Deadly Game of Chance - TV Tropes (2024)

"An ace or you're dead."

• Downplayed example in Lupin III: Gravestone of Daisuke Jigen. Whenever the sniper and assassin Yael Okuzaki gets a job, he rolls a 6-sided die before he takes aim. Whatever the result, he'll only allow himself that many bullets to kill his target. This has never prevented him from finishing a job, so the gesture is more about showing off than about giving the victim a chance to live.
• Kaiji: Series main antagonist Hyoudou not only has Kaiji risk everything for Kaiji's lottery gamble, he also has Kaiji bet four of his fingers on the game. This sadly does not end well for Kaiji.
• One Piece: Done by "Big Mom" Charlotte Linlin — she uses a roulette wheel to determine the punishment for a person who challenges her or attempts to leave her control. Spinning it will cost the person body parts, years of lifespan (via Linlin's Soul-Soul Fruit powers) and members of their crew, with the exact parts and numbers varying on where the wheel lands, and the results inevitably lethal. The wheel has been seen in action on two specific occasions:
  • First, when the Nox Pirates invaded in an attempt to access Linlin's Road Poneglyph, their captain Zepo had to spin the wheel, losing one hundred years of his life. Since he only had thirty years of life left though, he died instantly when that time was taken. Pedro, his crewmate and successor as captain, would have lost the other seventy years in turn, but managed to bargain it down to fifty thanks to the actions of Pekoms and Baron Tamago, leaving him aged but still alive.
  • Fifteen years later, when Jimbei asked permission for he and his crew to leave so that he could join the Straw Hat Pirates, he retracted the request after realizing that spinning the wheel would cost him members of his crew and instead waited until a more opportune moment to rebel.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: In chapter 26, during the Death-T arc, Mokuba challenges Yugi and Jonouchi to a game called "Russian Roulette Dinner." Players spin a rotating tabletop and must eat the food that stops in front of them, but some of the food is poisoned. Mokuba cheats, forcing Jonouchi to eat poisoned food and giving himself safe food. Yugi realizes that Mokuba cheated, and stops him from cheating again, resulting in Mokuba being forced to eat poisoned food.
• In Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, the fat cats of Osaka play a sick lottery game called "Cans or Zombies" where needy people charge through a canvas with two openings: one leads to double the food cans (the local currency during the Zombie Apocalypse) the contestant bets, the other to a pile of zombies ensuring certain death. No one has won the game before and it's all for the wealthy's sick amusem*nt. After Akira runs away with all of his friends' cans, Takemina shocks him out of it by staking his life in the game. Their resulting winnings are so huge that the cans spill out and above the canvas, letting Takemina win again and again until the wealthy are bankrupted by their own game.

• Batman: Whilst it's not just limited to murder (using it to decide all his criminal activities or flat-out everything he does), Two-Face will always decide whether he will kill or spare a victim depending on the results of him flipping his signature double-headed coin with one of the sides badly damaged. 'Good heads' mean they live, 'bad heads' mean they die. He will adhere to this even if the result is utterly impractical to him. The whole concept came from his father, who flipped a coin to decide whether or not he would beat his son.
• Garulfo: Downplayed. When his henchman fails to kill the titular hero, Count Hegueulard puts his blade to his throat and asks him to choose a number between 1 and 2. The henchman says "2", which was the correct answer, so the Count spares his life this time.
• Soda: One Professional Killer ties his victims to a bomb, then uses a kitchen timer to set the delay. He closes his eyes and turns the timer at random, explaining to his victim that there's a chance he'll die in the explosion as well.

• Danganronpa: Darkened Hope: Emiko's execution involves a wheel being spun to determine her fate. One segment of the wheel depicts a smiley face, and Monokuma's hesitation when the wheel lands on the smiley face implies that Emiko would be let free should that segment be landed on. However, it's an execution, so Monokuma gently pushes the wheel over to the segment depicting a bullet, and Emiko is shot to death.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: Petyr Baelish proving to be a disappointing swordsman, the Wolf decides to test him otherwise. He has Baelish tied facedown to a tree and then throws swords at him while blindfolded. This goes on for a while, Baelish nearly ready to faint as he hears the swords land closer...and then the Wolf stabs him in the back, as befits a sacrifice to the Chaos god of betrayal.
• This Bites!: During the Skelter Bite arc, a pirate named Torino Red has challenged another pirate that said pirate can't figure out which of two cups is poisoned; if the challenged pirate drinks one and survives, he gets one million berries. When he tries to back out of the challenge, Zoro and Chopper get involved — Zoro drinks both mugs to make the two competitors even, giving the challenged pirate a chance to escape and a pair of Skull Mist Pirates (with aid from Chopper) time to arrest Torino, on the grounds that "Skelter Bite does not accept lives being used as collateral under any circ*mstances".
• In With Pearl and Ruby Glowing, after Flim and Flam get arrested, the sheriff makes them flip a coin to decide which one he should rape. Flam rigs it so he would be the one hurt instead of Flim.

