A wide variety of pathogenic microorganisms have been demonstrated to cause eukaryotic cell death, either as a consequence of infecting host cells or by producing toxic products. Pathogen-induced host cell death has been characterized as apoptosis in many of these systems. It is increasingly being recognized that cell death with some of the features of apoptosis may result from a variety of molecular pathways and that experimental techniques used to identify cell death often do not distinguish among these mechanisms. We propose that a clear understanding of the diversity of processes mediating cell death has been obscured by the simplicity of the nomenclature system commonly employed to describe eukaryotic cell death. This review presents a perspective on eukaryotic cell death and discusses experimental techniques used to study these processes.