# Would you actually die in Jumanji? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 26, 2018, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714 "2018-12-26T05:25:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/1 "2018-12-26T05:25:59Z")
_Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle_ was on earlier. Unlike the original film, where the game invaded reality, in this one video game players were sucked into the game world. They have three bars, representing their game lives, ‘tattooed’ on their arms. The players decide that if you die in the game, you actually die in real life. Granted, they weren’t sure; but they did convince themselves it was so. Aside from one or two lines about uncertainty, all of their dialogue indicated that it was a fact. If a player lost all three lives in the game, would the player die in reality? Or would he or she simply be ejected from the game and end up in front of the monitor? The former seems like a poor business model. Imagine you buy the latest-and-greatest multi-player video game that’s out today, and the way it’s written is that if you lose all of your game lives you’re ‘dead’ and can never play the game again. Who would buy it under those conditions? ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/2 "2018-12-26T07:27:28Z")
_Jumanji_ the video game wasn’t built according to any business model though. It was _Jumanji_ the board game until the kid rejects it and it changes into a more pleasing form. Since the board game required you to play through it entirely to escape, I would assume that the video game also required you to do so. Escaping the game by throwing yourself off a cliff three times would defeat whatever purpose the game was after (team and confidence building under threat of death, apparently) so it makes more sense that dying was in fact a permanent threat. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/3 "2018-12-26T11:43:58Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Imagine you buy the latest-and-greatest multi-player video game that’s out today, and the way it’s written is that if you lose all of your game lives you’re ‘dead’ and can never play the game again. Who would buy it under those conditions? There are some games that have a “[permadeath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permadeath)” option. Usually they are very cheap, or even free, games, so you don’t lose much, or maybe it’s just for some special levels, but it really is the rule that you only have one attempt to achieve the mission, and if you mess it up, then your chance is over. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/4 "2018-12-26T17:56:25Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > There are some games that have a “[permadeath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permadeath)” option. It’s a defining feature of the [Roguelike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike) genre ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/5 "2018-12-26T18:14:37Z")
In roguelike games, or in “hardcore” mode in other games, if you die, you can still play the game again, just starting over with a different character. That’s different from not being able to play the game again at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some game out there that uninstalled itself when you died, as a gimmick, but it’s rare enough that I’ve never heard of it. And of course, even that falls short of literally killing the player. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/6 "2018-12-26T18:28:39Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some game out there that uninstalled itself when you died, as a gimmick, but it’s rare enough that I’ve never heard of it. And of course, even that falls short of literally killing the player. I’ve heard that Global Thermonuclear War will in fact kill not only the player but potentially millions of others. The only winning move is not to play. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/7 "2018-12-26T18:39:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In roguelike games, or in “hardcore” mode in other games, if you die, you can still play the game again, just starting over with a different character. That’s different from not being able to play the game again at all. > > I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some game out there that uninstalled itself when you died, as a gimmick, but it’s rare enough that I’ve never heard of it. And of course, even that falls short of literally killing the player. There were a couple that were supposed to come out a few years ago, but I don’t think they ever did: > **[One Year Later, Those Two Perma-Permadeath Games Aren't Doing So Great \[UPDATE\]](https://kotaku.com/one-year-later-those-two-perma-permadeath-games-arent-1788301072)** > > Last year, I covered two different games with an awesome (and also terrifying) central conceit: if you die, you can never play again. Upsilon Circuit and One Life both touted forms of perma-permadeath. People loved the idea. My two posts were viewed... ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/8 "2018-12-26T19:09:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In roguelike games, or in “hardcore” mode in other games, if you die, you can still play the game again, just starting over with a different character. That’s different from not being able to play the game again at all. That’s true. I was getting off track from the OP. There’s also [Lose/Lose](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-computer-game-that-destroys-your-files), the PC game where your system files are represented by alien spaceships and are deleted as you shoot them until your computer eventually crashes from deleting critical files. You won’t be playing that one twice unless you count reinstalling after a fresh Windows install. But Jumanji wasn’t created to be a marketable item and wasn’t created to be a video game at all until it shifted forms to pull the kid in. So it doesn’t really have a comparison in “real” video gaming anyway. Plus, you know, it’s magic and stuff. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/9 "2018-12-26T19:33:20Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > _Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle_ was on earlier. Unlike the original film, where the game invaded reality, in this one video game players were sucked into the game world. They have three bars, representing their game lives, ‘tattooed’ on their arms. The players decide that if you die in the game, you actually die in real life. Granted, they weren’t sure; but they did convince themselves it was so. Aside from one or two lines about uncertainty, all of their dialogue indicated that it was a fact. > > If a player lost all three lives in the game, would the player die in reality? Or would he or she simply be ejected from the game and end up in front of the monitor? The former seems like a poor business model. Imagine you buy the latest-and-greatest multi-player video game that’s out today, and the way it’s written is that if you lose all of your game lives you’re ‘dead’ and can never play the game again. Who would buy it under those conditions? That’d be bad marketing. I’ve always wondered why, in any of these movies or shows, who came up with the interface. “Why do you have this exposed high voltage wire sticking into the VR helmet?” “That way, when you die in the game, you die in real life! Muhahahaha!” “Yeah, you’re fired, can we get another engineer in here to take that wire back out?” > [@TimeWinder](#): > > I’ve heard that Global Thermonuclear War will in fact kill not only the player but potentially millions of others. The only winning move is not to play. [I tried it.](https://www.myabandonware.com/game/global-thermonuclear-war-3u4/play-42k) It’s a bit annoying with the old school DOS interface, but I doubt that more than a few dozen were killed. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/10 "2018-12-27T05:22:29Z")
