Out with a Bang

O'Grady, he was eighty, though his bride was just a pup,

He died upon the honeymoon when she got his Irish up
—Da Vinci's Notebook, Another Irish Drinking Song

A character having a heart attack and dying during sex, to the embarrassment and mortification of his or her still-living partner. Generally used in comedy (because, unless it's played for laughs, there's nothing pleasant for the person who was with that character at the time). Sometimes they also Go Out with a Smile.

Alternatively, someone may be killed through other means during sex. If it's murder, then the killer may do it to get their jollies, or because that's when their victim's defenses are completely down.

Quite literal Death by Sex. The opposite would be Mate or Die.

Not to be confused with a person blowing themselves up, or with people deciding to make their demise a memorable one.

Truth in Television for some lucky people. Hey, if you've gotta go... That said, No real life examples, please; All The Tropes does not care to squick its readers.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples of Out with a Bang include:

Anime and Manga

  • In the Battle Royale manga, Mitsuko Souma forces herself on already-dying Yuichiro Takiguchi, because she thinks it will "make him better." She stabs him to death out of frustration when it doesn't. This is not played for humor. Not at all.
  • In Blood Plus, Diva's rape of Riku is implied to have either directly caused his death (through the... fluid transference) or directly preceded her killing him by giving him her blood.
  • In episode 2 of Kaiba, a woman has intense sex with Kaiba's body, into which she has copied her memories. The ominously heightening experience, coupled with thoughts of her father, results in an explosion, covering the entire room with what appears to be green blood.
  • Urotsukidouji.
    • The explanation may cause immense amounts of Squick, so it will be in spoiler tags. A woman is being raped, and the Naughty Tentacles demon that is currently penetrating her engorges the tentacles to the point where she is ripped apart graphically. Such things happen often in the darker tentacle-themed hentai movies. One movie I never saw in its entirety included a scene where the act of ejaculating into the woman's womb causes her to explode.
      • The movie was the first Demon Beast Invasion hentai anime, and was actually the first sex scene, the first scene full stop!
      • That was probably La Blue Girl episode in which the main character's demon father executes the female demon that was trying to assassinate him.
      • This also happens in Urotsukidouji, with a nurse. He then goes on to absorb the living flesh of everyone else there, so she might have been the lucky one....
    • Mahou Shoujo Ai 3/ Sexy Magical Girl 3 does something similar with a metal pole which is almost as wide as she is and is thrust in so deep it begins to stick out of her belly, and almost kills her if not for her sudden berserk rage. In the same anime, it happens for real with a minor character, although only somewhat as she is impaled vaginally through the entire front of her body to become the vessel for one of the villains, who in the next episode bursts out of her pregnant-looking belly. Why yes, it is a rather dark series (post ep. 3 anyway). Why do you ask?
      • And the much darker (albeit with a nonsensical plot) movie Dark Love/ Kuro Ai averts this, by having the girls in scenes where real girls couldn't possibly survive coming out without so much as a scratch (in fact enjoying it ecstatically all the while.)
    • After being molested by a water nymph in the second episode of Dragon Pink the nymph turns into water and enters a girl through her privates... and then literally invokes the trope to reform. Implied to be completely orgasmic for both parties. In the third episode is a Japanese-styled lamia who rapes the catgirl lead with a snake/blowfish hybrid. She being a catgirl and made of sterner stuff like all typical catgirls, manages to survive this however....barely. For all the human girls the lamia kidnaps and rapes this trope more than likely comes into effect, however.
  • In the Ninja Scroll movie, the ninja Kagero is the poison tester for a feudal lord, because her body is immune to poison. Unfortunately, her body is also filled with poison, and thus sex, or even physical contact, with any man will kill him.
    • Subverted in that the antidote to the hero's poisoned state is to have sex with her.
  • In a Shout-Out to the above, Basilisk has Kagerou, a female ninja "blessed" with the ninja skill of having her breath turn into instant-death poison when she's aroused. The results of this are seen a bunch of times, too. You'd think it obvious that raping a ninja lady is not a good idea. Too bad the guy who DOES rape her is... well, immortal.
    • Basilisk also had Okoi, a ninja who pulled her opponents blood out of their bodies via skin contact. Guess what her favorite method of getting close enough is.
  • Similarly yet again, this is the point of the Poison Princesses. Their poison-exporting kingdom uses them to get rid of troublesome political opponents.
  • The Three Sisters in the first Vampire Hunter D novel kills its victims this way. (No, that's not a typo.) They use the demonic power of their hair to consume their victims with pleasure, then they consume the pleasure, then they consume the victims.
  • A PG variant of this appeared in Mahou Sensei Negima, after The World Tree causes Nodoka's request for a kiss from Negi to turn him into a kissing-obsessed Determinator. Asuna is quick to point out that if he actually kissed anyone in that state, they could die due to suffocation. When Negi finally ends up kissing her, she actually faints before the magic wears off and he turns back to normal.
    • And before that, there were the fake Negis, who exploded after kissing a girl.
  • In Afro Samurai, Okikku attempts to invoke this trope on Afro by killing him during the sex with a blade disguised as a hairpin, but she finds out that Good People Have Good Sex and undergoes a Sex Face Turn instead. She is killed soon afterwards by her former bosses for her betrayal after revealing to Afro that she is his childhood friend Otsuru and briefly fighting alongside him.
  • In the second chapter of Franken Fran, Fran heals a crippled girl by making her part insect. When she goes to a love hotel with her new boyfriend after her convalescence is over, she instinctively eats her mate.
  • The very first demon we meet in Berserk takes the form of a beautiful naked woman who lures men into sex with her so that she can transform into her true form and eat them alive. She is killed by Guts in the very first scene of the manga when she tries this on him and gets her brains blown out the back of her head with his Arm Cannon. But during the Eclipse, we get to see this Apostle in action when she eats Corkus alive.


