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Chess with Death
- 713 statements
- 134 feature instances
- 125 referencing feature instances
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A character gets into a contest of some sort with The Grim Reaper, Satan, or some other supernatural entity, usually with some dire consequence if the human loses. This is Older Than Feudalism, with examples dating back to Greek myths of the 5th century BC—Apollo had at least one musical duel, the Muses had another musical contest, and Athena had a weaving contest with Arachne (the details vary between different versions, but the end result is that Arachne is turned into a spider). Note that the Greek Gods were prone to throwing tantrums if they were beaten and cursing the mortals for it; having the supernatural entity take a defeat on the chin was a rarity. The most mimicked version is to have a dying man challenge The Grim Reaper to a chess game in return for a longer life, hence the trope title. See also Enemies with Death and Smart People Play Chess. But it doesn't have to be chess—if the player is allowed to pick the game, absolutely anything can happen. Sub-Trope of Hanging Up on the Grim Reaper. Compare Did You Just Scam Cthulhu? for when you cheat death in this game (which may be the origin of the idiomatic phrase). Also compare Judgement of the Dead, when Death evaluates the morality of your actions in life rather than your prowess at a game. See also The Problem with Fighting Death. Not to be confused with Human Chess where the pieces are humans and captured pieces are sometimes killed. As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware. |
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Chess with Death / int_11b7db91 | type |
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On Adventure Time we have Finn getting in a music battle against Death to save the soul of a plant. | |
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Chess with Death / int_12451e5f | type |
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This scene was lampooned in (500) Days of Summer, with Cupid replacing Death. | |
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Chess with Death / int_136469af | type |
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Pact, the protagonist challenges Conquest to a contest in order to safeguard his freedom, specifically mentioning The Seventh Seal. Conquest points out that the one challenged in the movie was Death, not Conquest-but he accepts anyway when it's pointed out to him that this is a chance to crush someone under his heel while they're engaged in a futile act of defiance, which is within his nature as much as it is in Death's nature to struggle with all living things. | |
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Chess with Death / int_177ef8a1 | type |
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In the myth of Alcestis, Heracles challenged Death to a wrestling match over the soul of his friend Admetus' beloved wife, to repay said friend's hospitality. Heracles won. | |
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Tales of Beedle the Bard- "The Tale of the Three Brothers". In which case each brother "tricks" death by crossing the river safely, and each wins a "prize". They unknowingly are putting up their lives for bargain, as the first brother (who wins an unbeatable wand), shouts about his good fortune so that another man slits his throat and steals it from him. The second brother has won a stone to reawaken the dead, and recalls back a past flame; but as the dead cannot belong among the living, his lover suffered back on Earth, and the second brother took his own life to be with her in the afterlife. The third brother had won a cloak of invisibility, which he used to "hide" from death until he was old and ready to "welcome Death as an old friend". | |
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Harbinger (Finmonster) (Danny Phantom, ParaNorman): Danny's ancestor did this to save his wife. | |
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Chess with Death / int_1adee40d | type |
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This is the whole point of Reaper's game in The World Ends with You, though you compete against other humans as well. In the first game, the competition is a seven-day gauntlet. All players that survive until the end get to choose one of them to come back to life, with the rest playing again the next week. In the sequel, the reaper's game has teams of players competing for points. At the end of the week, the top team gets a wish and the bottom team gets Erased. |
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Parodied hilariously in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. The boys challenge Death, but since they don't know the rules of Chess, they convince him to play other games... like Clue, Battleship, and Twister. Because Death is a Sore Loser, he keeps challenging them to "best two out of three", "best three out of five", and so forth until he finally gives up. In the original script (used for the novelization and comic adaptation), this becomes a Chekhov's Gun during the final showdown, wherein where Bill and Ted get killed several times by their evil robot duplicates and get Death to bring them back by bringing up all the times they beat him. | |
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In The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Death hates it when knights try to play chess with her. She explains that she doesn't even like chess and gets fed up enough to switch the pieces around when no one is looking. | |
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Jack from Fables played cards in a Louisiana swamp with the devil in disguise. At first it seemed like the devil had the upper hand and when Jack had nothing left to bet he offered up his soul, but only if the devil would give him his Bag of Holding the devil agreed and Jack won, having had four of a kind the entire time and simply waiting 'til the devil was cocky enough to bet the sack. | |
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In Reaper Man, Death refers to playing a game called "Exclusive Possession", which he won, even though his opponent had got three streets and all the utilities. | |
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A Halloween-themed episode of Benson involved Benson challenging Death to a game of Trivial Pursuit, wagering his life against that of a school bus full of children in an accident whom Death actually came to collect. While it at first seems like Death is cheating (the answers to the first questions Benson asks are Death Valley and the Dead Sea, respectively), Benson wins because Death just hasn't been keeping up with popular films. (The answer to the third question, which he misses, is Death Wish.) Benson struggles with his third question too ("What was the name of the pet pig on Green Acres?) but remembers at the last second the answer: Arnold Ziffel. | |
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Parodied in Bottom when Eddie — as part of a ploy to trick Richie into letting him back into the flat after being kicked out — plays on Richie's recent fortune-teller inspired paranoia about dying by dressing up as Death. Richie challenges him to the standard game of chess, which hits a snag when 'Death' admits he doesn't know the rules. Richie then suggests Cluedo, which hits a snag when 'Death' reveals that he knows perfectly well that Richie always cheats by looking at the mystery cards. They settle on I-Spy, which hits yet another snag when 'Death' betrays an inability to spell. | |
