Glory kill

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Glory kills are exceptionally violent, gruesome deaths which the Doom Slayer is capable of inflicting upon monsters and other players in the 2016 Doom and in Doom Eternal. The most common type of glory kill occurs when monsters or players take a critical amount of damage or are otherwise stunned by special attacks; they will be highlighted by the Praetor suit's dynamic HUD as being vulnerable to direct attack and the monster itself will be briefly unable to retaliate. Closing to melee range at a proper angle and pressing the kill button or key will then engage the player directly with the target and execute one of many fatal attacks. Each monster species has several possible glory kills that can be performed against it, depending on the angle of approach. A short period of invulnerability is invoked during the beginning of most glory kills, but this does not last through the entire animation and recovery in most cases, making the execution of glory kills a matter of careful timing when in the heat of battle.

Kills made with the berserk power-up, which are similarly gruesome and capable of taking out even extremely powerful enemies in a single deft blow, are additionally counted as glory kills.

In the single player campaign, glory kills increase the amount of health dropped from monsters. They are also the subject of many achievements and are required to be executed in order to accomplish goals in some of the game's upgrade paths. In Doom Eternal, they will also charge up the blood punch.

Trivia

Comments made by id Software and Bethesda in the run-up to and aftermath of QuakeCon in 2014 suggested that this feature was inspired both by the popularity of Brutal Doom and the insane violence of the Doom comic.

Glory kills were preceded by and based upon a similar mechanic known as sync melee, which was to be a part of the cancelled Doom 4 1.0 project.