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| - Here's the situation. You're all alone and you're faced with capture, imminent death, enslavement, public humiliation followed by (possibly grisly) execution, or something even worse. You know what the monsters or bad guys will do to you if they get their hands on you, and you do not want that to be your fate, but You Have No Chance to Survive -- either there are too many of them, or you're out of bullets (or down to your final bullet). So what do you do? Examples of Better to Die Than Be Killed include:
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| abstract
| - Here's the situation. You're all alone and you're faced with capture, imminent death, enslavement, public humiliation followed by (possibly grisly) execution, or something even worse. You know what the monsters or bad guys will do to you if they get their hands on you, and you do not want that to be your fate, but You Have No Chance to Survive -- either there are too many of them, or you're out of bullets (or down to your final bullet). So what do you do? You turn the gun or knife on yourself. If there is no way to avoid death, it is better to go out on your own terms than let your enemy decide what happens to you. This trope may derive from Real Life. Many cultures, including that of classical Rome, held that suicide was an acceptable form of death: to a Roman, suicide was not just a way to avoid a fate worse than death but a noble deed meant to demonstrate one's own stoicism and honour in the face of adversity. Emperor Otho was considered a weak, luxury-loving sybarite until he committed suicide shortly before a plot to assassinate him could be put into effect; his self-inflicted death changed Romans' minds, leading them to see Otho as a greater man than he perhaps really was. The Christians were seen as depraved and disgusting by Romans such as Tacitus in part because they would not commit suicide, which the Romans interpreted as cowardly and almost obscene (as was the Christian willingness to be killed by wild animals, literally the most dishonourable method of death a Roman could conceive of). The most common places that this trope shows up are stories where people face a Fate Worse Than Death in either the classical sense or in a Body Horror / The Virus sense, such as in a zombie movie where being taken by the zombies means being eaten alive or joining their number. In the older stories, such as westerns, samurai, and kung fu stories, a woman faced with rape and death at the hands of her enemies would often choose to die by her own hand rather than suffer this fate. A variation of this also appears in the classic scene where a disgraced army officer finds a loaded gun on his bed. The hint was to kill himself in order to spare the regiment the embarrassment. Another variation happens quite a lot, where a mook kills himself rather than let the heroes find out any information. This also shows up in spy stories where a captured spy takes a Cyanide Pill to deny his captors any information they might gain from him under torture. A small number of actual criminals would rather die than be taken to prison ("You'll never take me alive, copper!") -- for the most part, people tend to treat these cases a lot less sympathetically than other examples of this trope, as it's seen as a cowardly way to escape justice. The criminal may even make one last shot at a Blast Out, meaning either a bloody escape or, more likely, Suicide by Cop. If there's a ledge nearby, you can bank on a Prisoner of Zenda Exit. Compare I Die Free. Contrast Face Death with Dignity, Mercy Kill, I Cannot Self-Terminate. In video games and some other media, this could be considered a case of self-kill-stealing, especially to stop experience or a reward being gained by the kill. Has nothing to do with the fact that "People die if they are killed". Examples of Better to Die Than Be Killed include:
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