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Its sister site The Wanderer's Library has the story "For the Glory", where a former heavyweight champion challenges Death to a boxing match. He loses, no thanks to Death getting the hang of the sport far quicker than he anticipated. The story also notes that chess isn't the only game you can pick to play against Death; it can be any other sport, game, or activity of your choosing and he has to play along. | |
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The premise of Umineko: When They Cry is the main character getting trapped into playing a chess game (Although the way it plays out looks more like 13 Dead End Drive) with a witch - with one big catch - it's Human Chess with his family as the chess set. It's also nothing like chess. |
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In Problem Sleuth dead characters are almost always sentenced to a battle with Death in any board game other than chess. Death will play a board game with you even if you aren't dead. Such as the Game of Life. Death loves Life. Although some find it easier to simply walk out of the afterlife's door instead of playing. |
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In Coraline, the cat suggested this to the titular character since the Other Mother loves to play games. So Coraline challenged the Other Mother to a game where she has to find her parents and the three lost children's souls. If she wins, the Other Mother has to let her go. If she loses, she must stay with the Other Mother forever. As it turns out, the Other Mother has no intention of letting Coraline go even if she wins the game, so Coraline has to trick her into letting her escape. | |
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Carmilla the Series: In the finale, a newly-mortal Carmilla gambles her life to bring Laura back from her Heroic Sacrifice. "A life to gamble for a life." | |
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At the climax of Summer Wars, Natsuki takes advantage of the fact that Love Machine treats everything as a game and played several matches of Koi-Koi with it. She managed to make a mere card game look epic and won back the millions of stolen accounts. If she lost? A missile-powered satellite will crash into a nuclear power station around the world and... yeah. | |
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Darkwing Duck dies in a motorcycle accident because he refused to wear his helmet in the heat of pursuit. Eventually he challenges the Grim Reaper for one more hour in the world of the living so he can defeat the criminal he was chasing. The game? Darkwing simply has to do something that Death can't do; he does a cute finger trick with his hands. Death, lacking necessary muscles, tendons, and other body parts, fails to copy him. | |
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In Discworld Noir, Death remembers once being challenged to a game of "flog" (Golf). The soul he's collecting asks what kind of game it is. | |
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Pushing Up Roses discusses the history of the trope in her Best Portrayals of Death video. She even does the video in skeleton makeup and has a chessboard in front of her at one point. | |
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In Reaper, Sam plays quarters (a game bouncing coins into a shot glass) with the Devil. He loses. He plays again and is going to win... but an angel CRUSHES HIS HAND. 'Cause the forces of good don't want him to win. While it's all part of their plan, they really didn't need to be such assholes about it. | |
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In Motörhead's music video for their version of "Hellraiser", Lemmy plays poker with Pinhead and wins with, fittingly, the ace of spades. | |
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The animated film Animalympics lampoons The Seventh Seal's iconic scene mentioned above with the film being called "Price and winnies" and directed by the avian Ingmar Birdman. The role of the Death is played by the horse Bjorn Freeborg and we see the famous scene with him saying the following: | |
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The "Chess Event" against Medivh in Karazhan. Failure to win the game results in the players' deaths. Medivh cheats. | |
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Constance Verity Destroys the Universe: Connie once played a game of chess with a Mountain God to keep it from sinking all of Asia into the ocean. | |
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Scrubs once featured J.D. playing Connect Four with Death on behalf of a patient in an Imagine Spot, and Death wins on the diagonal, prompting J.D. to say "Pretty sneaky, Death!" in a parody of an old commercial. | |
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Dilbert: Dogbert once escaped death by walking away from the game (Scrabble in this case) on his turn and leaving the issue unresolved. Death should've specified a time limit beforehand. | |
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In the Calvin and Hobbes fic "Hello Operator, Please Give Me Number Nine", a college-age Susie challenges Death to Calvinball. | |
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In "Meatballs or Consequences", an Animaniacs pastiche of Seventh Seal, they play checkers (as Dot and Yakko say that chess is unknown to them) for Wakko's life with Death. (The Warners win, but they blatantly cheat, and for some reason, Death fails to notice.) They play to stay together, which Death interprets as taking all three, but Death finds them too annoying to keep dead. | |
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Animaniacs | hasFeature |
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SCP Foundation: SCP-1440 once challenged Death to a card game for his life and won. Four times, in fact. Now he wishes he didn't. Its sister site The Wanderer's Library has the story "For the Glory", where a former heavyweight champion challenges Death to a boxing match. He loses, no thanks to Death getting the hang of the sport far quicker than he anticipated. The story also notes that chess isn't the only game you can pick to play against Death; it can be any other sport, game, or activity of your choosing and he has to play along. |
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SCP Foundation (Website) | hasFeature |
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In Supernatural Dean has one of these with Death: in exchange for bringing Sam's soul back to his body Dean has to do his job for a day. Dean ends up failing the test, but Death returns the soul anyway. Firstly because his real reason for the task was to show Dean what forces he was messing with by constantly resurrecting, and also because Sam and Dean's current investigation suited his purposes. He may have wanted a day off too. | |
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Earthworm Jim: And in true Discworld style, neither of them know what "the little horsey guys" do and they decide to just flip a coin instead. Death wins (he used a Two-Headed Coin) but it turns out to be All Just a Dream (the episode where this happens is a parody of The Wizard of Oz). |
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In one issue of Dylan Dog, a guy in a coma challenges Death at a chess game. If he wins, he gets to wake up and live; the catch is that every time he loses a piece, he must name someone he cares about, and that person will die. At the end, the guy loses but reveals that he actually wanted to kill those acquaintances and then die. Death, furious, decides to revive him anyway; at the same time, Dylan ends up killing the man's physical body in the world of the living. As a result, the man is left neither alive nor dead, and finds himself stranded in an endless white void forever. | |
