They are said to cover up the deaths before police or coroners arrive to save the family from shame. In the novel (and later movie adaptation) Rising Sun, death as a result of this type of sexual arousal is explained when it is offered as a possible cause for a murder victims death. In the film Worlds Greatest Dad, the protagonists teenage son accidentally kills himself with asphyxiation whilst sexually aroused. The protagonist then stages his sons death as a suicide, which gives him the opportunity to rise to infamy through a literary hoax. In the film Ken Park a character named Tate practices autoerotic asphyxia. Autoerotic asphyxiation occurs in the cold open of Six Feet Under episode Back to the Garden. Kenny from South Park dies from suffocating while wearing a Batman costume and practicing autoerotic asphyxia in the episode "Sexual Healing". In the season four episode of Californication, titled "Monkey Business", the character Zig Semetauer is found dead in his bathroom by Hank, Charlie and Stu after suffocating due to autoerotic asphyxia, to which Hank quips "Im not averse to the occasional choke-n-stroke, but this is a prime example of why one must always use a buddy system." A character in the film Knocked Up offers to be a "spotter" for a friend if he intends on performing autoerotic asphyxiation. Bruce Robertson, the main character in the 1998 Irvine Welsh novel, Filth, engages in the practice. This is also depicted in the 2013 film adaptation.
Bodies found at the scene of an accidental death often show evidence of other paraphilic activities, such as fetishistic cross-dressing and masochism. In cases involving teenagers at home, families may disturb the scene by "sanitizing" it, removing evidence of paraphilic activity. This can have the consequence of making the death appear to be a deliberate suicide, rather than an accident.The great majority of known erotic asphyxial deaths are male; among all known cases in Ontario and Alberta from 1974 to 1987, only 1 out of 117 cases was female. Some individual cases of women with erotic asphyxia have been reported. The main age of accidental death is mid-20s, but deaths have been reported in adolescents and in men in their 70s.Autoerotic asphyxiation has at times been incorrectly diagnosed as murder and especially so when a partner is present.Lawyers and insurance companies have brought cases to the attention of clinicians because some life insurance claims are payable in the event of accidental death, but not suicide. In fiction
The sensational nature of erotic asphyxiation often makes it the subject of urban legends. It has also been mentioned specifically in a number of works of fiction. In the Marquis de Sades famous novel Justine, or The Misfortunes of the Virtue, Justine is subjected to this by one of her captors. She survives the encounter. In the Guts short story in Chuck Palahniuks novel Haunted, one the characters discusses parents who discover the accidental deaths of their sons to autoerotic asphyxiation.