Comic Books

  • The "Little Deaths" storyline of Powers focuses on the police investigation of a philandering Captain Ersatz of Superman, who died at the climax of sex with one of his (many) lovers. In a rather tragic twist on the matter, his secret identity was married and his secret wife, upon being bombarded with the news of how her husband lost his life, killed herself.
  • A gruesome example in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Hyde rapes the Invisible Man Griffin to death.
  • In The Sandman, a minor Running Gag is the thought of going out "between two nubile virgins, crushed by an elephant at the moment of ecstasy." In Death's story in the anthology "Endless Nights", someone actually pulls this off (ringing a bell to cue the elephant, if you were wondering). And lives to tell about it, thanks to some Alchemical Phlebotinum that sticks a small island in a sort of Groundhog Day Loop.
  • In Wanted, the Professor mentions killing his arch-nemesis by giving his lady friend a radioactive condom.
  • Common in the Ramba comic series. Two particularly disturbing incidences (from the same two-part story) are a woman being raped to death by a man with a blade attached to his penis, and a woman being drowned in semen.
  • In the 'possible future' Spider-Man mini-series Reign, it's all but outright stated that Mary Jane dies from radiation poisoning and cancer derived at least partially from exposure to Peter's radioactive semen, thus forming a particularly slow-working example of this trope.
  • The Host of The Darkness dies if they conceive a child, and the Darkness will make sure he does if he ever has sex. There are loopholes, however.
  • Cinder, one of the members of Deathstroke's new "Titans" team of killers, is first seen having sex with one of that sucks out your Life Force. It doesn't help that her current form is based on the protagonist's subconscious ideal of the perfect woman, so he's obsessed with her at the same time as he's trying to track her down and kill her.


Fan Works

"Check me on this, please ... Aphrodite killed at least fifty rebel gods, and incapacitated not less than 250 others for, well, we can assume several days at least, one of whom is Zeus himself ... in a bedroom-Olympiad that ran over two days?"

  • Kuso Miso Technique's Abe Takakazu in this fan video kills a guard by raping him. Which doesn't make much sense until later when it's shown all gay men have lightsaber swords for penises.
  • In this Code Geass fanfic (very soft for something hosted on adultfanfiction.net), Euphie is stupid enough to have sex with Suzaku who is recovering from critical injuries. He barely survives.
  • In the Touhou doujin Though the Wind Cries a man who lost his entire family in the drought blames Suwako for it. He then proceeds to rape her as she is going through quite a severe Heroic BSOD and does no resistance. However during this, something snaps inside of her and she kills the man during the act.


Film

  • In the 1981 Made for TV Movie The Star Maker, Rock Hudson (as Danny Youngblood) drops dead in bed while having sex with a very young (possibly underaged) girl. Ed McMahon (as Lou Parker) makes jokes about it at his funeral.
  • Mentioned in EDtv.
  • Subverted in Clerks, in which the old man Caitlin has sex with (thinking that he is Dante) is already dead.
    • Not so big a subversion as he had died while masturbating.
    • Let's not forget Randall's story of his cousin who broke his neck trying to service himself.
  • Formed the basis of the Black Comedy Liquid Sky, in which a woman learns that anyone who sleeps with her dies, which she then uses to get revenge on several of her enemies.
  • Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye murders a Canadian naval officer by strangling him with her legs during the act. 007 later finds the officer's corpse still wearing a huge smile on its face. To quote Empire Magazine:

"There can't be too many gentlemen of a heterosexual persuasion who, if asked how they'd want to die, wouldn't tick the box marked 'crushed to death between Famke Janssen's thighs'."

