"Margaret Sullavan was a star whose deathbed scenes were one of the great joys of the Golden Age of movies. Sullivan never simply kicked the bucket. She made speeches, as she lay dying; and she was so incredibly noble that she made you feel like an absolute twerp for continuing to live out your petty life after she'd ridden on ahead, to the accompaniment of the third movement of Brahms' First Symphony."
— Gore Vidal, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Case
Basically, the spectacle involved in a character's death is proportional to the importance of the character to the story.
This is why the faceless Mooks and Red Shirt characters die in droves, while the Big Bad gets a second chance at redemption, or at least is taken out in the most spectacular blaze of glory the FX budget allows. Main characters get to go out with a bang instead of a whimper, complete with an Heroic Sacrifice, a final dying speech and Excessive Mourning by their loved ones. (And then the reaction is proportional to the drama.) Unless someone was Distracted from Death, anyway.
Thus, if a main character dies in a decidedly undramatic or anti-climactic way, the creators are often accused of having Dropped a Bridge on Him, even if they were shooting for realism and trying to subvert the notion that Death Is Dramatic. Typically, "deaths" like that are a major clue that No One Could Survive That! and that the hero will be back shortly. So when such a death turns out to be permanent, the fans feel cheated. This will generally cause a tidal wave of revisionist Fan Fic.
Reactionary Fan Fic will usually invoke He's Just Hiding. Also related to Player Death Is Dramatic where it's a videogame that makes the death of the player character a big deal.
Since this is such a common trope, most of the examples will be subversions. Works in which Anyone Can Die usually do away with this trope altogether, so there's no need to explicitly mention them here.
Naturally, this is Truth in Television; since death tends to impact us in direct proportion to how close we were to the deceased in real life. As for how dramatic dying actually is for the person dying, no one's come back to comment.
Contrast Surprisingly Sudden Death and Dropped a Bridge on Him, which don't have the same qualms about portraying death as unexpected and unceremonious. Compare Wring Every Last Drop out of Him, when a character is on the brink of death, but takes a long while to actually die, and Inverse Dialogue Death Rule, when a dying, important character gets several lines of dialogue before kicking it
As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In Hunter × Hunter, Meruem spends his final moments after realizing he was dying as a result of a deadly toxin seeking out Komugi, the woman he loved, so he could play some final games of Gungi with her. The two meet up and play Gungi, with Komugi staying with him despite knowing the toxin would cause her to die if she did. Meruem passes away resting his head in Komugi's lap, with Komugi passing away soon after him.
- Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas, many. To name a few: on the protagonist's side there are Pisces Albafica, Virgo Asmita, Leo Regulus...and on the antagonist's side there are Wyvern Rhadamanthys, Behemoth Violate, Basilisk Sylphid....
- Death Note plays it straight with Light and Soichiro, while detective L's death is relatively peaceful (though still pretty dramatic). Mello's death, meanwhile, is significantly downplayed.
- Mostly averted in MÄR, where most villain deaths are quick and inglorious. Of course, with the exception of the offscreen-killed Luberia thieves guild, none of the heroes die. At least not permanently.
- Played straight at most three times, with the deaths of Kannochi, Aqua, and Phantom. All three were sympathetic in some way, as the ones who don't die dramatically are either bloodthirsty sociopaths or cowards.
- Gai Daigoji in Martian Successor Nadesico is an intentional subversion of this, to set up the show's philosophy on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. Earlier in the episode in which he dies, he and Akito are seen watching (and crying over) an episode of Show Within a Show Gekiganger 3, in which Joe Umitsubame dies a dramatic and heroic death in battle, and Gai declares that he wants to die like that. At the end of the episode, he's shot by a military officer attempting to escape the ship, before he even realizes what's going on; he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not heroic at all.
- Kaiser Ryo's death via heart failure in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX starts with a failed Heroic Sacrifice, and as he lays dying, he finally manages to snap Protagonist Juudai out of his Heroic BSoD, something that three other separate Heroic Sacrifices had failed to do. He's given an amazing send-off in the duel beforehand.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yugi's Heroic Sacrifice in the Doma arc. It wasn't only depressing to the audience, but to the pharaoh as well. Which is why he immediately launched a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Weevil (whom they had been dueling at the time).
- Naruto:
- Haku's death
- We have the Fourth Hokage and his wife, when sealing the Kyuubi within their son, Naruto, Zabuza, after Naruto knocked some sense into him, and the Third Hokage, after sealing away Orochimaru's arms and rendering his invasion unsuccessful.
- After the Time Skip, Gaara gets his tailed beast extracted from him and dies. Chiyo revives him later, at the cost of her own life, which gets similar respect.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Averted to magnificent effect. Mami's death in Episode 3 happens completely out of nowhere. (And she's killed by a Monster of the Week, no less!) The suddenness makes it all the more shocking, and subsequent character deaths are also usually sudden.
- End of Evangelion:
- When Misato is shot by the military, she still manages to limp away, give Shinji an encouraging pep talk complete with a kiss, then stuff him into an elevator before collapsing.
- Asuka died fighting to the finish. She was trashing the MP Evas but then they recovered, plucked her right eye out, impaled her, chopped her into pieces and ate her alive. Her death -and the vision of the MP-Evas chewing her Eva's bloody remains- triggered Shinji's final breakdown.
- Code Geass: Shirley and Euphemia each died from a single bullet to the chest, but their deaths were slow and presumably agonizing with much tears and sad words exchanged between them and their once-potential lovers.
- Darker than Black: November 11 goes back down the elevator and wanders a very good distance down the street before finally collapsing from his many bullet wounds.