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The entire premise of Yu-Gi-Oh!. In early volumes of the manga, Yugi challenges naughty people (mostly bullies and liars) into various "Shadow Games", and punishes them once they inevitably lose (he's the Yu-Gi-Oh! - the King of Games, after all), typically by trapping them in endless illusions with his mystical ancient power. Later in the series when the manga starts to be written in arcs and adopted in the anime (focusing almost exclusively on the Duel Monsters card game), Yugi has to face his matches that are equally capable of inflicting Penalty Games to his and his friends' souls, such as Bakura and Marik. | |
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In the Discworld series, Death is often challenged to these. Again, with the twist that he can't lose (unless he wants to). For example: In Maskerade, Granny Weatherwax challenges Death to a poker game for the soul of a dying child, with the stakes being that if she wins he'll instead take the sick cow in his place (but if he wins, it's double or nothing; Granny has to put her own life on the line as well). Granny shows four queens — and Death immediately folds despite having four ones, because even Death knows not to cross Granny Weatherwax... and because Granny initially tries to cheat, but Death then insists they exchange hands (because he also wants to save the child and always wins at any game). In Reaper Man, Death refers to playing a game called "Exclusive Possession", which he won, even though his opponent had got three streets and all the utilities. In Discworld Noir, Death remembers once being challenged to a game of "flog" (Golf). The soul he's collecting asks what kind of game it is. In The Light Fantastic, Twoflower attempts to teach Death (and the rest of the Four Horsemen) how to play Bridge. It doesn't come easy: The Discworld Roleplaying Game mentions this, and adds that it must be a game with a clear winner and loser; which rules out challenging him to an RPG. |
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In Maskerade, Granny Weatherwax challenges Death to a poker game for the soul of a dying child, with the stakes being that if she wins he'll instead take the sick cow in his place (but if he wins, it's double or nothing; Granny has to put her own life on the line as well). Granny shows four queens — and Death immediately folds despite having four ones, because even Death knows not to cross Granny Weatherwax... and because Granny initially tries to cheat, but Death then insists they exchange hands (because he also wants to save the child and always wins at any game). | |
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In The Light Fantastic, Twoflower attempts to teach Death (and the rest of the Four Horsemen) how to play Bridge. It doesn't come easy: | |
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In Pirate101 Captain Blood manages to obtain immortality when he challenges Death to a game of poker. However, it's not because he beat Death. He's immortal because after Death showed a winning hand he left the table for a bathroom break. Since he has never played his hand, Death still hasn't technically won so Death can't claim his soul. Death is ticked about this and has rewritten the rules to ensure this doesn't happen again. | |
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Irregular Webcomic! had an early running gag where the various Deaths would admit that they had to accept any game as a challenge, whereupon the recently-departed would find some game their Death had never even heard of. Challenges have included poker, Quidditch, pod-racing, and Myth-busting, which ended up being the origin of Hitler's Brain in a Jar. "Pirate Slang" was deemed too humiliating by the Deaths, who let the pirates return to life. It is also stated that chess is no longer an option since in the 1970s, no Russians had died for about a decade. Apparently an earlier strip where chess was used was forgotten - though with the huge amounts of time-travel in the comic, this may refer to another earth. The Deaths do seem to be a bit trigger-happy with this, accepting the idea that Quidditch was just a coin toss. |
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The Twilight Zone (1959): In the episode "One for the Angels", a salesman talks death into letting him stay alive until he can make the sales pitch of a lifetime, e.g., "one for the angels". Death agrees, whereupon the salesman smugly quits his job. Unfortunately, Death still has to take a soul, and chooses a little girl who lives in the same building. To save her life, the former salesman distracts Death with a series of enthralling sales pitches, keeping Death occupied until after the appointed time — and willingly sacrificing his life in the process since now that he's made his sales pitch of a lifetime, his bargain with Death is now complete and Death gently walks with him into Heaven. The episode "A Game of Pool" features this when a man (Jesse Cardiff) who dedicated his life to pool would "give anything" for a chance to play Fats Brown, the pool player that everyone says was the best, and better than Jesse is. Fats Brown then gets a call from his heavenly pool table to report to Jesse's pool hall, where Fats then appears and accepts Jesse's challenge — if the stakes are for Jesse's life. Jesse accepts, and they play pool. Both are very good, but Fats gets on Jesse's nerves when he notes that all Jesse did was pool — he didn't get married or see the world or anything. Jesse thinks that Fats is just trying to psych him out. Before making the final shot, Fats says that winning this game may have undesired consequences — but Jesse blows him off. (Fats adds that he was required to say that.) Jesse makes the shot, and Fats acknowledges that Jesse is, in fact, the best pool player ever. Jesse laughs hysterically for a while — but the scene then cuts to Jesse asleep at the heavenly pool table, getting an announcement to report to a pool hall in Sandusky, Ohio. In the meantime, Fats Brown has gone fishing. |
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The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Dealer's Choice", Pete, Jake and Tony correctly deduce that Nick, who has taken Norman's place at their regular poker game, is the Devil and that he is here for one of them. Nick suggests that they make a game of it: whoever picks the highest card "wins" and gets to go with him. Tony picks an eight, Jake picks a seven and the unfortunate Pete picks a jack. Tony suggests that Pete and Nick play a game of one-on-one, all or nothing. Nick agrees and tries to put up $18 (three sixes) but instead puts up $19 at Pete's insistence. As it is dealer's choice, Pete chooses a game of lowball, where the lower hand wins and players don't want matching cards. Being the Devil, Nick has been getting three sixes in every hand. Pete gets four fives and Nick gets three sixes, meaning that Pete loses. However, Marty, who is too innocent for the Devil to trick, reveals that Nick's Tarot death card is in fact a fourth six. After been caught out, Nick leaves empty-handed, though not before filling Pete's empty kitchen with food and beer. In "I of Newton", Sam is a mathematician trying to solve a complex problem. In frustration, he says he'd trade his soul for the answer. And sure enough, a demon appears. The devil (wearing a red T-shirt with an ever-changing series of slogans, the most memorable being "Hell is a City Much Like Newark") says the only way Sam can save himself is to come up with a request the demon can't perform - i.e., a riddle he can't solve, a game he can't win, an object he can't retrieve, and so on. The demon describes in fantastic detail how he can instantaneously appear anywhere, any time; how he can zip into and out of parallel universes, imaginary dimensions, impossible situations. At last the demon says, "What is your request?" And Sam's reply? "Get lost." |
