5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) is a series of flash games released on the [adult swim] website across the late 2000s and early 2010s. It began in 2007 with the original first installment of the same title, which proved to be popular enough to be uploaded to other flash game websites and start the series with the release of three direct sequels, closing in 2011 with a reboot of the first game titled 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself): Reloaded.
The first game's plot goes like this: You play as a white-collar worker who gets an e-mail that mentions an upcoming meeting within five minutes... and decides to kill himself rather than attend. Later games have different settings and reasons for suicide.
List of games:
- 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) (2007)
- 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) 2 (2008)
- 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself): Airport Edition (2009)
- 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself): Wedding Day (2010)
- 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself): Reloaded (2011)
The Five Minutes to Kill Yourself games provide examples of:
- Animals Hate Him: Any animals you come across are willing to hurt you on your way to dying.
- Apathetic Citizens: None of the people around the character who aren't harmful or whom they can't interact with really care or are suspicious about the fact that they're harming themselves or getting into dangerous situations by their will.
- Black Bead Eyes: Most of the characters have these.
- Character Customization: You get to customize your character at the beginning of each game, although it's mostly limited to color palettes, with shaped-based traits like outfits only changing between games. For Wedding Day, you customize both the character you'll play as and the spouse they're set to marry.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: It's possible to die by simply spamming a bunch of acts with little damage, although the games tend to discourage doing such a thing, due to it usually taking a longer time to cause your death than acts with more damage and giving lower score results.
- Driven to Suicide: As the title says, the goal of each game is to kill yourself before your character attends a certain event, which they consider to be terrible on their part, as seen in the various game overs.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- In the first two games, any successful acts of self-harm play out as in-game character animations. Later games make use of cutscenes for the acts instead.
- Also in the first two games, your character could only be a male person. From Airport Edition onwards, you can choose your character's gender between male and female.
- Family Disunion: The motivation of the protagonist of 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) 2 to kill themselves is to avoid attending a meeting with their family.
- Fat Bastard: There are several obese people throughout the games who are willing to hurt you, be it intentionally or unintentionally.
- Heaven: Once your character dies, they go to a rather minimalistic version of Heaven in which they just walk across a cloudy field.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: From 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself) 2 onwards, you can write whatever name you want for your character. In an unusual case, the game does allow you to leave your character with an empty name.
- Made of Iron: It takes a lot to kill the player character in every game.
- Man on Fire: Various interactable objects in the series involve the player character using them to burn themselves.
- The Many Deaths of You: There are many ways to harm yourself or commit suicide.
- Monster Clown: One of these is among the means you can use to injure your character in the first game, Airport Edition and Reloaded.
- No Full Name Given: In contrast to the following games, which use Hello, [Insert Name Here] instead, the protagonist of the first game receives the default first name of "Stan" without a middle name or surname.
- No Mouth: None of the characters are depicted with mouths.
- The Noseless: Every character who doesn't wear nose-based accessories (such as the Monster Clowns) have no noses under the game's art style.
- Running Time in the Title: True to the title's word, you have five minutes to kill yourself.
- Shows Damage: As your character loses health, they become visibly soaked in blood, as well as covered in burn marks if you choose acts involving fire.
- "Stuck at the Airport" Plot: The setting of Airport Edition, as well as the player character's reason for suicide.
- Timed Mission: As mentioned in the title, you get a time limit of five minutes in every game.
- Trophy Violence: In the first game and Reloaded, your character can use a trophy to hit themselves in the head.
- Urine Trouble:
- One of the things you can do in the first game and Reloaded is urinating on a pile with electronic equipment, which gets your character electrocuted.
- Airport Edition does the same via urinating on a fountain with an angel sculpture. This prompts said sculpture to shoot urine-mixed water at your character, sending them to a distance and making them lose health once they hit the floor.
- White Collar Worker: The player character of the first game and Reloaded is this.
- Worst Wedding Ever: Wedding Day is about a soon-to-be-married couple who seek to separate just before their wedding begins via having one of the partners kill themselves, due to fear that the wedding might be terrible anyway, even though their relationship has been healthy until then.