• The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie Boogie has Santa Claus and Sally chained up to platforms and uses a pair of dice to determine how many times to crank the lever that lowers them into a boiling pot. When the last roll comes out snake eyes (two ones, the lowest possible roll), he angrily pounds the table, changing the roll to eleven. Fortunately, Jack arrives just in time to save them and defeat Oogie.

• Boys Don't Cry (2000): Fred offers his victims a chance out in a game of Heads or Tails?, using Kennedy's half-dollar coin, only he always wins.

  Fred: When I'm about to kill somebody, I tell them this: "If it's heads, you win and I spare your life. If it's tails, then you lose, and I win your death"... And it's always tails.

• The Dark Knight: Harvey Dent, better known as Two-Face, used to use a Two-Headed Coin to probe criminals into confessing to their crimes. However, after he became a villain himself, he began flipping his coin to decide whether his victims would live or die; if they got heads, they could live. The damaged side of the coin dictated death.Both Wuertx and Maroni die in this way.
• In Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, residents of Bartertown must "face the wheel" if they "bust a deal", i.e. break a vow. The wheel is divided into ten unequal sections (Death, Hard Labour, Acquittal, Gulag, Aunty's Choice, Spin Again, Forfeit Goods, Underworld, Amputation, Life Imprisonment) and is spun to determine the person's fate. Max faces the wheel after he refuses to kill his opponent in the titular Thunderdome, receiving Gulag, a fatal sentence (banned to the desert without water). Subverted, however, since Max is subsequently rescued.
• No Country for Old Men: Anton Chigurh lets certain people call a coin toss to determine whether he'll kill them. Carla Jean gives him a Shut Up, Hannibal! on the subject:

  "The coin ain't got no say. It's just you."

• The Princess Bride: Wesley challenges Vizzini to a simple game of chance: guessing which goblet of wine Wesley has poisoned. Vizzini attempts to reason which goblet is which based on what he knows of Wesley's personality and exploits, and ultimately even switches the goblets when Wesley's back is turned. Vizzini chooses a goblet and both men drink. Then, Vizzini drops dead. Wesley reveals that he poisoned both goblets, but had intentionally built up his resistance to the poison over time, so drinking it wouldn't kill him.

• Battle Royale: Kazuo Kiriyama uses a coin toss to decide whether his posse and he would gang-rape Izumi Kanai or if he would play to win the Program and kill everyone. As they come up tails, Kazuo kills everyone with his MAC-10.
• How to Train Your Dragon: Norbert the Nutjob, chief of the Hysterical Tribe, tries to decide whether or not he'll kill a captive Hiccup by throwing his Death-Axe into the air, and seeing whether it lands with the black or white blade facing up. The first book he does this in, it lands white-side up, but he still settles for imprisoning Hiccup instead: the second time, the axe is about to land on black, but Hiccup convinces him of Can't Kill You, Still Need You, so he deliberately nudges the axe to make sure it lands on white so he can keep his useful hostage alive.
• The Lady, or the Tiger? revolves around one, in which those accused of heinous crimes are told to choose between two doors. Behind one is a beautiful woman who will marry them; behind the other, a hungry tiger. Subverted in the case of the main character, who is accused of courting the king's daughter — she bribes the guards to find out what's behind each door and then subtly guides him towards one of them. Whether she guided him towards the woman so he could live, or towards the tiger so no-one else could have him, is not revealed.
• No Country for Old Men: The psychopathic villain Anton Chigurh uses the coin toss method a few times. His victim calls the toss rather than himself, as he believes it's 'not fair' otherwise. He doesn't always use this method when killing, however, so it is unclear why he does this.
• Pale: In order to take the Role of the Aurum Judge, one must win a game of chance against the current holder, with the loser dying. For instance, when the Gold-Furred Mouse lost a game of dice to the future Aurum Dame, she proceeded to bite his head off and took his Role. For this reason, the Aurum's Role has the highest turnover rate amongst the Judges, with the current Aurum Coil taking on the Role a relatively short time before the events of the story.
• A Study in Scarlet: Jefferson Hope challenges his victims to a game of chance in which his victim picks from two pills — one harmless, the other laced with poison — and takes the one he picked while Jefferson takes the other. The first victim picks the poisoned pill and dies, which Jefferson takes as a sign that justice is on his side. His second victim refuses to partake in the game, so Jefferson stabs him in the heart instead.
• The Wasp Factory: The titular factory is a highly complicated home-made system in which a wasp is placed inside a giant clock, and crawls through one of twelve doors, near each of the numbers on the clock, and this seals the wasp's fate: by fire, by drowning, by spider venom, by electrocution, by acid, and many others.

