The Tomb Raider series has put Lara Croft through a lot. Even if we’re not talking about her numerous deaths, she’s had to put up with a fair few torments. From dealing with Atlanteans and the legacy of trap-obsessed monks, heavily armed goons in Venice, exploring the Great Pyramid, and, of course, dealing with a variety of wildlife in a way that’s sure to anger PETA. The thing is, she never seems to really learn from these experiences. Every game comes and goes, and each time, she has to face down similar threats, but does she improve? Well... She still finds ways to get impaled on spikes, or drowned, or eaten by the fauna of whichever exotic locale she’s in today. Now, you could say this is the player’s fault, but I scoff at your arguments. It’s her fault, and definitely not that I’m just bad at the game or something *sniff*.

Regardless of this, she’s found many, many horrible fates over the years, and in this article, I’ve raided the innumerable, impromptu tombs where she’s met her final resting place, and will attempt to extract clues on exactly how she died. I think I was pretty successful. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go have my tiger flashbacks in peace. How many of these fates from over the years have you suffered? Know where Lara can buy some kind of animal repellent? Got any adventuring tips? Let us know on Facebook!

15 Her Case Of Spontaneous Human Explosion

The early Tomb Raider games loved to screw with our expectations. Whether it was with spikes placed just right to catch you in a swan dive, or the shocking surprise of a tiger attack. There was, however, one more way the game liked to mess with us. Are you a cheating type? There’s no judgment here, some of my funniest moments have been created by using cheat codes, but take one misstep (literally) inputting a code in Tomb Raider 2, and you’d get a stunning surprise. Lara would literally explode. One moment she’d be the sassy British adventurer, the next, she’d be transformed into a human cluster bomb, with polygonal shrapnel flying everywhere before detonating on impact with the ground. If only she could find some way to harness this incredible power she apparently has within.

14 When Boogie Boarding Goes Bad

The Tomb Raider reboot was a great game, but came with its fair share of controversy, with one highlighted moment being an exceptionally gruesome death. Lara had to float down rapids in one section, being buffeted around like so many whitewater rafts. If you made one single error, she would come to rest (or rather, her jaw would, followed swiftly by the rest of her) on the sharp end of a pipe. The writhing pain before she eventually goes limp is the stuff of nightmares. This is far from the only time in the game when jutting bits of metal or wood spelled trouble for Ms. Croft. Later on in the game, she ends up somersaulting down a ravine, and if you’re not careful (easy, thanks to a juddering camera), guess where the spike’s going? There’s also a parachuting segment, where, let’s just say, the trees need pruning.

13 An Elegant Swan Dive...Right Onto Stone

While this may not be one of the more scripted deaths in the Tomb Raider series, in some ways, that makes it all the worse. It’s not exactly hard to do, particularly with the early games’ harsh platforming challenges and uncooperative camera. You’re running around, exploring ruins, raiding tombs, and you need to dive down into the water. You attempt to do a graceful swan dive into that pool of water like an Acapulco cliff diver only to find that it isn’t your friend and mine H2O that’s waiting down there, but our longtime opponent that is hard, unforgiving rock. Instead of looking like an icon of grace and elegance, you land face first on stone. That harsh thump and crack sound lives on in the memories of a million 90s gamers, and probably induced a fear of heights in countless kids.

12 Lara Croft: Failed Wolf Puncher

Unlike Liam Neeson in his famed role as a professional wolfpuncher in The Grey, Lara has a bad history with the Canidae family. In the early games, she gunned down more than a few packs, potentially putting a couple of species out of existence. I guess she was just carrying on the grand tradition of the British big game hunter, minus the pith helmet. However, occasionally, they’d get their own back. The worst example of this, mostly due to the horrifying animation, can be found in the reboot. A wolf, probably attempting to do their equivalent of killing Hitler, dives out of the bush and attempts to grab you by the throat. Fail the QTE, and...well, it’s not pretty. Wolves gonna wolf, and players gonna die.

11 Feeling Nature’s Heavy Weight

Collapsing caves are never fun, but god. Heading back to the reboot again for a moment, do you remember the moment, fairly early in the game, when you’re fleeing a collapsing cave? If you fail another of the QTEs, you experience what is essentially a natural version of Jax’s fatality from Mortal Kombat III. A huge rock crushes her legs, making Lara scream in pain, before another falls, crushing the rest of her, leaving only an arm and hand to wave at the camera in death. This isn’t the only time Lara’s come a cropper thanks to loose outcrops either. She’s also been flattened by a Raiders of the Lost Ark style boulder, as well as getting crushed by a pillar in Rise of the Tomb Raider.

10 Sword Swallowing Isn’t For Amateurs

When Tomb Raider decides it's going to channel the same mystical psychedelia that seemed to power about half of the games released in 2012/13, you know things are going to get buck wild, and most likely go bad for Lara. When the demonic and katana-wielding oni are around, you can be doubly sure of that. Swords plus Lara equals bad times had by all, a formula that’s been proven repeatedly over the years. In this case, she catches a sword through the throat, after getting grabbed by one of the oni. That sword swallowing duo she was going to get going with the demon needed more practice, I guess. Swallow it parallel to your body, not perpendicular, Lara, GAWD! To be fair, getting killed by the oni is pretty easy, and it’s not the last time they show up on this list.

9 Haven't You Ever Seen Hot Fuzz?

Do you remember that scene in Hot Fuzz, when Angel and Danny go to a yokel’s house for an inquiry, before discovering his huge cache of weapons? Remember when the guy also smacked the sea mine (or rather, SEA MOINE) with the butt of his shotgun, only for an ominous ticking to begin? Apparently, Lara didn’t. In Tomb Raider, you can come across some very active sea mines embedded in a beach’s sand. Shooting them, or even more bafflingly, bouncing up and down on them as though they’re ungiving and highly explosive trampolines, leads to a recreation of Tomb Raider 2’s cheat code moment, only in a slightly less comedic way. This is maybe the only entry on the list which should have led to Lara’s many accolades featuring a Darwin Award.

