I'm working on a very dark comedy story (novel-length) where a guy kills a LOT of people. He's a mass murderer and kills a lot of random people (one a a time). He kills them a different way for each victim. (That's not the funny part; I'm not THAT sick).
So the game is, how many ways can we think of to kill a person? It's OK to get as bizarre as you want, as long as it's still possible for an actual person to do. In fact, the more bizarre the better.
I'll go ahead and get the easy ones out of the way:
Shoot with a handgun
Stab with a knife
Strangle with hands
Axe to the head/chest
So, all you sickos, what can you think of?
That experience and other death experiences are too vivid in my mind to contribute further.
Is part of the reason you're looking into this so you have a serial killer with an always changing M.O.? Someone who makes it difficult for authorities to link together different crimes for lack of common evidence?
If that's the case you may be able to simply add plausible accidents to your villain's repertoire. A great many people pass away every day from disease, old age, motor vehicle accidents and drug abuse and apart from a cursory coroner's report may not automatically be assumed suspicious deaths.
The psychology of your villain would be important too; if there is any link in victims (at worst, the common 'they all look like his ex lover' trope seen in so many serials) then usually a serial killer character will, due to the emotional link with choosing his victims, be expected to stick to the same MO in seeking their demise as a symbol of whatever contention he has with the original person.
Should the killer simply be random in selection however - and sufficiently intelligent to avoid getting sloppy and caught - then it would increasingly plausible that they attempt to cover their tracks by making their crimes resemble accidents.
Were that to be the way they developed, I'd have to imagine the Darwin Awards would become an easily tapped source of ideas.
This is not a typical "criminal minds/C.S.I" type serial killer. That is, he isn't compelled to murder in any certain way. He's addicted to killing people because he gets an emotional charge out of it, and he feels a compulsion to murder, but it doesn't matter to him how he does it, so he likes to experiment and try out all sorts of different methods. He is definitely NOT (gag me) killing people because they all look like his ex-girlfriend.
So anyway, for this guy, pretty much anything goes, no matter how over-the-top. It's a form of play for him, so he will try anything for the sake of novelty. He's not really into torture, though, just the actual act of killing.
Accidental deaths and the darwin awards...great idea. I will definitely mine those things for ideas.
I also like "hang him upside-down and see how long it takes the blood flowing to his brain to prove fatal." Of course, that means I would have to find how how long that actually is.
Let's say the killer doesn't wait around for the victim to be a body.
This film 'Man Bites Dog' has a serial killer who kills in lots of different ways, but I think it is very difficult to be completely patternless.
You may go round killing people in various ways, but you may not do it on a Tuesday afternoon because that is the day you do your shopping. Even randomness is a choice, and we can't help but make repetitive choices. An investigation will focus on finding a pattern, where and whatever it may be.
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Great minds think alike. Have you ever read Orwell's 1984? This is very similar to a death scene near the very end of the book. In that the victim is strapped in to a chair with something like a bird cage over his head (hole cut through bottom to fit over his head). It is set up so that the only exit is blocked by his head, then a rat is put in to the bird cage.
Something along those lines.
Poison somebody's fork/spoon.
Bury alive (maybe with vicious/poisonous animals).
Icing down balcony while loosening support rails.
Stab with icicle.
Shot with bullets formed from ice (from Father Downing's mysteries).
Tie them up in car that gets put in to car crusher.
Replace their drink with powerful acid.
Put very thin, barely visible fishing wire across trail/street to decapitate fast cyclist or motorcycle rider.
Impale with broom handle.
Glue mouth and nose shut.
Set leads to a metal chair they are sitting on and electrocute.
Drop them in to boiling vat of liquid at some industrial type food plant or something like that.
Crucify
Nail them to a wall.
Nail gun to head (been done in movies a million times).
Have something large fall on top of hot tub while they are in it so that it traps them under water.
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Good god I'm a sick pup.
http://www.spike.com/show/27237
Cora
quote:
Shot with bullets formed from ice (from Father Downing's mysteries).
The guys on Mythbusters couldn't get that one to work.
Hmm...ways to die? Do you want gory or interesting? Unique? Torture?
I liked many of the ideas -- superglue on mouth and nose would be nasty.
Fire is always bad.
All of the movies Saw had some really unique devices, which were part of the plot (sort of).
I always liked the Final Destination Rube-Goldberg type of deaths.
If you tie the deaths into the plot, then you can get pretty creative like the Saw series.
For example, if the MC wants to murder an alcoholic or drug addict, then he could somehow (creatively) force them to OD.
One of the most bizarre real-life murders I read about is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes
One that didn't end in death:
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=31592
(I guess you hope the snake bites the monkey and the dog eats the snake)
If your MC wanted to stage deaths, maybe some kind of erotic-asphyxiation, or maybe your MC is into Art and he can stage the deaths per paintings.