  • The Australian film Children Of The Revolution implies that Josef Stalin died in this way.
  • In Species II, most women who sleep with the man infected with alien DNA die from a five minute pregnancy that bursts their stomachs. Curiously, a woman similarly infected died the same way, instead of healing.
  • In the low-budget Clay Pigeons, Vince Vaughn gets revenge on Joaquin Phoenix's behalf by murdering his ex-girlfriend during sex... with Elvis playing in the background.
  • Happened to Goldie Hawn's character's husband at the beginning of the film Private Benjamin.
    • At the funeral: "What were his last words?" "I'm coming."
  • Basic Instinct opens with a woman murdering her partner during sex. With an ice-pick. Ouch.
  • The success of the above seemed to cause a mini-deluge of poor imitations (or rather, considering the original was no classic, poorer imitations) using this very trope. Most notably, the incredibly cheesy Madonna vehicle Body Of Evidence opens with a wealthy man dying from a heart-attack caused by indulging in cocaine and the stress brought about by having extremely passionate sex with his younger girlfriend. The resulting court case asks the penetrating (pun definitely intended) question of whether "sex was the murder weapon". Hint - it was.
  • Done for laughs in the Thanksgiving segment of Grindhouse.
  • In Dave, the president has a stroke while having sex with his secretary. White House staffers then replace the president with a body double.
  • Played with in The Happiness of the Katakuris when one guest, a sumo wrestler who went out with a bang, was lifted to reveal his girlfriend had suffocated underneath him afterward.
  • The political scandal in The Birdcage is the result of a noted politician going Out with a Bang. "Louise, I'm the Vice President of the Coalition for Moral Order! My co-founder has just died in the bed of an underage black whore!"
    • Of course, this was also used in the French original, La Cage aux Folles. The conservative political leader, while noting that most of the national newspapers have fondly eulogized the president, noticed that one liberal newspaper noted that the president's last words were "Remember my little gift."
  • In Se7en, the Lust victim suffers a particularly gruesome form of this, via bladed dildo.
    • More than likely a result writing-wise of the innumerable sexploitation prison movies of the 70s. There's at least four occurrences involving this, or razorblade-in-vagina instead.
  • This is the setup for The Distinguished Gentleman.
  • The Big Bad in Lifeforce is a stunningly beautiful nude space vampire that sucks out your Life Force. It doesn't help that her current form is based on the protagonist's subconscious ideal of the perfect woman, so he's obsessed with her at the same time as he's trying to track her down and kill her.
  • In the porn-spoof Flesh Gordon, the evil emperor Wang fires a Sex Ray at Earth from his planet Porno, causing humans to go mad with lust. People including pilots who should be at the controls of their airplane instead.
  • In an unintentionally funny scene in Malcolm X (not sure if it happened in real life), an old friend of his is shown to have died of a heart attack during sex, while still on top of the girl who's now screaming her head off. To quote a classmate, "It was that good..."
  • In Barbarella, a Mad Scientist tries to kill the title character with the "Excessive Machine" that gives lethally powerful orgasms. Barbarella not only survives, she overloads the machine.
  • The Hidden (1987). While possessing the body of a stripper, Puppeteer Parasite-like alien screws a man to death in the parking lot. It's a bit unclear exactly how this is done.
  • Cherish in Cecil B. Demented. The FBI must have some crack snipers if they can hit someone between the eyes, when they're bouncing up and down like that.
  • A killer prostitute (specifically an assassin targeting a specific victim) in Kiss of the Dragon asks her victim things like "Do you want to go to heaven?" and "Are you ready to go to heaven?" as she's riding him to (his) orgasm. He asks her to take him there, in no frame of mind to notice just how long and sharp the hairpins she's holding are. Mortality ensues.
  • In Internal Affairs II, the capo "Gandhi" gets suffocated with a plastic bag by a "masseuse" when he's expecting a different kind of "happy ending".
  • In Spies Like Us, Chevy Chase even says the line. Perfectly subverted in that everyone in the group of spies and Soviets gets to have sex with someone, and then they figure out how to disarm the nuclear missile and avert world obliteration.
  • In 11:14, Aaron and Cheri are having sex in a cemetery when part of a damaged stone monument breaks off and falls on his head.
  • Invasion Of The Bee Girls
  • In Death Becomes Her, Bruce Willis's character has a "customer" who died this way, big grin and all.
  • In the screwball comedy Sibling Rivalry (1990), The one-night stand of Marjorie Turner (Kirstie Alley) dies during a wild rumpus. This lands Marjorie in a fine mess.
  • The 2011 film The Victim begins with a stripper dying of accidental head trauma while being raped in the woods.
  • In the film Patriot Games, one Irish assassin is a redhead beauty that chokes her target during sex at the beginning of the movie.
  • Very Bad Things: The death of a stripper while having rough sex with one of the guests at a bachelor party is what kicks of the Plethora of Mistakes that drives the plot.
  • Cabin Fever features a moment where the diva is convinced that there is no escape from the deadly disease going around. Rather than actually trying to flee the infected area, like most of her friends, she resigns herself to her fate and decides to spend her last minutes gettin' her freak on. Grabbing the nearest available man, she gets naked in the blink of an eye and rides the dude to her last moaning madness. She was in such a wild mood the guy didn't even have time to put on a rubber. Pitty for him that it turned out she had the disease while they were doing the deed bareback. I guess he went out from a bang.
  • In a German sex horror film called Rossa Venezia, the killings are touched off by a wife coming home to find her hunting-crazy husband in bed with a pretty young thing riding his lap. As quietly as she can, she picks up his elephant gun and lets her have it in the back of her head. Just so happens they were climaxing at the same time too, making this a twofer for the unlucky gal. She then proceeds to flip the hell out and rampage across Germany Mrs. Vorhees style, killing anyone she sees 'doing the deed' or just having done it. For less of a bang but still a bang, she executes a couple of other women with electrified dildos.
    • Ten Little Maidens with input by the same writer also features an electrified DOUBLE dildo as part of an incredibly unrealistic murder ploy. Yeah, that seems to kind of be his thing.


Jokes

  • An old joke, somewhat NSFW: Two people are having sex in the back of a car when the man suddenly has a heart attack whilst still joined with his partner. The woman freaks but can't get him off her; she nevertheless manages to summon help, who get the emergency services to come out. They determine that the only way to get him out of there is to take the roof off the car. The fire department saws the roof off the car and manages to get the guy out, and as the paramedics are taking him away a police officer tries to comfort the woman, who is sobbing hysterically. She says "Don't worry, your husband's going to be fine." The woman replies "Fuck him, he's not my husband. It's my husband's car, though." Ba-dum-tish.
  • Another joke: An ambulance is called early one Sunday morning to the home of an elderly couple, the paramedics find them both naked in bed - him dead, her weeping. When the paramedics ask what happened she explained: "Well my husband had a weak heart, but we both still wanted to have a sex life. So we'd only have sex once a week, timing our thrusts to the sound of the church bells to keep it slow.... if only that fucking ice cream van hadn't come along!"