8 Not Quite Understanding How Trains Work

Tomb Raider III’s Aldwych level was...interesting. The level was set in a Masonic Temple, and it featured more than met the eye. For example, there's a secret train station hidden in its depths. The tracks proved a great location for shooting at goons bothering you, but they hid a danger. It’s not hard to guess what it is, is it? But Lara, being Lara, or the player being the player, somehow got it into their minds that the best way to catch a train is to run DIRECTLY TOWARDS IT. Lara, dear, I know you’re not used to public transport, and your butler probably drove you everywhere as a kid (when you weren’t locking him in the freezer because you thought your allowance should be higher,) but come on!

7 Getting Killed By A Legless Fiend

It’s kind of easy to forget how strange early Tomb Raider games could get. The original certainly primed us for a kind of strange experience, with a large pod hatching a giant red mutant with no legs at the very end of the game. Just after Lara kills one of the rulers of Atlantis. Yep, don’t think too hard about it. Anyway, despite this monster having no legs, it certainly isn't 'armless, and looks like it never skips upper body day at the gym. Getting squashed into the ground like hamburger meat, with accompanying bone-cracking sound effects is no fun, and will happen a lot. The way to kill shouldn't be too hard to figure out — you just need to take advantage of its slow movement speed and lack of agility and fill it full of lead.

6 Literal Swords Of Damocles

The Sword of Damocles metaphor comes from an allegorical Greek story which is meant to represent the fragile happiness rulers experience, knowing they can be killed at any time. For Lara, the story’s allegorical nature disappears in St Francis’ Folly, where huge swords hang above her head as part of a series of rooms dedicated to deities and myths. Can you guess where this is going? You need to traverse several rooms, each of which features keys to unlock the Colosseum, with one of them being the Key of Damocles, which fortunately isn’t also a deadly threat. To make the swords even more of a threat, some of them are concealed, and you also can’t use their shadows to judge where they’ll fall. Instead, you’ve got to keep your ear open for the sound of them cutting through the air.

5 Punji Sticks: Not Just For Nam Anymore

Spikes. The most simple trap that there can be, and boy does Tomb Raider like to take advantage of them. Whether it's the ominously blood-streaked spikes from the original, or the realistically-rendered ones of Rise of the Tomb Raider, they’ve even featured in The Guardian of Light. Sometimes they’re protruding from the ground, other times they’re buried deep in a pit, destined for your swan dives or a mistimed backflip. Though the kills may have got gorier and more affecting, radically transformed from the simple limp flop to the ground which followed your falls in the original, they’re still the same. They’re still the same bastard spikes, and they’re still an essential part of the Tomb Raider experience because sometimes the most simple traps are the best.

4 Becoming Saint Sebastian

It’s often said that 2012 was the year of the bow, and it seems like that extended into 2013 far enough for Tomb Raider to catch its tailwind. The number of times in the two new games that Lara becomes an impromptu archery target is beyond a joke now. Whether it’s blue flaming arrows in Rise of the Tomb Raider, arrows fired by ridiculously prescient ancient demon samurai in the reboot she cannot catch a break. She can catch arrows with her face, though, and man, does she. To be fair to Lara, she does dole out the bow-based punishment with enough regularity in these games. The twang of a bow can signify either the satisfaction of downing an enemy or getting murked by one. Such is the duality of Tomb Raider.

3 “‘Cos You Are Gold! Gold!”

As though Spandau Ballet coded the game, it’s quite impossible for Lara to realize, against her will, that she’s indestructible. In Palace Midas, you come across a dismembered hand accompanied by a pair of legs, nothing beside remains of what was once a great statue. Surely nothing will happen if you touch it, right? That whole tragic story of unimaginable greed isn’t real or anything, right? Well, you probably decided to try it anyway, or simply stepped on it without thinking. What’s the result?. Lara gradually turns into a gold statue, becoming a vastly more expensive (and more dead) Iron Man. The hand does have another purpose, though. As part of the palace’s puzzles, you have to get three lead bars and turn them into gold with the help of the hand.

2 Never Parachuted Before, Never Will Again

Have you ever gone skydiving? Apparently, Lara Croft hasn’t, and not only this, she has no idea how parachutes work either. In Tomb Raider, there’s a QTE to open the parachute, which, should you miss it, leads to Lara falling to her death, apparently, in her last moments, wondering what that cord was for. THIS IS WHY YOU LEARN IN TANDEM, LARA, GOD DAMMIT. Even if you do manage to get it open, your troubles don’t end there. You then have to float down a heavily forested valley, with dense foliage providing leafy obscurity to your view, as well as thick, pointed branches which can bring you to a stop in a short, sharp fashion. It’s a pretty irritatingly difficult challenge that the game throws your way, but it’s certainly not easily forgotten.

1 Getting Shanked

The worst death scenes in this series are the ones where you actually have to watch Lara struggle for life, and none of these were worse than when she gets her throat slashed by a guard in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Its brutality and actual speed add to your shock, like when Leon got decapitated by one of the chainsaw guys from Resident Evil 4. The guy stands back, looking on, while Lara stands gasping, clutching her neck, desperately trying to staunch the bleeding with a look of panic on her face. Eventually, she just collapses to her knees and finally to the ground. It’s deeply horrendous and made all the worse by the passivity of the guy who kills her, just standing back and watching her. In a game that’s so fantastical, there’s a feeling of real-world violence to it.