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And then there's another from The Twilight Zone (2002) where the devil shows up to a few friends' poker game, intending to take one of their souls. When the soul he picks challenges him to a card game to decide it, the devil slyly accepts and promptly gets caught cheating. To save face, he decided to fill their fridge with beer instead of killing them all, proving that even the devil could be a good sport. | |
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Death and the Maiden: Death's not very good at board games, but it's still not a good idea. He got so sick of challengers that he beat one to death with the chessboard. | |
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In The Order of the Stick, it all depends on choosing the right contest. | |
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The Young Ones: The episode "Nasty" starts with a direct homage to The Seventh Seal, where Death loses. Then kills his opponent anyway. | |
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Ready Player One: The first Easter-egg challenge is to navigate through a recreation of the Tomb of Horrors D&D module. The Lich waiting at the end challenges the player to a joust, as in the old video game.note The absurdity of the situation is not lost on Wade Losing the game would result in a fight, which a low-level character like Parzival would certainly not survive. | |
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Wolverine has at times engaged in battle with Lazaer, the Angel of Death, for the right to return to his body. | |
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Exalted: there is the demon Sigereth, The Player of Gamesnote part of Madelrada, That Which Wears Down The Mountains; who herself is part of the Yozi known as Kimberry, The Sea That Marched Against The Flame. You can issue a challenge to her, either by sorcery or by being a game master of sufficient repute and casting a personally written letter of challenge to her into the sea. You can wager anything you have against her, but if you wager yourself and lose, you're turned into a soulless mannequin. If you win, you can demand something that Sigereth has, including restoring someone who lost to her. Challenging Death itself is not possible though, due to the No-Resurrection meta-rule. | |
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One of the 101 game scenarios, called Haunts, in Betrayal at House on the Hill, has players attempting this trope. The other players (except for a traitor) are expected to help the one stuck playing against death cheat, running around the house finding items that help the chess player cheat to defeat Death. This is expected and usually required, as Death is nearly impossible to beat fairly, having a massive Knowledge stat and even getting to rerolling any blank dice after his first roll. | |
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According to Kilian Experience, Death is really bad at karaoke. | |
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Star Wars Uncut: Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader play chess instead of having their lightsaber duel in a 15-second clip inspired by The Seventh Sign. | |
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A /tg/ DM put Death into his◊ Dungeons & Dragons game, and allowed dead PCs to challenge him to a game of their choosing. If they won, they came back to life. Of course, Death is extremely overpowered and a master of bullshitting so he almost never loses. After a near Total Party Kill, Death naturally shows up to reap their souls and of course, they all challenge him. First, the fighter challenges him to a Body-Count Competition against an infinite horde of weak enemies. Death wins by spamming AoE spells. Next, the cleric challenges him to a contest of who can do the most acts pleasing the cleric's god in 24 hours. He then communes with his god and says that because the contest was his idea, he should therefore share credit for every act Death does, and then does a ritualistic dance in order to break the tie and beat Death by one. Death then goes out and massacres a bunch of the god's worshippers, losing the contest. He brings the cleric back to life as was agreed, and the cleric is immediately smote by his angry god and dies again. After all, he did say he should share the credit for everything Death did... The wizard then challenges Death to a riddle contest. Whoever gets three wrong first loses. Death wins by making up a bunch of bullshit Insane Troll Logic riddles that nobody would ever be able to figure out naturally. Then, in a surprising turn of events, the sole surviving member of the party, a binder, challenges Death to a game of planar hide-and-seek. If he can't find Death within two weeks, then Death can kill him too, but if he can, Death has to revive the entire party. Death finds this proposal interesting and goes off to hide. The binder simply turns around and fights the enemies that wiped the rest of his party. When they inevitably curb-stomp him, Death of course shows up to reap his soul. "Found you." |
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Death appears in Chilly Beach to take away Dale, who opts to challenge him and then proceeds to annoy Death by taking too long to pick what game they're going to play. It leads to this exchange: | |
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The concept is parodied in Beetleborgs, where the Grim Reaper is Little Ghoul's uncle, and plays chess with his niece simply to pass the time. | |
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Farscape. One of John Crichton's Imagine Spots with Harvey, an Imaginary Friend version of the Big Bad Scorpius, involves them playing chess on a battlefield. Just when you think the scene is going to riff on the Chess with Death trope, they've suddenly changed to checkers and then Go Fish. | |
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The Sims has had several variations, but only The Sims 3 plays the trope with actual chess. Living sims can challenge the Grim Reaper for a dying relative's life (assuming a chessboard is present in the vicinity). He's a strong, but not invincible chess player; Sims can generally count on succeeding if they have 8 Logic skill points or more out of 10. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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The Flash has escaped Death by beating him in a race on numerous occasions. This is even a game mechanic in the GBA version of Justice League Heroes! | |
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During the game-focused stories in Haruhi Suzumiya, notably the baseball game and "Day of Sagittarius", if the SOS Brigade lost either of these games, they believe Haruhi would become infuriated and potentially end the world. | |
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The main villain of the Banjo-Kazooie series, Gruntilda Winkybunion, sets up the penultimate confrontation with the character as a GAME SHOW in the first two games. Not only that, but in the second game she gives quiz questions during the ACTUAL final battle; answering them makes her go easier on you because she's... just that nice? More likely obsessive-compulsive, given her reliance on speaking in rhymes in the first game. |