Literature

  • The Color Purple. Celie finds out at her father's funeral that he died during sex with his new young wife.

Celie: How he die?
New wife: (whispering) On top of me.

  • In the novel Como Agua Para Chocolate or Like Water for Chocolate, Tita's lover Pedro literally dies at the climax, due to a sudden heart attack.
  • In the Book of Amber, the lead character Corwin claims that when he said we wanted to die in bed, what he meant is that he wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while having sex.
  • In Discworld's Making Money, the previous bank owner died during sex with his mistress. Moist later finds a closet full of his sex toys.
  • Roulette, from Wild Cards, has the superhuman ability to fatally poison men having sex with her, and she is manipulated by the Big Bad into being a hitwoman for supers.
  • The first Dresden Files novel, Storm Front, begins with Harry being called in to help investigate the deaths of two people who took going Out with a Bang to the extreme - magic caused both of their hearts to explode messily out of their chests mid-coitus. Justified Trope, as Harry theorizes that the strong emotions during sex amplified the magic attack.
    • Also, White Court vampires (who are succubi and incubi) can kill with sex, especially if they're seriously injured and need to feed intensely. Lord Raith was such a boss White Court that he used to use this power as an opener at parties by kissing someone to death, something that takes most of his kind the duration of sex, so minutes instead of seconds.
    • In White Night, Molly gets to re-experience someone's 'out with a bang moment' thanks to a White Court vampire. Fun stuff! This makes things very awkward for Butters and Dresden, who were watching, expecting pain and despair rather than an orgasm.

Butters: Is she above age?
Dresden: Um, yes.
Butters: Good. Now I don't feel quite so Nabokovian.
[Cue comments about needing to get out more.]

  • A strange aversion in the third Vlad Taltos book, when the main character decides (for no good reason) to have sex with the female assassin who just killed him (he got better, evidently); later, thinking back, he notes that he was wondering whether she would kill him before they finished.
  • In Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series, Lucien Galtier dies, after a long and eventful life, of a heart attack during the act. This event provides the transition to his son-in-law, the new viewpoint character, who helps his wife, Lucien's daughter, deal with her grief via gallows humor.
    • In his Darkness books, an officer decides to tie up and rape a hot spy for no particular reason and sends his soldiers out of the tent. She manages to get to a razor and slit his throat (though it is implied to be after he finishes) before cutting her bonds and escaping.
  • Setup for Chuck Palahniuk's Snuff: An aging porn star is shooting a world-record gangbang and may or may not die at the end of it. A lot of the book is other characters arguing about whether this result is intentional and/or inevitable. The actual ending manages to be much more embarrassing.
  • In the beginning of the Star Trek: New Frontier series, the Vulcan Selar is consummating her Pon farr with her mate when he dies. This merely delays the Pon farr for a little while. She eventually consummates with Burgoyne, the hermaphrodite engineer.
  • A particularly disgusting variation of this occurred in John Connolly's short story The Cancer Cowboy Rides. Buddy Carson seduces a drunken waitress and has sex with her; however, on the second round, the waitress begins to feel the effects of Buddy's unique gift- fast-acting cancer transmitted by touch: tumours, black blood, and a slow and agonising death that Buddy watches eagerly.
  • In Larry Niven's Ringworld, one of the humanoid species is a race of "vampires" that use cranked-to-eleven pheromones to draw in victims of the opposite sex from other species, with almost invariably fatal results.
  • In The Iron Dragons Daughter, Jane used sex magic to convert her unfortunate targets into jet fuel for Melanchthon.
  • Gene Wolfe's "There are Doors" had an alternate Earth where humans have a very different reproductive cycle; after sex women store men's semen in their body for the rest of their life, and can use it to have as many children as they wish. Men die, as their immune system shuts down.
  • It's all but stated outright Kitiara from the Dragonlance books has killed men while or after having sex with them, iirc.
  • "How's the Nightlife on Cissalda", a Harlan Ellison story about the human race ending because people were too busy having sex with aliens to eat
  • "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", an article by Larry Niven explaining—in VERY close detail—exactly why Superman could never have a Superboy and why this trope would be the likely outcome of any mating with Lois Lane or other non-Kryptonian females.

"With kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet."

