Re: Great murder choice.
"If you are breathing nitrogen and don't get enough oxygen, that trigger doesn't happen and you drift gently off to sleep, eventually on a permanent basis."
Correct - you don't notice. Nitrogen is used on a large scale to inert chemical process equipment which may contain flammable substances. And sadly people enter those environments and collapse, then one of their colleagues tries to get the victim out and then collapses themselves, etc.
Similar accidents have happened inside barges which have been sealed up for a while and where rusting has resulted in an oxygen-depleted atmosphere. I think there are even types of clay which can cause anoxic conditions in trenches dug in them.