Rules

Written rules

Before releasing his Death Note into the human world, Ryuk wrote some of the more basic rules on the first page in English, because he believed that English was the most popular language in the world. The rules written by Ryuk are the following:

1. The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

2. This note will not take effect unless the writer has the subject's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.

3. If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the subject's name, it will happen.

4. If the cause of death is not specified, the subject will simply die of a heart attack.

5. After writing the cause of death, the details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Each volume of the manga has a page containing new rules or possible uses for the Death Note. In the anime series, each eyecatch contains a different rule written in both English and Japanese, similar to how they were revealed in the Japanese manga. Two new rules are revealed in almost every episode.

False rules

In addition to these original rules, Light persuaded Ryuk to add a set of fake rules to mislead L and company. The reason behind this was to remove all suspicion of him and Misa being Kira and the Second Kira and preventing L from destroying the Death Note.

1. If the owner of the Death Note does not kill within 13 days of the last entry, he or she will die.

2. If the Death Note is burnt, destroyed, or otherwise damaged in any way, all those who have touched that Death Note will die.