    • (This appears to have been totally ignored by the modern-day DC Comics which have established Clark and Lois as a married couple who, presumably, have a non-lethal sex life.)
  • In Angels & Demons, the assassin's final atrocity was to be making the leading lady give him head and slitting her throat as he came. Foiled, thank God.
  • Discussed in Zolang er leven is by Renate Dorrestein. A widower realises that there was nothing he could have done to prevent his wife's death, but he could have been making love to her instead of fighting.
  • In Dan Brown's Digital Fortress, an obese man hires a prostitute. Because they came into possession of a ring that the hitman was tracking down, they were murdered while in the act, as the hitman's instructions were to kill anyone who had even seen the ring.
  • In The Magician's Apprentice, by Trudi Canavan, the control of your magic—including the episode was called "Day One".
  • In the book Snap Shot by A.J. Quinell, the Mossad agent Misha Wigoda is killed this way by the SDECE's agent Janine Lesage at the end of his interrogation. This was because, even though he was on Valium they couldn't extract any useful information from him until they discovered the lust Janine was producing in him. They used this to extract the information they wanted from him. Janine always wanted to kill a man while having sex as she had heard that when that happens the victim gets a monumental erection.
  • In The Kingkiller Chronicle, every man that Felurian meets dies of exhaustion after having sex with her. The rare few that survive emerge with their minds shattered beyond repair. Kvothe is legendary for being the only man to ever survive with his mind and body intact.
  • The Jennifer Morgue has Ramona Random, a CIA agent with a succubus bound to her soul who usually kills by these means. It leads to a nasty predicament where one of her targets has a heart attack during sex, and she needs the little death to go with the big one or the awakened succubus will eat her soul as well.
  • In Time Scout, someone conjectures that sex with Margo would kill you. His interlocutor implies that it would be worth it.
  • In Michael Ely's Twilight of the Mind, a Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri Expanded Universe novel, the daughter of the imprisoned Sheng-ji Yang kills her husband, the new chairman of the Hive, by placing a poisoned device in her vagina and getting him to forget his distrust of her long enough to seduce him. As soon as he penetrates, he gets injected with a fast-acting poison, while her guards take care of his guards. Thus she becomes the new Chairman Yang.
  • In the Forgotten Realms novel Daughter of the Drow by Elaine Cunningham, female-on-male murder during sex is called "the spider's kiss" among the drow (in reference to their spider goddess Lolth, among other spidery things in their culture). The title character, wizard/cleric Liriel Baenre, actually subverts it, however, as she instead knocks her lover unconscious to save him from a group of Vhaeraun worshipers.
  • In The Albino Knife, Marcus Jefferson Wall has his consciousness transferred into a cloned mastodon, then suffers a stroke while having sex with an elephant. It Makes Sense in Context. More or less. (This is a subversion, as the scientists who transferred him manage to pull him back out in time.)
  • Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks featured a woman who specialized in killing her partner at "the moment" so he was coming and going at the same time.
  • The Sano Ichiro series used this as a major part of the plot in one of the books. In The Perfumed Sleeve, Sano's rival Makino dies during a threesome; his partners flee in panic, and his manservant finds his body and tried to "clean things up" so it looks like his master died with dignity.
  • Averted, lampshaded, and played with in Robert A. Heinlein's novel I Will Fear No Evil. The protagonist's elderly husband dies of a stroke on their honeymoon cruise (while lifting a heavy object), and his wife tearfully asks their physician if a contributing factor could have been 'too much honeymoon'. Her physician discusses this trope with her -- and then points out that in his experience cardio-vascular events brought on by sex generally happen immediately before the sex act in question, as the most logical time for them to happen is during the initial blood pressure spike brought on by the pre-sex arousal.

Live Action TV

  • On an episode of Mash, a visiting general goes Out with a Bang with Major Houlihan... Hilarity Ensues as the general's aide de camp spends the second half of the episode trying to find a battle into which he can bring the general's corpse. The idea, of course, is that instead of going Out with a Bang, the general—in the public eye—will Go Out With a *BANG*.
  • Forms the basis of the plot of at least one episode of CSI, with rather roundabout complications.
    • In this episode, the main suspect, a very overweight woman, accidentally suffocates her partner when she passes out drunk on top of him. The woman actually told the police that she smothered him with a pillow, because she said she would rather confess to murder than suffer through the jokes that would be made about her because of the true nature of the victim's death. Believe it or not, the show handled this with a degree of sensitivity.
      • Picket Fences did a similar story, but without the sex: an obese woman didn't want to admit that she'd rolled over in her sleep and smothered her husband by accident, so she claimed to have done it deliberately.
    • And then there was the guy who fell off a hotel balcony while having sex on the railing...
  • The X-Files episode Gender Bender from season 1, is an example of this trope.
    • The third season episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" had the titular psychic suggesting that this would be Mulder's death: "You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified one than auto-erotic asphyxiation."
    • In the same episode Clyde also predicted he himself would die in bed with Scully. This ended up being true, as he died in bed, and Scully was in the room. He was in bed, and with Scully, but not in bed with Scully.
  • Ha'Gel from Earth: Final Conflict. Very similar method of death for his victims. Of course, he was desperate, as he seemed to be the Last of His Kind. He essentially rapes both Sandoval and Beckett to produce Liam, the hero of seasons 2&3. Liam doesn't seem to acknowledge his alien parent any more than he absolutely has to.
  • Supposedly fated to be Lister's death long after the events of Red Dwarf. "He chokes to death, aged 181, trying to remove a bra with his teeth." The source of this information does not have a stellar record, however.
    • He does seem to have a penchant for that kind of thing, though... in the episode "Timeslides" he gains a Portal to the Past and tweaks things a little, so that he does not go on Red Dwarf and instead dies in a plane accident, aged 98. He was having sex with his fourteenth wife and lost control of the plane.
  • The Angel episode "Lonely Hearts" had a parasitic demon that kept a constant stream of hosts by emerging from the current one and, er, "penetrating" a partner during sex, killing them and coming to rest in their body.
  • Parodied on Seinfeld, where one episode includes Kramer passing out (while not during sex, the situation seemed headed that way). The woman he passes out on top of contacts her relative (brother?) who has mob connections, and Kramer wakes up in the East River.
  • Semi-lampshaded in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where one of Dax's previous hosts died having sex. (With Vanessa Williams, so, Justified Trope.)
  • Portrayed in an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent that opened with a paranoid millionaire having his trophy wife gunned down after one last love-making session.
  • Subverted in an episode of Night Court. Dan Fielding met a woman who had killed most men she'd had sex with. The only survivor was John Wayne, "... who never walked the same again." At the end of the episode, Dan emerged from her embrace while doing an impression of The Duke.
  • A bit on The Man Show featured a commercial for "Die Like A Man" a service that would let an aged relative expire in a more manly way. Among them was a parachute not opening, a boxing match with a pro boxer, and vigorous sex with a beautiful woman.
  • The Jailbait episode of season 5 of The Shield had Officers Lowe and Hanlon called to a warehouse where the owner reported discovering two bodies. The fat truck driver presumably having died of a heart attack and crushing his partner to death with his weight. After the necessary gallows humour, the officers are shocked to discover the woman is still alive.
  • The concept of this trope gave rise to this classic observation on the British show Mock the Week: "There are those who say there is no good way to die. These people have obviously never heard the phrase drug-and-sex-fueled heart attack".
  • One episode of The Practice involved an attractive woman in her thirties/forties on trial for murdering her elderly husband by sex. The Reveal is, of course, that she did it, but not to get his money; she just had some serious daddy issues.
  • Farscape.
    • John Crichton enters an alternative reality where one of his plans went pear-shaped and Moya is on the verge of imminent destruction. So naturally Chiana tries to have sex with him, figuring she might as well die doing something she likes. An earlier episode has Aeryn and John trapped on a transport pod that's running out of air. Realising they'll be dead in less than an hour they suddenly start tearing off their spacesuits to have sex... only to be interrupted by D'Argo coming to their rescue.
    • Zhaan's backstory has her murdering her Quisling lover while having sex with him.
  • Emmett of Queer as Folk had an older lover die this way. In an airplane bathroom.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer there is an episode where Buffy and Riley compulsively have sex in a haunted house, fueling it with psychic energy in the process, and it is revealed they'll die from it if not rescued.

