Russian Roulette in Popular Culture - Notable Incidents

Notable Incidents

Numerous incidents have been reported regarding Russian roulette.

• In his autobiography, Malcolm X says that during his burglary career he once played Russian roulette, pulling the trigger three times in a row to convince his partners in crime that he was not afraid to die. In the epilogue to the book, Alex Haley states that Malcolm X revealed to him that he palmed the round.
• On December 24, 1954, the American blues musician Johnny Ace killed himself in Texas after a gun he pointed at his own head discharged. Sources including the Washington Post, attribute this to Russian roulette.
• Graham Greene relates in his first autobiography A Sort of Life (1971) that he played Russian roulette, alone, a few times as a teenager.
• In 1976 Finnish magician Aimo Leikas killed himself in front of a crowd while performing his Russian roulette act. He had been performing the act for about a year, selecting six bullets from a box of assorted live and dummy ammunition.
• John Hinckley, Jr., the man who attempted to murder President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was known to play Russian roulette, alone, on two occasions. Hinckley also took a picture of himself in 1980 pointing a gun at his head.
• PBS claims that William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, had attempted suicide by playing a solo game of Russian roulette.
• On October 12, 1984, American actor Jon-Erik Hexum suffered severe brain damage as a result of a Russian roulette stunt. The revolver that Hexum used was loaded with blanks and he apparently believed that the stunt was a harmless prank. However, the overpressure wave from the discharge of the blank propelled the round's wadding into his temple. The impact shattered his skull and caused massive brain trauma. Six days later he was declared brain dead and was taken off life support.
• In February 28, 2000, a man from Houston, Texas died after attempting to play Russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol. The man was apparently unaware that semi-automatic pistols automatically insert a cartridge into the firing chamber when the gun is cocked. He was posthumously awarded a Darwin Award.
• On October 5, 2003, psychological illusionist Derren Brown appeared to take part in a game of Russian roulette on British television Channel 4. The stunt was broadcast with a slight delay allowing the program to cut to a black screen if anything were to go wrong. Also, the final firing of the gun was not shown, as the gun had gone out of camera shot. A statement by the police said that they had been informed of the arrangements in advance, and were satisfied that "at no time was anyone at risk".
• The BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? on 13 September 2010 featured the actor Alan Cumming investigating his grandfather Tommy Darling, who he discovered had died playing Russian roulette while serving as a police officer in Malaya. The family had previously believed that he had died accidentally while cleaning his gun.
• In the Discovery Channel reality series Bering Sea Gold, cast member John Bunce loaded a bullet into a .44 Magnum spun the chamber, pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire. He pulled the trigger a second time, which fired the chamber with the bullet in it, killing him. This incident occurred off camera at night between while John, an alcoholic, was "blackout drunk."