# List of people who have died while on the toilet

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Numerous individuals have died while using a toilet facility or in the process of defecation or urination. This includes confirmed or suspected historical figures as well as more recent notable cases.

## Pre-20th century

| Date | Location | Name | Age | Description | Source |
| Summer of 581 BC | Jin, China | Duke Jing of Jin | Unknown | Died falling into a toilet pit. | |
| 8 April 217 AD | Between Edessa and Carrhae, Roman Empire | Caracalla | 29 | Murdered by his soldiers while stopping to urinate on his way to Edessa. | |
| 11/12 March 222 | Rome | Elagabalus | 18 | Murdered by the Praetorian Guard "in a latrine in which he had taken refuge". | |
| 336 AD | Constantinople, Eastern Roman Empire | Arius | 80 | Died from explosive gastrointestinal problems inside of a public toilet | |
| 30 November 1016 | Oxford or London, England | King Edmund Ironside of England | 26 | Stabbed to death while defecating in a privy. | |
| 4 November 1035 | Lysá nad Labem, Bohemia | Jaromír, Duke of Bohemia | 60–70 | Was assassinated by being stabbed with the use of a spear from under the privy seat while defecating. | |
| 26 or 27 February 1076 | Vlaardingen, Lower Lorraine | Godfrey IV, Duke of Lower Lorraine | Unknown | Was assassinated via being stabbed with a spear from under the privy seat while defecating. | |
| 19 April 1578 | Echigo Province, Japan | Uesugi Kenshin | 48 | Allegedly assassinated by a ninja while using a toilet, but very unlikely because his anticipation of his own death is recorded in a death poem. Early sources record his deterioration of health, his complaints of pain in the chest "like an iron ball", and, as Kenshin Gunki recorded, "on the 9th day of the 3rd month, he had a stomach ache in his toilet. This, unfortunately, persisted until the 13th day, when he died". It is much more likely that he suffered from esophageal cancer. | |
| 25 October 1760 | Kensington Palace, London, England, Great Britain | George II of Great Britain | 76 | Collapsed shortly after attending to his close stool, possibly died of an aortic aneurysm. | |
| 1892 | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States | J.W., also known as Balloon Man | 29 | Suffered from congenital aganglionic megacolon, which brought him considerable fame for his bloated abdomen. He suffered from constipation and was found dead in a bathroom at the age of 29, apparently having died trying to defecate. His eight-foot-long colon is currently on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. | [11] [12] |

## 20th and 21st centuries

| Date | Location | Name | Age | Description |
| 3 August 1966 | Los Angeles, California, United States | Lenny Bruce | 40 | Died from acute morphine poisoning caused by an overdose in the bathroom of his home in Hollywood Hills. |
| 22 June 1969 | Chelsea, London | Judy Garland | 47 | Overdosed on barbiturates while using a toilet. |
| 24 October 1971 | Paris, France | George Dyer | 38 | Overdose of alcohol and amphetamine while using a toilet. Portrayed in The Black Triptychs |
| 16 August 1977 | Memphis, Tennessee, United States | Elvis Presley | 42 | He was found dead on the bathroom floor. The cause of death was cardiac arrest due to alleged drug overdose. |
| 8 March 1989 | Columbia, South Carolina, United States | Michael Godwin | 28 | Former Suffolk, Virginia, resident accused of fatally beating 24-year-old Molly Royem with an iron in West Columbia, South Carolina; sentenced to death by electrocution, but later reduced to a life sentence. He was accidentally electrocuted when he bit a pair of earphone wires, in an attempt to fix a broken television, while sitting on a metal toilet at the Central Correctional Institute in neighboring Columbia. |
| 21 May 1991 | Chicago, Illinois, United States | Ioan Petru Culianu | 41 | Assassinated by an unknown party while using the toilet in the University of Chicago Divinity School's Swift Hall. |
| 19 January 1996 | Los Angeles, California, United States | Don Simpson | 52 | Died of heart failure caused by combined drug intoxication in the bathroom of his home in Bel Air. |
| 8 March 2004 | Hollywood Hills, California, United States | Robert Pastorelli | 49 | Overdosed on morphine while on a toilet. |
| 25 June 2011 | Pilton, Somerset, United Kingdom | Christopher Shale | 56 | Died of a heart attack on a portable toilet while at Glastonbury Festival. |
| 17 May 2013 | Marcos Paz, Buenos Aires, Argentina | Jorge Rafael Videla | 87 | Died of a heart attack while on a jail toilet after slipping in the shower. |
| 10 October 2016 | Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany | Tamme Hanken | 56 | Died of sudden heart failure on a hotel toilet. |
| 21 June 2019 | Doha, Qatar | Toufiq M Seraj | 63 | Fell unconscious on an aeroplane toilet en route from Dhaka to Doha; he was pronounced dead of a massive heart attack shortly after landing. |
| 23 November 2021 | Seoul, Republic of Korea | Chun Doo-hwan | 90 | Had multiple myeloma; found "fallen down" by a probable heart attack in a toilet at home. |
| 4 March 2022 | Auburndale, Florida, United States | Aaron Henderson | 43 | Crushed to death by a bulldozer while using a portable toilet. |

## Deaths in fiction

* Donald Gennaro (played by Martin Ferrero) is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex while sitting on the toilet of a destroyed restroom cabin in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park.
* A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones: In the book A Storm of Swords (2000), from the series written by George R. R. Martin, Tywin Lannister is killed by his son Tyrion while using the toilet.
* The Sopranos: One capo for Tony Soprano's crime family, Gigi Cestone, died on the toilet, likely due to stress caused by the new leadership role.
* Unforgiven: The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) assassinates the character Quick Mike (David Mucci) in an outhouse.
* Pulp Fiction: In the film, one of the protagonists, Vincent Vega, is shot by Butch Coolidge while exiting a bathroom by use of machine gun.
* South Park: In the 2012 episode "Reverse Cowgirl", Clyde's mom falls into the toilet and suffers disembowelment.
* Saturday Night Live produced several fictional advertisements for comedic value for a device called a "Toilet Death Ejector", in which a toilet would "eject" a person if they died on it so they would not be found dead on the toilet.
* Edward Spratt, a fictional English artist in Return of the Obra Dinn, was strangled by the Kraken as he was using the ship's head at the bow.
* Amir Asif, the main antagonist of the 2020 action movie Extraction, is shot after entering the toilet.
* Logan Roy, a character from Succession, has a heart attack on the toilet of his private jet while skipping his oldest son's wedding.