Willow: "It must have been terrible, being trapped like that"
Buffy & Riley: "Yup… oh yeah, terrible..."

  • Referenced in Smallville, where Clark spends an episode worrying that this will happen to Lana, if he gets overexcited and loses control of his powers. He doesn't. Which is a pity, cause it would have been hilarious.
  • In The Dresden Files, Harry attempts suicide by vampire while having sex with her.
  • One episode of Caroline in The City had Caroline help Richard fake his death to make his art more valuable and to get back at an art critic. They even arrange a fake funeral, and Richard manages to stay convincingly dead through a harangue by the critic who didn't buy his act, but just as he starts apologizing for his behaviour at the funeral, he mentions how Richard died. Caroline had been telling everyone he'd gone Out with a Bang with her, and the shock/outrage causes Richard to blow his cover.
  • In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Sally and Harry were trying to kill an overweight fortune teller they thought knew they were aliens. Eventually, they asked her how she foresaw her own death and she replied that she would be killed having sex.

Fortune teller: Not a bad way to die, right?
Sally: No... but a horrible way to kill. Right, Harry?
[Harry has an Oh Crap expression on his face]

  • On The Steve Harvey Show, Regina's husband Jordan dies this way on their honeymoon. She returns home and recounts the tragedy to Cedric, Lovita and Steve.

Steve (to Cedric): I always knew it would be killer, but Damn!

  • On Waiting for God, Diana reveals this once happened to her. When Tom says, "What a wonderful way to go!" she replies, "For him, maybe! I was dreadfully embarrassed!"
  • On the sitcom Anything But Love it happens to a guy Jamie Lee Curtis' character is dating. She later recalls him saying "Omigod, not yet!" but thought he meant something else.
  • Happened to Larry Hagman's character in Nip Tuck.
  • On Ham and Cheese-fest Dynasty, Cecil Colby (Lloyd Bochner) suffers a heart attack and dies underneath new wife Alexis (Joan Collins). Alexis slapping him in the face to bring him around adds Narm.
  • Subverted and then played straight in an episode of Chicago Hope. A man has a very bad blockage in his heart and shows up to get surgery. It turns out the doctor is an old flame of his. He doesn't tell her about his heart condition, instead acting like the only reason he's come to town is to see her.(Which isn't entirely a lie. It was really both reasons). They end up having sex and he has a heart attack during it. He actually lives for awhile afterwards since the doctor took the necessary steps to preserve his life and got him into surgery immediately. But while in recovery, his wife shows up. He wakes up to see his wife and the doctor together and instantly assumes that the doctor felt guilty (she didn't know he was married) and told the wife about his infidelity. The panic causes him to have ANOTHER heart attack, which kills him.
  • Featured, not surprisingly, in the show One Thousand Ways to Die:
    • A very shy Japanese couple of the century that have restrained themselves from even kissing each other for 7 years of marriage decide one day to do it for the first time, resulting in their simultaneous deaths by heart attack as they reach the climax.
    • In another episode, a man with a fetish for fatties ended up dying by suffocation when his date for the night climaxed and then passed out from exhaustion on top of him, preventing his lungs from expanding and covering his face with her fat rolls. Her reaction when she awoke was disappointed, but oddly not that surprised.
    • A cheating sleaze is bitten by a spider, whose venom acts like Viagra during his final hours. Trying to relieve himself of the... tension, he goes through a series of his girls until finally collapsing dead with one.
    • And there was one about a virgin who went to a Nevada brothel, signed on with a Dominatrix for the night... but it turned out he had a severe allergy to latex. That he was completely dressed in (including a zipper over the mouth).
  • Not the trope itself, but Barney of How I Met Your Mother names the trope when a cremated friend of his in a jar, which he takes to the bar, causes a girl to go home with him.
  • In Two and A Half Men, Allen befriends his elderly next-door neighbor (who has a dislike of Charlie), and eventually dates and has sex with her, and she passes. Charlie keeps making fun of them (well, mostly Allen) till the end:

"That's it! I knew there was a "big bang" joke!

