12 Times A Movie Character’s Fate Was Worse Than Death

A European vacation with her best friend goes unimaginably awry when Lindsay finds herself an unwilling participant in the sick fantasy of a deranged German surgeon. After a failed escape attempt, Lindsay is given the worst possible “middle” position in a “human centipede,” with her mouth attached to a human anus and her anus attached to a mouth.

In the end, Lindsay is left alone in the house, trapped between her deceased companions, unable to talk or stand. Because her captor and two detectives on his case perish in a melee, it is unknown if she has any chance of rescue – or if she’d even want it.

When a storm hits a New England town accompanied by a thick mist, David finds himself trapped in a supermarket with his son and a number of others. As they are picked off by otherworldly creatures that come from the mist, he fights both the vicious onslaught and a religious zealot who claims Armageddon is upon them.

David escapes the store with his son and a few others, but discovers that his wife has died in their home. With no means of avoiding the mist, he uses his last four bullets to kill his son and his friends, wishing to spare them a terrible fate at the hands of the creatures.

When he leaves his car to let the creatures attack him, the mist suddenly disappears and the military arrives to take out the beasts. David has the horrible realization that he needlessly killed his loved ones.

Wallace, a podcast host in search of interesting stories for his show, visits the home of a retired sea captain named Howard. After learning about the walrus that saved Howard’s life, Wallace is drugged and passes out. Upon waking, Howard shares his sick plan for Wallace and gives the terrified man just enough time to make a frantic phone call for help before knocking him out again.

When Wallace comes to once again, Howard has completed his mission: surgically dismembering Wallace and sewing him into a walrus-shaped body made of human skin. Howard trains Wallace to be a walrus, and after a physical altercation, Howard is stabbed to death with one of Wallace’s “tusks” made out of human bone. Though Wallace is rescued, he has to live out his days in a monstrous body.

Of a group of friends forced to endure a hellish experience in a ghost town called Ambrose, Wade receives the sickest treatment from a couple of deranged brothers. To become one of the wax figures in the town’s wax museum, Wade is covered head to toe in burning hot wax, which stiffens to encase the still-living man.

When a friend attempts to save him, he finds that the wax is so attached to Wade’s skin that it cannot be removed without flaying him alive, so there is no hope for him.

On holiday in France, Rex’s girlfriend goes into a gas station and never returns. Panicked, Rex searches for his love, but she seems to have vanished into thin air. Three years later, he is still desperate for answers. He receives letters from her supposed captor asking him to meet, but the captor never appears.

After a televised plea, the man responsible for her disappearance tells Rex that the only way to know what happened to his girlfriend is to have the same experience she did. After being drugged, Rex wakes up to find that he is trapped in a box, buried underground with no hope of escape.

The audience does not know what the mutilated living man in a bag did to “deserve” such a punishment. Does that make his lot better or worse? In her quest for power, the bag man’s captor, Asami, sadistic and hellbent on revenge for perceived ills, makes the bag man completely dependent on her.

When the man comes out of the bag, he’s missing his feet, tongue, an ear, and three fingers. The man is so desperate for sustenance that he hungrily consumes Asami’s vomit. All told, he unquestionably suffers a fate worse than death.

Attempting to help a mentally ill friend, Anna comes to a home where her friend has slain a family she believed was responsible for mistreatment during her childhood. The friend then takes her own life.

Anna hears a sound from the basement and finds a mutilated young woman. As they try to escape, the young woman is shot, leaving Anna alone with sadistic strangers. Their leader explains that they seek to learn about the afterlife by tormenting young women in the hope that these “martyrs” will transcend and learn the secrets they desire.

Anna survives being horrifically flayed alive, whispers what she has discovered to their leader, and is left catatonic and alone. The film gives no clues about what is next for Anna.

After quitting her job at a nursing home to care for an elderly couple at a plantation, Caroline slowly teases out the dark mystery of the estate and its inhabitants. Determined to discover the secrets of hoodoo, she delves deeper into the trap before her until she finally finds herself on the receiving end of a body-swapping ritual.

Trapped in the body of a dying woman and force-fed a potion that causes paralysis, Caroline is taken from the house by paramedics, ostensibly to die slowly.

Adam, a photographer who chronicles people’s secrets and misdeeds in exchange for cash, finds himself in the crosshairs of the sadistic Jigsaw Killer. After being taken from his apartment, he awakens in a filthy bathroom chained to a pipe, with another man in a similar position and a corpse between them.

Jigsaw’s sickening “game” plays out as multiple people involved are forced to commit terrible acts or suffer the consequences. When all is said and done, Adam is the sole survivor in the bathroom. He has been fired at, electrocuted, and has no way to escape his shackles. The mastermind leaves him with only a “game over,” then locks him in the room to suffer alone.

After being molested as a young girl by her father, who worked in a meatpacking plant, Cheryl is triggered by the scent of meat and refuses to touch it. For a student project about people’s greatest fears, she is locked by a guy named Quaid in a room with a steak.

After several days, with nothing but the steak between herself and extreme hunger, she breaks down and eats the rotting meat. After forcing people to engage with their fears, Quaid tosses the dead body of one of her friends into the room with a knife and says, “Let’s see how hungry you have to be to get through that.” She is left locked in the room, forced to choose between death and cannibalism.