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A Halloween episode of Pinky and the Brain sees Brain challenge one "Mr. Itch" (implied to be Satan) to rhythmic gymnastics for Pinky's soul (which he had voluntarily offered to Mr. Itch in exchange for Brain becoming the ruler of the world) — but Mr. Itch specifies that if Brain wins, he loses control of the world and can never try to take it over again. Brain goes through with it anyway, and his routine is scored a perfect 10. Mr. Itch barely even tries, but as the judges are his own minions, they give him a score of 11. The Reset Button is only hit when Pinky reveals that he actually sold his soul for two things, one of which Mr. Itch cannot provide, which means the original deal is void. | |
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"The Soldier And Death": The titular soldier plays card games with a bunch of demons, and wins every round thanks to his magic pack of cards. | |
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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: Will Turner's game of Liar's Dice against Davy Jones, pitting his soul against the key to the Dead Man's Chest. In the spirit of the game itself, the trope is subverted—all Will really wants is the key's location, so he can steal it later. Interestingly enough, he technically loses, but just as Jones is starting to gloat—"Welcome to the crew, boy..."—Will's father ups the bet so as to save Will. | |
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Dante's Inferno begins with the eponymous character getting murdered and the Reaper coming to take his soul. The game's first battle tutorial is the fight between Dante and the Reaper, which ends with Dante crushing the Reaper and taking his scythe. | |
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The opening to The Colbert Report's "Cheating Death" segment shows Stephen Colbert tricking Death into looking away, then rearranging the pieces, as well as several other forms of cheating such as playing a Shell Game. In the final episode, Death finally catches Stephen cheating and tries to kill him, so Stephen shoots and kills Death in self-defense, thus making himself immortal. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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The Sims allowed a Sim to play a game of rock-paper-scissors with the Grim Reaper for another dying Sim's life. The reaper is predisposed to declining the challenge outright, but if he accepts there's about a 50-50 chance the Sim will win the game. If the Sim loses, there's a further 50-50 chance the dying Sim will be brought back as a zombie. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_7f640c58 | comment |
The Sims 2 featured a similar mechanic, albeit with a game of chance rather than rock-paper-scissors; the reaper will also always accept the challenge. This time, the relationship between the challenging Sim and the dying Sim determines the chance of success: If it's below 25 on a scale of -100 to 100, it's a guaranteed fail. The maximum chance is capped at 90%. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_7f640c59 | comment |
The Sims 3 involved actual chess, but The Sims has put several spins on it in other games: The Sims allowed a Sim to play a game of rock-paper-scissors with the Grim Reaper for another dying Sim's life. The reaper is predisposed to declining the challenge outright, but if he accepts there's about a 50-50 chance the Sim will win the game. If the Sim loses, there's a further 50-50 chance the dying Sim will be brought back as a zombie. The Sims 2 featured a similar mechanic, albeit with a game of chance rather than rock-paper-scissors; the reaper will also always accept the challenge. This time, the relationship between the challenging Sim and the dying Sim determines the chance of success: If it's below 25 on a scale of -100 to 100, it's a guaranteed fail. The maximum chance is capped at 90%. The Sims 4 massively expanded the range of mechanics by which Sims can plead for someone's life - by which we mean there's an entire guide for it on the fan wiki. Examples include seducing the reaper (10% success chance), demanding he change his mind (40%), wailing about the death (33%), toying with him via voodoo magic (the chance varies but increases with repeated attempts), and yelling at him (always fails). Which options are available at any given time depends on the mood and skills of the living Sim. |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_7f640c5a | comment |
The Sims 4 massively expanded the range of mechanics by which Sims can plead for someone's life - by which we mean there's an entire guide for it on the fan wiki. Examples include seducing the reaper (10% success chance), demanding he change his mind (40%), wailing about the death (33%), toying with him via voodoo magic (the chance varies but increases with repeated attempts), and yelling at him (always fails). Which options are available at any given time depends on the mood and skills of the living Sim. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_8276c475 | comment |
The eponymous character in the old Genesis game Chakan: The Forever Man gained immortality by beating Death in a duel. The point of the game is to get him to lose it. Death even shows up as an Optional Boss. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_82d7e030 | comment |
Three Panel Soul inverted the trope - the mortal narrator won the Devil's eternal soul in a game of mancala. He eventually traded it to an angel for "the ideal method of grilling grilled corn on the cob." | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_83443877 | comment |
And in Mono Puff's "The Devil Went Down to Newport", Satan and God go "surfing for souls". God wins because Satan's hooves make it difficult to stand on a surfboard. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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Parodied on an episode of Kaeloo, where Stumpy challenges the Grim Reaper to a rap battle. As the Reaper has actually come for Adele the flower's soul and not Stumpy's, he blatantly ignores him. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_861b3b3a | comment |
Modern MoGal: It's actually in the Grim Reaper rulebook that disputes between Grim Reapers should be solved with chess. | |
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Chess with Death / int_862b18a1 | comment |
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, a female Death offers Roxton several chances to win back his life. Roxton accepts that he died and actually requests that she just claim him, but she says that if he doesn't try, his friends' lives will be forfeit, too. Death uses an hourglass to give the games a time limit, and Roxton fails at each one: Retrieve a diamond from a maze made of walls of fire (ran out of time), Retrieve a raptor egg (he tripped and dropped it), Guess which bowl holds oysters (guessed wrong). Each time he loses, Death captures another one of his friends. The final game is: shoot his own girlfriend, or himself. Roxton shoots the hourglass, making it impossible for the game to end. Death concedes victory to Roxton and lets them all go. | |
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Card Shark: Getting caught cheating usually involves getting kicked out of the venue, but some chapters cause Eugene to be killed by their opponent. This sends them to Hades where they are given one more chance for life if they can beat Death in a hand of cards. Naturally the player has to cheat to win. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_8ba4613a | comment |