Disclaimer - haven’t watched the movie. From the trailer, I thought it was like the Twilight Zone messing with players. “you want realistic game play? I’ll give you a game to play. You can actually die!” ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/11 "2018-12-27T10:23:23Z")
I do like the OP’s “Wizard of Oz” ending better: “All you have to do to make it back home is die three times.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/12 "2018-12-27T16:47:14Z")
There was also a Doom mod where all of the enemies were running processes, and the game would send a kill command to them when they died. The flag depended on the weapon used, with the BFG being, of course, kill -9. And the final boss (if you could make it that far without the whole computer crashing) was the process for the Doom game itself. But yeah, all of these real-world games are irrelevant. It’s magic; it doesn’t need to make sense. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/13 "2018-12-27T19:41:27Z")
For the reasons stated by others, I would expect the death to matter, and not just kick you back out. However, being a video game, healing items and life restoring items would also be a possibility. So you run out of lives, and then someone gets you a 1-up mushroom or phoenix down. The game could even have a failsafe, in that eventually at least one player would be revived–especially if, like the first movie, it has the whole time travel thing. Doing it this way, dying would never be a way out, just way to make your way out that much harder. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/14 "2018-12-27T22:19:25Z")
I thought it was stupid. Obviously, when you loose your last life, you are ejected from the game. But I kinda liked the movie, so I’ll go along with the plot device: when you die, you’re stuck in the game as a dead player. Like the other stuck-in-the-game player, you’re missing from real life. And when you die in game, and are stuck in the game, your friends can’t complete, and they are stuck in the game too. ---
**Author:** ![Taber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac91a4/32.png) [@Taber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taber)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/15 "2018-12-27T23:18:51Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > For the reasons stated by others, I would expect the death to matter, and not just kick you back out. However, being a video game, healing items and life restoring items would also be a possibility. So you run out of lives, and then someone gets you a 1-up mushroom or phoenix down. The game could even have a failsafe, in that eventually at least one player would be revived–especially if, like the first movie, it has the whole time travel thing. > > Doing it this way, dying would never be a way out, just way to make your way out that much harder. I think the most video gamey result of losing all your lives is having to start over from the beginning. Though the pilot kind of confirms the dying in real life, because the alternative is that his teammates are waiting for him to die so they respawn, and everything’s screwed up because he finished with another group. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2020, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/16 "2020-07-07T14:20:32Z")
_Bing!_ [Jumani spawn-in chime] I just watched Jumanji: The Next Level and was about to start a new thread asking the very same question. I guess that answer is that the main conceit of the films is that the Jumani console is magical (i.e. no one knows where it came from, how it was made or who made it and for what purpose) and that the players need to complete the game to safely exit it. I’m going to guess that the would in-fact die if they used up all their lives in the game. The players seem pretty certain of it and I believe that knowledge is instilled in them by the game itself, much in the same way they are instilled with the necessary knowledge and skills for each of their characters. Like whoever plays as “Mouse” Finbar automatically gains a bunch of zoology knowledge. OTOH, this might simply be the game making the players THINK they will die if they lose all their lives to add a sense of realism and consequence to the game. They may, in fact, simply exit the game. This, of course, begs the question as to what the Jumani (or it’s cousin Zathura) games actually are or where they come from. As the games in canon pre-date modern technology, let alone any future technology that would enable realistic VR (not to mention whatever temporal multi-dimensional timey-wimey technology that would enable Alex Vreeke to exit the game at the same point in time he entered after 20 years of gameplay). So the answer would be “magic” or “space aliens” which for all intents and purposes is the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2020, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/17 "2020-07-07T16:34:56Z")
I think The Rock provided the answer. He lost all his lives in a game of Jumanji and was permanently transformed into a video game character in real life. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2020, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/18 "2020-07-07T17:27:16Z")
I’m pretty sure, if the writers made the characters agree that you would die in real life, then you would die in real life. I’m not sure how many more of these movies are going to be made, but I’m kind of surprised they didn’t have a single character die in real life. So, until I have more information, I assume they die in real life. The question becomes then, do they just poof into oblivion, or is their corpse forcibly ejected from the console? I would rule out the latter since a lot of kids watch this, but I’ve seen some PG-13 movies where way more effed up things than that have happened. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/19 "2020-07-08T05:13:01Z")
The cast is clearly trapped in making Jumangi movies as long as they are profitable. The factual answer is we don’t know since such things have not happened in the movie canon. That does seem a bit dark though. The Jumanji films are supposed to be fun family adventure films. It wouldn’t do to have real life and death consequences. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-actually-die-in-jumanji/826714/20 "2020-07-08T05:59:12Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > > [@TimeWinder](#): > > > > I’ve heard that Global Thermonuclear War will in fact kill not only the player but potentially millions of others. The only winning move is not to play. > > I tried it. It’s a bit annoying with the old school DOS interface, but I doubt that more than a few dozen were killed. I see you forgot to piss on the spark plug.