• House: Downplayed and a rare non-villain example. In season 1 episode 4 "Maternity", an epidemic spreads throughout the maternity ward infecting the newborn babies. House decides to try two medications (vancomycin and aztreonam) on two of them, risking death if one of the medications doesn't work, as pointed out by his colleagues. They further condemn him for his decision to flip a coin to decide which baby gets which medication, although he argues that it needs to be done to find out which medication can save all of the babies. Neither of the medications work, but the baby given Aztreonam passes away.
• Lupin (2021): This is the Part 3 villain Cisco's signature way of deciding who to kill, shooting anyone who fails to pull an ace out of his deck of cards. Rather than just playing with his victims, however, he seems to treat his games as a test of guilt, so whoever doesn't pull an ace out of a full pack of cards must be a traitor. Assane takes advantage of his peculiar ways. When he manages to pull the ace out of the deck of cards, Cisco is confused but impressed. Unbeknowst to him, Assane placed an ace into Cisco's deck of cards. He later plants a smoke bomb in his usual set of cards, which sets off when Assane pulls a joker, knocking out Cisco and his crew for the police to find them.
• Pagan Peak: The killer in season three (inspired by the legends of Jack the Sorcerer) selected their victims by rolling an elaborate hand-carved die. If it landed on the Greek symbol omega, then they would make their kill.
• Power Rangers S.P.D.: Wootox, the Villain of the Week in "Recognition", makes a decision based on a coin flip after swapping bodies with Sky. He calls heads to attack a random guard and tails not to; the coin lands on tails, much to his displeasure.
• Sherlock: The killer of the episode "A study in pink" forces his victims to pick one of two identical pills, with him taking the other one. One is deadly poison, the other is harmless. Might be a subversion as the high social reading skills of the murderer supposedly turn it into a case of I Know You Know I Know.
• Wire in the Blood: The Bradfield Sniper from "Synchronicity" chooses his victim by cutting a pack of playing cards several times until he is left with a final card representing a specific location. He would then go to this place and shoot whoever was there dead. His completely random method makes it next to impossible to catch him.

• : Two out-of-universe examples as per the game mechanics:
  • This was pretty common in pre-4E for first-level Player Characters, since their meager Hit Points and saving throw bonuses meant that any unlucky dice roll during play could be potentially lethal before they had enough resources to even contemplate resurrection.
  • Post-4E has literal "death saving throws", basically determining whether or not an unconscious character lives or dies. Three successful throws, you're stabilized. Three failures... you get the idea.

• Hiveswap: In Act 2, in order for Joey and Xefros to get to the train's engine room, they have to pass through the purpleblood car, populated by Monster Clown-type characters. The leader, Marvus, says that they can only pass once he spins a wheel and they have to kill whichever blood type the wheel lands on. Joey gets past the first two by, respectively, taking a picture of a guy sleeping and using a knife painted to look bloody, but for the third round, Xefros commits a legitimate Accidental Murder and is thus allowed to pass.
• A literal version in Jackbox Party Pack 3's Trivia Murder Party. The host first rolls three dice, then a selected player decides whether the at-risk parties must roll higher or lower to not die.
• Mr. TomatoS: In Ms. LemonS, the punishment for failing too many times is that you're forced into a game of Rock–Paper–Scissors. Lose once, and your eye goes. Lose a second time, your hand goes. Lose all three, and you're expelled from the game and must reset (where you'll still retain the injuries due to lasting memory). It's rigged completely, as the game cannot be won by the player.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth: One of Butters' ultimates 'Professor Chaos' involves a Wheel of Decisions that decides which attack will be used depending on when the player clicks to stop it spinning. Only one of the options involves the antagonists not getting their asses kicked (it provides a shield instead).

• Zero Time Dilemma:
  • The first branching point is a coin toss for whether or not the killing game will even happen. The villain will indeed honor the deal and let everyone go if the player manages to call it, leading to a very quick end of the story. It's rigged, it will always be a win the first time and a loss afterwards.
  • One decision game mirrors Russian roulette. A character is strapped to a chair with a gun aimed at his head and another operates the gun. It has 50/50 odds. And there is the option not to fire, at penalty of a third character dying. It's not rigged.
  • Before you're allowed to leave the casino after completing the puzzles, you are presented with three dice and told to roll them. If the result is three ones, you can leave. If it's anything else, you get Swiss cheesed by Gatling guns. Fortunately the game is rigged so that you always succeed on the third attempt (provided you watch the cutscene of said Swiss cheesing all the way through each time for the game to actually count your attempts).

• The Handbook of Heroes: Wicked Uncle has a Wheel of Torture he uses to pick which torture to inflict on Aristocrat.
• YU+ME: dream : Sadako proposes a game to Fiona; find a single sword among the items in the west wing of the castle in an hour. If she wins, Sadako will let her and Lia go; if not or Fiona refuses to play, she'll have her killed by Lia, who's been reverted to the terrible Mara. It was a ploy; Sadako says Fiona returned four minutes late, but she actually has the aim of goading Fiona into killing her to free her from position as Queen of Nod.

• During his playthrough of a multiplayer mod of Undertale, Alpharad decides to let Smith make the choice to kill or spare the two knights in Hotland. His choice is decided via heads or tails.

  Jacob: The gays live off a coin flip...?

• In an episode of Fillmore!, a bully offers to roll a die with his victim. If it comes up 1 through 5, the bully will beat him up. If the victim rolls a 6, they'll play again.