In the Death Note fic "Kira, Sweetheart" L gets Ryuk hooked on EverQuest. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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In Lexx, the undead Kai plays chess to win back his soul... but his motivation isn't to rejoin the living, but to finally, properly die. His opponent is Prince, who is either Death or the Devil, or both. Kai wins, and Prince does eventually make good on his offer. However, because Prince is a dick, he deliberately chooses a moment where Kai's death will have the most impact on his friends. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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Momentarily referenced during "We're Doing a Sequel" in Muppets Most Wanted, where the Swedish Chef is shown playing chess with the Reaper. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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One comic in Exiern featuring a female death has an old man challenge her to a game of chess for his life. She strips naked, and he can't concentrate on the game enough to win. | |
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In Roommates, James really just wanted to get a glass of milk (and maybe midnight snack) from the kitchen but got invited to a friendly game of poker by, well, a Fair Folk Psychopomp, a Humanoid Abomination, an Anthropomorphic Personification of Fear and a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl of the vengeful type. As he survived the experience they either let him decline or he won, we don't know which he didn't tell. | |
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The climax of the 1986 film Crossroads (1986) is a guitar battle between Eugene and Jack Butler (the Devil's chosen one) for Willie Brown's soul. Eugene wins. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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In Grant Morrison's Seaguy, the eponymous hero plays chess with a none-too-clever Death who was visually unable to distinguish black from white. | |
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In Top 10 spin-off Smax, there is actually a specific Death responsible for playing chess with "wily peasants". His name is Lionel. Naturally, he even looks like the Grim Reaper in The Seventh Seal. Just as naturally, he isn't very good at chess (that's why the peasants always win). | |
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In Richard Adams' Watership Down, the story of "El-Ahrairah and the Black Rabbit of Inle" invokes this trope as the rabbit hero attempts to maneuver the Black Rabbit, a god of death, into accepting his life in exchange for those of the rabbits in his warren - once in a game of bob-stones (the lapine equivalent of liar's dice) and then in a storytelling competition. El-Ahrairah loses both times. The ending implies this is how El-Ahrairah ascends to become a Trickster God. The utterly crushing defeats (both psychologically and physically; while the Black Rabbit is not evil, there are consequences for challenging him) in the very things he's legendary for and subsequent realization that all his cleverness and manipulative skills did nothing more than drive him and his charges straight to this point finally purges him of hubris and makes his intended sacrifice worthwhile. |
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Regular Show had Skips arm wrestling with Death with his soul on the line to bring back Rigby, whom he had killed in the first place. Skips cheated by using an arm brace (that Rigby used previously to beat him), but got away with it. This is what happens in pretty much any episode featuring Death. Various characters have defeated him at bowling and hot dog eating contests in order to retain their mortal souls. Probably this is the reason he started instead to ask them to babysit his son Thomas instead of challenging them in order to let them live. |
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In the Futurama episode "Hell Is Other Robots", the Robot Devil explains that the Fairness In Hell Act requires him to give visitors the option of challenging him to a fiddle contest to win back a robot's soul (in this case, Bender's). A solid gold fiddle is even part of the dealnote Fry asks about its practicality, thinking it'd weigh hundreds of pounds and sound terrible; the Robot Devil says it's more for show than anything else. Losers only get a smaller, silver fiddle, and the Robot Devil may kill them at his discretion (in this case, Fry). Of course, playing well on a solid gold fiddle is pretty hard as it is, and the Robot Devil's prehensile tail serves as a third arm. Leela, who accepted the challenge with the explanation that playing the fiddle was just like the drums, yells "Time for the drum solo!" and beats the Robot Devil unconscious with the gold fiddle. | |
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In one issue of Ghost Rider, Ghost Rider races against Death for the lives of a man, a little girl, and himself. The Rider cheated by kicking Death into a ravine. It should be noted that Death mentioned before they began how There Are No Rules. Before kicking Death's cycle, Johnny Blaze commented in his thoughts how he normally wouldn't do that to a cyclist, but Death isn't a normal cyclist. |
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"The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was": The youngster spent three nights in a haunted castle, where he plays nine-pins with a bunch of skeletons. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_a6543322 | comment |
In Touhou Project, defeating a Shinigami who comes for a human's life in a duel will extend their lifespan. However, it's usually Celestials and Hermits, ascended humans, who are able to consistently defeat the Shinigamis. Tenshi's lucky in that the only shinigami to ever defeat her was only the ferrywoman of the Sanzu river - and was only after her because she was killing spirits. |
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In The Witcher, the ghost of a gambler challenges Geralt to a popular dice game for the soul of a boy Geralt has become guardian of. When challenged to mortal combat by a more powerful spirit of death for a soul, Geralt remarks, "Thank God, I was afraid you wanted to play chess." Although Geralt can just beat the gambling ghost to true death using his sword if the player chooses. Which is what he does anyway if he loses at dice. |
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Chess with Death | |
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In Wellington Paranormal, Officer O'Leary plays the board game Guess Who? with Satan — or more specifically a Bland-Name Product version called "Who The Hell". | |
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Chess with Death | |
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The Seventh Seal example is parodied in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, with the heroes besting the Reaper (who looks almost exactly like he did in The Seventh Seal) instead in games like Battleship, Clue, and Twister. The Reaper is a Sore Loser here, insisting on a rematch each time he loses. Eventually the Reaper gives up and joins them. The multiple wins become a plot point in the novelization and comic adaptation, where the boys get killed several times during the final showdown with their Evil Twins and make Death bring them back each time by citing all the games. Likewise, in the novelization, the villain tries to invoke this after he is killed, coincidentally suggesting the same games Bill and Ted played with Death. The Grim Reaper refuses since he just found out he is really bad at those games. | |
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One man has the audacity to play Lawn Darts with Death. That man is Flaming Carrot. | |
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In Six Feet Under, Nate has accidentally taken ecstasy, and dreams of playing Chinese Checkers with his dad, Death, and Life. Death And Life (a white man in a suit and a large black woman respectively) start having sex, and Nate's dad quotes the Bhagavad Gita. | |
