List of suicides in fiction

This is a list of incidents of suicide — the intentional killing of oneself — depicted in fictional works, including movies, television series, anime and manga, comics, novels, etc.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

A

• Aegeus, a character from Greek mythology, drowns himself after mistakenly believing that his son Theseus was dead^[1]
• Ajax the Great, a character from the Greek mythology, stabs himself with a sword (his death is described by Sophocles, Pindar and Ovid; the suicide is, however only implied in Homer when, in the Odyssey, the ghost of Ajax refuses to speak to Odysseus in Hades)^[2]
• Naoko Akagi (Neon Genesis Evangelion), jumps off a control tower after murdering Rei I^[3]
• Misa Amane (Death Note), unknown cause. In the anime, she was last seen standing at the top of a very tall building; it is assumed that she jumped. In the manga it was suggested that she hanged herself.^[4]
• Antigone, a character from Greek mythology, hangs herself whilst awaiting execution.^[5]
• Princess Ashe ("Final Fantasy XII") Sorrow of kingdoms defeat. Method not specified.
• Alia Atreides (Dune), defenestration^[6]
• Duke Leto Atreides, (Dune), poison gas capsule

B

• Billy Bibbit (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), slits own throat
• Lily Bart (The House of Mirth), overdoses on chloral hydrate (possible suicide)
• John Barton (Looking for Alibrandi), slit his wrists^[7]
• Jacqueline de Bellefort (Death on the Nile), shoots herself after killing her lover Simon to escape justice
• Georg Bendemann (The Judgment), threw himself off a bridge^[8]
• Emma Bovary (Madame Bovary), ingestion of arsenic.^[9]
• Sammy Bushey (Under the Dome), shoots herself

C

• Jericho Cane (End of Days), impales himself on a sword
• Howard W. Campbell Jr. (Mother Night), hangs himself
• Juliet Capulet (Romeo and Juliet), knife wounds^[10]
• Castel (The Bourne Identity), defenestration
• Chloe (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), hanged herself after being convinced to by The First
• Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly), seppuku;^[11] and Kim in the contemporary adaptation Miss Saigon (gunshot)^[12]
• Mallorie "Mal" Cobb (Inception), jumping from heights^[13]
• Richard Cory (Richard Cory), gunshot to the head^[14]
• Quentin Compson (The Sound and The Fury), drowning^[15]

D

• Daisy (Girl, Interrupted), method was unknown in the novel^[16] while in the movie, she hangs herself and cuts her wrists

E

• Julian English (Appointment in Samarra), carbon monoxide in garage, ch. 9

Eponine Thenardier (Les Miserables), takes a musket ball for Marius Pontmercy, page 1193

F

G

• Hedda Gabler (Hedda Gabler), shoots herself offstage^[17]
• Seymour Glass, eldest son in J. D. Salinger's Glass family, shoots himself as described in Salinger's short story A Perfect Day For Bananafish
• Godric (True Blood/Southern Vampire Mysteries novels), "meets the sun", which as a vampire is fatal
• Gullberg (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest), shoots himself after shooting Galachenko

H

• Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) Hanged himself to be with his deceased love, Cathy.
• David Hoope (Death Note), shoots himself in the head
• Ray Huizanga (Cell) shoots himself
• Waring Hudsucker (The Hudsucker Proxy) jumps out the window of a skyscraper
• Hannah Baker (Thirteen Reasons Why), pills

I

• Ill Ratt (Death Note), real name Shawn Dunleavy, shoots himself in the head

J

• Javert (Les Misérables), jumped off bridge and drowned^[18]
• John the Savage (Brave New World) hangs himself^[19]
• Dayna Jurgens (The Stand), smashes her head through a glass window and thrashes her head around so that the sharp edges of the glass cut open her jugular vein.
• Joe Keller (All My Sons), shoots himself

K

• Anna Karenina (Anna Karenina), steps into the path of a train^[20]
• Father Damien Karras (The Exorcist), defenestration.
• Katsumoto (The Last Samurai), seppuku
• Gabriel Kent (The Bill), jumped off the top of a building
• Lawrence Kutner (House), dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and is found in "Simple Explanation" by colleagues.^[21][22]
• Yoji Kuramuto (Battle Royale), in the film, hangs himself alongside his girlfriend Yoshimi Yahagi

L

• Harold Lauder (The Stand), shoots himself in the head.
• Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence (Full Metal Jacket), self-inflicted gunshot wound after murdering his commanding officer^[23]
• Su Lin (Enter the Dragon), stabs herself with a shard of glass.
• Willy Loman (Death of a Salesman), car crash^[24]

M

• Lady Macbeth (Macbeth), method unspecified, "Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands took off her life"^[25]
• Lt. Col. Matthew Andrew Markinson (A Few Good Men), shoots himself
• McWatt (Catch-22), flies his plane into a mountain
• Romeo Montague (Romeo & Juliet), takes poison after finding Juliet whom he believed to be dead.^[26]
• Darren Mullet (Tormented), hangs himself

N

• Samuel Norton (The Shawshank Redemption) shoots himself

O

• Sakura Ogawa (Battle Royale) throws herself off a cliff alongside Kazuhiko Yamamoto
• Ophelia (Hamlet), drowning (ambiguous)^[27]
• Othello (Othello), stabs himself^[28]
• Okonkwo (Things Fall Apart), hangs himself out of despair

P

• Neil Perry (Dead Poet's Society), shoots himself
• Phoenix I, in the form of Jean Grey (Uncanny X-Men), telekinetically activates an energy cannon that disintegrates her.^[29]
• Madelyne Pryor, mentally commits suicide by forcing her mind to shut down.^[30]
• Edna Pontellier, (The Awakening), drowns herself in the Gulf of Mexico

Q

R

S

• Yuko Sakaki (Battle Royale) jumps from a lighthouse
• Hanna Schmitz (The Reader)
• Dr. Sheppard (narrator of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd), poison
• Shin (Hokuto no ken), jumped from the peak of his tower
• Smerdyakov (The Brothers Karamazov), hanging^[31]
• Septimus Warren Smith (Mrs Dalloway), jumps out of a window
• Holly Summers (No More Heroes), places a grenade in her mouth
• Svidrigailov (Crime and Punishment), gunshot to the head^[32]

T

• General Tanz (The Night of the Generals), shoots himself
• Captain Clark Terrell (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), shoots himself
• Teru Mikami (Death Note), commits suicide in prison
• Floria Tosca, in Puccini’s opera Tosca, jumps from castle rampart^[33]

U

V

• Eustacia Vye, (The Return of the Native), drowning (possible suicide)
• Vera Claythorne (And Then There Were None), hung herself after going mad

W

• Justice Lawrence Wargrave, (And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie), self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after murdering nine people on an island
• Werther, in The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe and the subsequent opera by Massenet; gunshot to the head; the fictional suicide touched off a wave of copycat suicides in Europe^[34]
• Dallas "Dally" Winston (The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton), suicide by police after robbing a grocery store

X

Y

• Yoshimi Yahagi (Battle Royale), in the film, hangs herself alongside Yuji Kuramuto.
• Kazuhiko Yamamoto (Battle Royale), throws himself off a cliff alongside Sakura Ogawa.
• Adam Yates (The Innocent), gunshot.
• Mary Alice Young in Desperate Housewives; gunshot to the head; the suicide enables the character to portray the role of narrator of the series from a dead point of view.
• Yume Nikki (Yume Nikki), throws herself off her apartment balcony.

Z

See also

• List of suicides

References

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