  • The Torchwood episode "Day One" features an alien that feeds off sexual energy, which has the unfortunate effect of reducing its sexual partners to dust.

(The team is watching a security video of the act.)
Gwen: He just...
Jack: [deadpan] Came and went.
Owen: Now that's how I'd like to go.
Tosh: I'm sure we could arrange it.

  • Mad Men's Roger Sterling has a heart attack and nearly dies while cheating on his wife.
  • The live-action version of The Tick (animation) kills off the Immortal (a Superman-expy) with a heart attack while under Captain Liberty. Given the... erm, frizzy part of her hair in the following scenes (and the paired scorchmarks in her ceiling), it's evident he wasn't in full control of his heat vision during the act...
  • On The Golden Girls, this is apparently how Rose's husband Charlie died.

Rose: Oh, there was something wild about him that night. Although I did think it was strange when he started yelling, "Rose, I'm going! I'm going!"

  • Happens in almost every episode of Silk Stalkings. Sometimes more than once. One example stands out in "Where There's a Will": a wealthy man is murdered by his younger partner when she handcuffs him to the bed and forces him to take a sexual performance enhancement drug that aggravates his heart condition. The man starts begging her to stop when he realizes what's happening, but she ignores him and continues to ride him while he's suffering a fatal heart attack.


Music

  • The Eric Bogle song "Little Gomez" is about a randy Chihuahua that is crushed to death while attempting to consummate a liaison with a Saint Bernard.
  • A double KO takes place at the end of "Leaving Love All Over The Place" by George Jones:

The mourners formed a single line
 As they filled by to pay their last respects
And they couldn't help but wonder how
Two lovers could break each others' necks.


New Media

  • Snopes has a (false) story about someone who electrocuted himself using a cow's heart as an electrically-stimulated sex toy.


Stand Up Comedy

  • Bill Hicks had a bit where he talks about his ex-girlfriend, and how he fantasizes that one day, she'll be having sex with her morbidly obese, abusive husband, and he'll die mid-coitus, right on top of her, slowly crushing her to death, and bile and blood and tobacco-laced saliva will spew out of his mouth into her face, and just before she drowns, she turns her head to the TV, "...and I'm gonna be on it!"
  • In his third Evening With... DVD, Kevin Smith talks about the requirements for being canonized, and says it helps dying in the name of God, which means you could be in the middle of coitus, and suddenly clutch your chest and cry out "Jesus!" and you'd be "Saint Nutsdeep, Patron Saint of Dying While Fucking".
  • Richard Pryor claimed that this is how his father checked out; "My father came and went at the same time".
    • He also said in one (raunchy, thus spoilered) routine that it's how he wanted to go if they were ever going to do WWIII: "If they launch, we'll get told you got half an hour to get out. Half an hour? That ain't enough time. Everyone clogging up the road; you ain't getting no-place! Me, I know a woman I been wanting to be with for ten years.. I would RUN over to her house; I'd say "baby (pant) we got fifteen, (pant) fifteen minutes!" And hope I get a nut just as the bomb go off!"


Professional Wrestling


Tabletop Games

  • In Warhammer 40,000 this is apparently the only way to have sex, especially when Slaanesh is involved, and especially when the Dark Eldar are involved. The only ones this doesn't happen to are either asexual (Orks, Tyranids) or religiously abstinent (Space Marines).
  • Multiple instances of this in FATAL, including being the victim of an eternal orgasm spell and failing a saving throw if your anus or vagina is stretched too far.