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In Robot Chicken, Spawn challenges Malebolgia to a fiddle contest. Spawn's act is flawless, while Malebolgia sounds like he's scraping a chalkboard. Unfortunately, the demons are the judges, so Spawn loses. | |
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The Magnus Archives: The dying soldier in the folk tale in "Cheating Death" challenges Death to a game. When Death offers him a choice of chess, dominoes, and dice, the soldier rejects all of those, takes out his own deck of cards, and challenges Death to faro. This is partly because he knows that Death must be too good to lose any game that isn't pure luck, and partly because the soldier knows how to cheat at faro. It turns out that there are actually multiple Deaths, each of whom was once a mortal who, upon winning a game against a previous Death, was doomed to take over from them until they find someone who can beat them (which is difficult because they become unsurpassedly skilled at all games and unable to play badly on purpose). Oh, and it's not just a folk tale - that soldier became one of them. | |
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Return to Zork's final showdown pits the player against the Big Bad Morpheus in a game of Survivor for both their own lives and the Kingdom of Zork. The game is chess-like and only has two pieces. The Mage Canuk and The Wizard Trembyle, who actually are those two characters that have been turned to stone. As well as all the other major magic wielders in the game whose statues blankly observe the contest. If Morpheus wins, the player shares the fate of the others. If the player wins, the spell over the others is broken, and they use their considerable power to send him back to...where is he from again? | |
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The final stage of Guitar Hero 3 is a guitar battle against the Devil for your soul, to a heavy-metal remix of The Devil Went Down to Georgia. Charlie Daniels has railed against this version, because of the possibility—make that probability—that the player loses (and thus the Devil wins). |
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Short film The Dove, another Bergman parody, has the heroine playing badminton with Death. | |
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Warhammer 40,000: A variation. Eldar Solitaires are the most powerful of the Dance Battler Harlequins, but their soul is forfeit to Slaanesh when they die. But when they do, the Laughing God Cegorach can try to trick Slaanesh into letting go of the soul, though how is not explained. | |
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In Witches' Legacy 11: Rise of the Ancient the Ancient One plays a board game version of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors with the Shadow Guard, with her return to the living world as the wager. When he protests her victory, she suggests and wins a rematch, resulting in the release of a number of imprisoned witch souls. | |
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In the The Demonata series by Darren Shan, the first real scary scene has Grubbs' mother, dad, and sister brutally butchered because they lost a game of chess against Lord Loss. The same book ends with Grubbs playing Loss in a game of chess for the same reason his parents did. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan comic Time Fades, Pinkie makes a deal with Death. If she can make Death laugh, she gets one free mulligan. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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In the Doctor Who serial "The Celestial Toymaker", the First Doctor and his companions have to play games against the Celestial Toymaker, who appears again a few times in the Expanded Universe. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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The ballet Checkmate focuses on a chess game between Love (who plays with red pieces) and Death (who plays with black ones). The chess pieces then come to life and act out the game. It results in one of the Red Knights falling for the Black Queen and being unable to kill her and getting (literally) stabbed in the back for his trouble. Naturally, this leads to Death winning the game and the Black Queen taking the Red King's crown. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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In Survival of the Fittest V5, Tessa Blackridge, given her choice of game (except Twister) to challenge Death for her life, chooses Go Fish. She loses. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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The Discworld Roleplaying Game mentions this, and adds that it must be a game with a clear winner and loser; which rules out challenging him to an RPG. | |
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Chess with Death / int_cca8c3f6 | type |
Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_cca8c3f6 | comment |
One route players can take through the inner region in Talisman forces the player to "Dice with Death" by rolling dice against the Grim Reaper. If the player rolls higher, the player's character can progress further towards the Crown of Command. If the Grim Reaper rolls higher, the character loses a life and must dice with death again on subsequent turns until the player either wins or the character is killed. | |
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The event that "Tribute" chronicles is seemingly the climactic battle against Satan in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, meaning that said best song in the world would be the D's half of the song "Beelzeboss". However, it seems the D was embellishing a bit considering how their survival was mostly luck and had nothing to do with their song, which Satan said was lame. Then again, they both get stoned after the battle, and it is implied that they write "Tribute" then, so that probably is how their inebriated minds remembered the battle. | |
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Deadlands: Hucksters get their powers by wagering bits of their souls against evil spirits in mental contests visualized as a game, usually poker. In game terms the Huckster draws a poker hand and the results depend on how good it is. | |
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Phantomarine: Lampshaded. Cheth offers a chess game as a potential challenge. Phaedra turns it down, commenting "You must've played millions of chess games." So they play a different game. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_d9c4a85e | comment |
Used in one issue of Marvel Adventures: Avengers. The Avengers end up playing Human Chess with Galactus over the fate of an alien world. Hulk screws up and it's a stalemate, so they try in a human-scaled stadium baseball.◊ Ant-Man screws it up, so they play poker. Hulk screws up again, and then Spider-Man mentions that he's hungry and they end up in an infinite-star restaurant. | |
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Chess with Death | |
Chess with Death / int_d9c602eb | comment |
The South Park episode You Have Zero Friends has Stan being sucked into Facebook, in a parody of TRON. Once there, he faces off with his "profile" in a game of...Yahtzee. | |
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In Fallen London this is one of a number of ways for your character to return to life after being killed. Notably, the more you play him, the more he ups his game; at his best, he's practically impossible to beat by mortals like you (going by the sheer difficulty of the Watchful challenge needed). You can also play dice, which stay random and slightly in your favor. | |
