On September 25th, 2007, the game Halo 3 was released for the Xbox 360 console, which rewards players with an 'Overkill' medal if four enemies are killed in a short period of time (shown below, left). In the next 10 years, there have been over 15 additional submissions for the term. On September 5th, 2003, the first Urban Dictionary entry for 'overkill' was submitted by user Madd Jester, who defined it as the practice of repeating the same joke too often.

On July 19th, 2001, the role-playing game Final Fantasy X was released, in which a player achieves an 'overkill' by hitting an enemy with more damage than their remaining health (shown below). In the game, if an enemy or player is killed with enough force their body would explode into 'gibs,' a slang term for fragments of flesh that are displayed upon completing an overkill. The earliest known use of the term “overkill” in the context of a video game was in the first-person shooter Doomreleased on December 10th, 1993. Though primarily used in a military context during the Cold War period, the word gradually came into generic use in 1965 as a more general description of excessive physical force. According to, the term “overkill” was coined in 1946 to describe the combined power of the United States and the U.S.S.R.’s nuclear arsenal.

Overkill halo 3