone's neck by punching them so hard their head twists from the excessive force.
    Soldier: Well, I'm calling a surprise witness: My hands! And they will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your lawyer's neck is guilty! Of being broken! HUTTAH!
    NECK SNAP!
• A chokehold and neck snap are elements of one of Heihachi's basic throws in the Tekken series. However, as disgusting as it looks, opponents do not immediately die from it. Other characters in the series whose moves include neck snaps are Feng, Christie, Lili, and Zafina. King has one as the start of one of his most powerful combination throws, which also includes a suplex, powerbomb, and piledriver.
• One of the many ways of killing your enemies in Tenchu.
• In Splinter Cell: Double Agent, the female spy can grab a soldier from behind, holding his head firmly against her left shoulder by pressing his cheek with her right hand. Being in control of him, she can move for a few moments to take care of him silently. When she has decided, she can break his neck instantly by pressing his head against her shoulder with her right hand. Then, the soldier dies instantly with his neck twisted 360 degrees.
• A difficult but high-scoring move in Tori Bash involves holding your opponent's head somewhere in the vicinity of your elbow and giving a good, hard twist. On 'softer' game modes, the neck joint will break and be rendered useless. On any game mode which involves dismemberment (including the default setting), it's a good way to messily decapitate someone.
• Trepang2: You can execute the grabbed enemy with this method. It also has a small chance to decapitate the enemy.
• Seen A LOT in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Whenever you sneak up on an enemy with a melee attack, expect to see some necks getting broken, and a very satisfying snap. In the online co-op modes, there are exclusive enemies that sneak up behind you, grab your neck, and attempt to snap it; if your buddies don't take him out in time...well, hope you've gotten used to hearing that snapping sound so much. The Big Bad can also kill you in this manner during the final showdown.
  • Also given a slight nod to realism, as when Nate breaks an opponent's neck, he's almost always putting his full body weight into the effort, either getting them on the ground first to abuse his leverage, or otherwise maneuvering them into a position in which he can exert a lot of pressure. They still die silently, though.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: If you perform a stealth kill while unarmed, you snap the victim's neck from behind. Justified by the fact that vampires are extremely strong.
• Warframe does this with a variety of melee weapons: staff users throw the bar across a humanoid opponent's neck and violently wrench it to one side, whip users coil the length of the whip around a victim's neck and pull down, and gauntlet users just straight up grab the head and twist. The end result is always a rather loud crack and bonus experience for stealth kills.
• In The Warriors, some of the bigger and stronger warriors will use this as their sneak attack if you come up behind an enemy from out of the shadows. The smaller guys usually stick to the karate chop to the neck routine.
• In a cutscene from The Witcher, Geralt gets one of these on a Salamandra mook. Bonus points for breaking his neck while he's pissing in an alley.
• In World of Warcraft, High King Maulgar did this to the previous High King as a show of his strength, killing him and becoming the ruler of Outland's ogres under Gruul.

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