Video Games

  • Avoiding this is actually a puzzle in the first game of The Spellcasting Series, as Ernie ends up on an island of amazons who have no problems taking what they want from our dorky hero. Take too long, and Ernie dies from exhaustion.
  • The hentai game Bible Black (which spawned an even more popular H-anime) has several "Bad Ends" which use some combination of drugs and/or magic to cause the hero to die of... "dehydration".
  • In the Roguelike game Nethack, there are incubi and succubi who might have sex with you (incubi for female characters, succubi for male characters). When this happens, there is a chance that "You feel exhausted", and you lose some hitpoints. If you die because of this, it's considered "overexertion". There is also a chance of leveldrain. Unless you wear proper "protection", then it's just HP loss.
  • Subverted in Phantom of Inferno, where Drei informs the badly wounded main character that she wants to go out like this as commandos approach the building they're in. While in great pain and doubting at her sanity he is forced to go along with her plan as she undresses him herself, and just at the climax the commandos rappel into the room - Drei rolls off, grabs her pistol and shoots both dead. While stark naked. She then explains that she's decided that was a stupid plan, and she's going to kill them all instead.
  • Not exactly this trope, but it should do - In Sexy Parodius the octopus lech Takosuke gets crushed during his getaway. Between the ass cheeks of a giant beautiful woman.
  • Some asari of the Mass Effect universe have a rare genetic defect that kills their partners during sex. These asari, known as Ardat-Yakshi, grow smarter, stronger and deadlier with each encounter, and it is an addiction to them, such that upon diagnosis, the Ardat-Yakshi is given the choice of living in isolation or being executed. In Mass Effect 2, Samara's loyalty mission has you going after an active one of these by the name of Morinth, who uses her condition much like a serial killer, and has been doing this for 400 years. You can choose to recruit her on your team, and get it on with her -- with predictable results.
    • Subverted in the same game with Jack; Mordin warns Shepard late in the game that this is a possibility if you're pursuing a romance with Jack. He hypothesizes that Jack might lose control of her already unstable biotic powers and accidentally kill Shepard mid-coitus. If you do consummate the relationship, however, nothing of the sort actually occurs.
      • A similar aversion also occurs with Tali, except in this case Mordin is afraid that she'll be the one to die due to her species' degraded immune system. However, Tali's smart enough to take the right precautions and comes out of it with nothing more than a nasty cold. And even then, she admits that it was totally Worth It.
  • Sengoku Rance has the Ninjas themselves. Hell, Suzume has a few like poison on her breasts, a drug that would burst whenever someone came inside her, and so on.
  • This is actually possible in 'The Sims 3, as can be seen in this screenshot.
  • In Fate/stay night, the Makiri lust worms do this to women. To quote the game, "The worms will transform when attacking a woman, so that they are only able to violate her nerves. They will spread their tentacles all over her body and devour her spirit. The lust worms will wet the woman's skin with their mucus, excite and destroy her central nerves of pleasure, and satisfy their hunger. It must be their instincts, as the worms seem to love the woman's womb. They do not eat female flesh, but seek the organs within them. They give the woman huge enough orgasms to fry her brain, and they go into her body to devour her placenta. Unwilling to eat human flesh, the worms have only one way to get what they desire. As a result, the woman's mind and body are completely violated and destroyed." And these worms are basically penises with More Teeth Than the Osmond Family.
  • Katawa Shoujo treats this seriously because it is a very real danger for the hero, who has a weak heart that can fail from too much excitement and/or physical exertion. Usually he's able to keep calm enough to avoid any problems, but at least one h-scene is cut short due to him coming extremely close to having a heart attack.
  • This is a frequent outcome of a human having sex with a monster or angel in Monster Girl Quest. The human may die of exhaustion, die from having their energy drained out (particularly common when the nonhuman partner is a succubus) or be eaten alive.


Web Comics

  • Get Medieval: Seen in this comic.
  • Natsuki of Sexy Losers dies of exhaustion from too much sex.
  • Magarce from Tally Road experiences this trope almost literally. If it were not such a shocking and gratituously furry image, the latter would almost be a perfect trope-illustration- except that she's not actually dead, just 'out'. One can only assume she has an (ahem) Made of Iron.
  • Amazing Super Powers - "I can't decide whether I want this to be Keith..." (see also Alt Text and hidden comic).
  • Dangerously Chloe started with Teddy accidentally getting into a demonic pact on a girlfriend, which led to summoning of certain young lady previously seen in Eerie Cuties. So if they'll do it, the contract will be fulfilled on the demons' side, thus Teddy gets to die and be dragged to Hell. Later they found out that killing him won't require Chloe to actually do anything else - apparently, their link made Teddy vulnerable to being drained by her, circumventing her control over process; when another succubus "tasted" him a little, he didn't notice the drain at all.Unfortunately, they discovered the problem during "kissing lessons" (to get a girlfriend on his own and void the contract, he needs to know what to do, right?). Of course, that still being "Teddy-bear", almost dying wasn't enough, so on top of it this incident sent him headlong into yet another trouble.
    • Also, a succubus without much practice of self control while excited is bound to "go wild" and messily kill a common soft mortal, no matter what her intentions were before - angels and demons are made of tougher stuff (Zachuriel at the end of an... unofficial meeting with Pandora was shown in a happily bewildered daze and covered in scratches, but no lasting damage), but demon boys are terrified of the succubi due to exaggerated rumors of this behavior, and angels usually are not an option due to the whole eternal enmity thing.

Western Animation

  • In one episode of Futurama, Fry, Kif, and Zapp Brannigan are actually sentenced to "Death by Snu-snu" (sex, naturally) from eight-foot-tall Amazons. Fry and Zapp's expressions upon hearing of their fate shift rapidly (and repeatedly) between horror and shit-eating grins while Kif sticks with horror. As shown by the image above, three skeletons of previous victims are seen nearby with crushed pelvises and very satisfied expressions.
    • This would appear to be based on a joke that goes something like this:

Two men exploring a jungle are captured by a native tribe. The two men are given a choice: Death, or Unga-Bunga. The first man chooses Unga-Bunga and is immediately raped by all the men of the tribe. After that, the second man chooses death. The tribe leader declares: "DEATH BY UNGA-BUNGA!"

  • In the South Park episode "Quintuplets 2000", the elderly Grandpa Marsh has sex with an equally elderly Romanian grandmother. The next morning, he discovers her body in the throes of rigor mortis, and remarks "So that's why she didn't say good night."
  • This trope was spoofed in an episode of Robot Chicken, which combined aspects of The Golden Girls and Sex and the City:

Blanche: In the middle of my no-denture adventure, my boyfriend's spirit released, in more ways than one!
Man sitting at an adjacent table: Check, Please!

Death: Sandy? Awww, not AGAIN! I'm gonna be a virgin forever! ...or am I?
(Car resumes rocking)

I plan on going out with a bang. Several, if it can be arranged.

Real Life

  • Attila the Hun reportedly died on his wedding night to his latest teenage wife of a heart-attack / nosebleed.
  • Semelparous are organisms that die right after having sex.


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