Why do people put pistols in their mouth to kill themselves?

I’m remembering a scene from Fight Club and Possessor where the main characters put pistols in their mouth in an attempt to “kill themselves” (plus other movies I’ve seen).

In Fight Club, Tyler misses (I guess on purpose), and in Possessor, the main character needs to do it after completing a contract (to leave the body she possessed).

In Possessor, the angle suggests she might miss her brain entirely.

I can understand something like a shotgun; it’s not exactly something you can hold to your temple, but why put a pistol in your mouth?

Is it more effective somehow? Does it hit a part of your brain where firing from the side might otherwise leave you alive, yet disabled?

I’m sure you could argue it’s just more dramatic from a movie critic perspective, but I’m sure people have really done this, and it maybe be a case of art imitating life, but I believe it would be the other way around.

  • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzEnglish
    91·
    2 days ago

    It’s also common in books to do the research and still fudge things because reality gets in the way of telling a story sometimes. Which, again, tangential.

    Andy Weir did the math for every single thing that happens in The Martian, often on the page in front of you. His guesses at the internal structure of NASA were so accurate that NASA thought he had an inside source. He still had to fake the fact that a dust storm could blow over a rocket on Mars, because there was no other way to strand Watney there without his crew.

    Martian dust storms really do reach hundreds of kilometres an hour. But F is MA. And the density of Martian air is so low that M is stuck being tiny. So there’s very little force in a Martian gale.