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In Casey and Andy, beating the devil at chess to undo selling his soul was part of Quantum Cop's Gambit Roulette to defeat Quantum Crook in one Story Arc. | |
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In American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Shadow plays checkers with the god Czernobog, who must join Shadow and Mr. Wednesday on their quest if Shadow wins, but will bash Shadow's brains out with a sledgehammer if Shadow loses. When Shadow does lose, he asks for one more game, same terms. Czernobog responds, "How can it be same terms? You want I should kill you twice?" Shadow points out that the Exact Words is that Czernobog gets one swing; as he is an old man, he might well miss, so the second game will be for a second swing. Shadow wins, and Czernobog agrees to the terms: he will help them, and then he gets one swing. At the end, Czernobog takes his swing - but just taps Shadow's forehead with the hammer. In Slavic mythology, Czernobog was half of a duology, the other half being his good twin Bielebog whom Czernobog is now becoming. However, he says that he will not completely become Bielebog until the next day, and chose to give Shadow just an honorary tap out of respect for him and his actions. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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In Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher, Socrates and his daughter Ari are sent to the philosophers' afterlife realm after getting into a car accident. Ari convinces the Arbiter there to let Socrates return back to the living world (she's actually still 'alive', but Socrates is not) if he can give an acceptable answer to a centuries-old "wager" of what the true source of morality is — a wager that incidentally has been answered correctly only once in all of human history. Oh, and if he fails, both of them will become trapped forever in the afterlife. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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DragonFable: Ash Dragonblade will, in his storyline, challenge Death to Tic-Tac-Toe because it's Serious Business. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer lampshades this trope. | |
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer | hasFeature |
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Chess with Death | |
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Also parodied in Life and Death (not to be confused with the above) as Steve (Death) has anger management problems when he loses. And for goodness sake, don't try it with pool. | |
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Chess with Death / int_e580d929 | comment |
Parodied in Big Wolf on Campus, in which the eponymous character's knowledge of the trope causes him to impulsively challenge Death to a game of chess, or as he calls it, "the one with the towers and the horsies... right?" Naturally, he loses, but does manage to convince Death to play another game of checkers, and loses. Then Battleship, loses. Then Candyland (which he was a master at). By the time they try to pull out Barrel of Monkeys, Death's had enough. | |
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In The Gamer's Alliance, the rebel leader Mae Torazo ends up playing chess with the Grim Reaper after her death. She wins the game and is allowed to possess her corpse for a limited period of time to have her revenge on the people who murdered her. | |
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Chess with Death | |
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Parodied in the first Family Guy to feature Death. While hanging out at the Griffins' trying to work off his sprained ankle, he and Lois play Life. | |
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Family Guy | hasFeature |
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Chess with Death | |
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Groo the Wanderer once had a sword fight with Death. Groo won. | |
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Chess with Death / int_f0f2af75 | comment |
In Kukuburi, the female protagonist plays battleship with a well-dressed, if tacky, skeleton Card-Carrying Villain whom she takes to be Death (but later refutes this misconception). The ships take the form of the flying whales present in the environment. She does not know that the attacks are reflected as bombs thrown against real flying whales - including the whale on which her friends are travelling in an attempt to rescue her. Besides, he cheats. | |
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In Martha Is Dead, Guilia dreams of meeting Death with Martha not long after her boyfriend dies and she is shot. Death can't tell them apart but tells the girls it is time for Guilia to die. The girls drew lots by tossing a medallion and then the one that loses goes with him, trusting the choice to Fate. Death knows that while Fate plays by its own rules, Fate is Death's ally and would always choose the proper girl. However, the medallion only had Martha's name on it and thus both Fate and Death are cheated. | |
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An episode of The Mask has Stanley signing a contract for good luck to the Devil (who's passing off as a guy named "Bub"). When the time to collect the soul comes, The Mask decides to compete against Bub in a dancing contest at the Coco Bongo. | |
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In King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, Alexander gets to challenge Death to save the souls of his lover's parents AND to leave the Realm of the Dead free. The challenge is especially difficult: make Death cry. Alexander succeeds. | |
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The original promotional video for "Vérone" from Romeo et Juliette: De La Haine a l'Amour included Prince Escalus playing chess with a mysterious and unidentified old man while the events of the story the musical is based on play out around them in a highly compressed format. Given that promo videos for French musicals are often designed and filmed long before the show itself opens or is even being properly rehearsed, and since Death is a character in the show (albeit in the form of an Amazonian Beauty dancer), it's probable that this trope was being invoked before the Death character concept was finalized. | |
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Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey: Dying causes Wishbone to play an unnamed board game with Pluto (Hades). The first to the potion of Asclepius that restores life wins. Opting out of playing is an automatic game over. Non-Death example — Wishbone plays checkers with Circe to free his men after she turns them into pigs. Wishbone later plays a game called "The Trojan War" against the deceased Agamemnon, his old companion from the actual Trojan War, in Hades. Winning gets him a coin that he uses in Elpenor's funeral rites. |
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The Crusader Kings II expansion "The Reaper's Due" added an event where an aging character plays a game of Chess with a random courtier whom he realises is Death. Success grants bonus health (making that character live longer) whereas failure means Death collects. | |
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Duel Master 1: Challenge of the Magi (one of a series of game books, a la Fighting Fantasy, designed for two players) featured the player being able to help out a potential ally in a chess game for an extra year of life. If she survives, you get a place to rest and some special equipment. | |
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