- Trigun: After being shot with a machine gun, Wolfwood manages to warn Vash of the challenges he still has to face, make his way to a church, fall on his knees and utter a confession/Final Speech... that eventually degenerates into a desperate plea for more time.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, Meer Campbell has enough time to deliver some tear-jerking Last Words after Taking the Bullet for her idol whom she is playing Body Double for.
- In the Wolf's Rain OVA, the wolf Toboe manages to keep fighting for several minutes after being shot in the chest. He even bites Darcia in the arm and then spends a few moments hanging vertically by his jaws, which would be really funny if it weren't for the fact that the poor bastard's dying.
- In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, important characters who die tend to die dramatically, such as Siegfried Kircheis. However, there are subversions as well, most notably Yang Wen-li, who bleeds to death alone after being shot by an unnamed cultist, and Reinhard von Lohengramm, who ends up succumbing to a disease.
- Double subverted in Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. At first Yuuki's death seemed dramatic. There is a scene of Mari and Mirai anxiously sitting in the waiting room, followed by a doctor coming in and telling them the bad news. It cuts to them behind a glass window, looking as the doctors fail to revive Yuuki and pronounce him dead. It turns out his actual death was far quicker and less climatic, and the first one was simply: his sister having a nightmare after his death. In reality, after collapsing Yuuki was brought to the hospital but quickly pronounced dead by the doctors.
- Most of the deaths in Death Parade are dramatic however one character subverts this trope— she simply slipped on soap and hit her head on the floor. Even she found her death embarrassing.
Comic Books
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Inverted, as Splinter dies of a heart attack.
- The Walking Dead: Averted and subverted and played straight. This mostly depends on whether the characters have enough time to mourn for the death. For the most part, characters have no choice but to just keep running.
Fan Works
- I Did Not Want To Die
by Kalash 93 does this in an explosively spectacular fashion.
- "Every Good Fairytale" has the death of its own protagonist. She's shot accidentally in the torso, justifying the trope. It's vital enough to kill her in the absence of any modern aid, but she has to bleed to death first. This allows her just enough time for her husband to try to help her, for her to get in a few last words, and for one heartbreaking Last Kiss.
- Evangelion 303: Jessika died in chapter 7 when the war plane that Asuka and she were piloting crashed. Her death cast a dark shadow over the whole Part II and especially affected Asuka, who blamed herself for it.
- Usually subverted in A Minor Miscalculation, where Ragyo and Nui usually kill people too quickly for them to say goodbyes. However, when Rei gravely wounds Tsumugu in their Mutual Kill, he manages to make a Final Speech to Senketsu and the unconscious Ryuko before expiring.
Films — Live-Action
- Blood Diamond: When Archer suffers a fatal wound while helping Vandy and his son escape, he manages to escort them both to the drop-point, kills the Big Bad and covers their escape on the helicopter with a sniper rifle, but eventually succumbs to his wounds. On the plus side, he seems very much at peace with his death, as he calls a friend to essentially say he's fine dying and that he really likes the view.
- The Brothers Bloom: At the end, after Stephen gets shot in the run down theater, he manages to get up and convincingly trick Bloom into thinking that it was all a big con and that he was just fine. He even pulls off the 'Greatest card trick in the world'. After Bloom leaves, Stephen (in obvious pain) has just enough strength to pull a chair onto the stage and sit down in it before passing on.
- Final Destination 2 has the sole character who survived the previous film taken out quite swiftly and suddenly.
- Why did Revenge of the Sith kill off Christopher Lee so anticlimactically, when 2 had shown him to be almost as good as Yoda?
- It's inevitably going to be anticlimactic no matter what if it happens at the start of the movie. It was plenty dramatic, though, especially for everyone who has seen Return of the Jedi and knows how Luke's scene echoes Anakin's scene, only Luke made the right choice that Anakin got wrong.
- The death of General Grievous was also rather abrupt.
- It seems that the minions of Sidious are weak to having their hands unceremoniously cut off, and it's not that hard to do! Every dead character seems to have been taking badass suppression drugs. Sorry Kit Fisto, Aayla Secura, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and Plo Koon. You're awesome, but you're not important enough to the plot to get as prolonged a death scene as Padme.
- Both Jango and his son/clone Boba are defeated almost embarrassingly quickly despite their hype, though in Boba's case, he survives.
- Children of Men is disturbingly realistic. Averted to the point of a Take That! against the trope. Anybody can get shot at any time, no Final Speeches allowed, please fall down and stop moving, the remaining characters will be busy running for their lives. Add to it, that if you aren't paying attention, the protagonist's quiet death just as the credits roll, can slip by unnoticed. Exception is Julian who gets a Due to the Dead burial.
- The Evil That Men Do. The hitman played by Charles Bronson hurls a knife into his target's throat. He pulls it out and staggers across the room after Bronson, backing him into the toilet before passing out from blood loss.
- The Lord of the Rings does the same thing again, to the same actor even, when Saruman, who had been the antagonist for the better part of the previous two movies, is disposed of rather unceremoniously at the beginning of the third. On the other hand, the entire point of the scene in the book, which is likely what the movie was trying to recreate in a somewhat briefer fashion, is that Saruman has been completely defeated by this point, and has no real power left except trying (and failing) to sow dissent among his foes (it's a bit more complicated than that in the book, but we are talking about a movie that was already over three hours long). I suspect it was sort of trying to show just how far he's fallen by that point.
- Supposedly Christopher Lee insisted that Saruman's death not be overly dramatic, as he knew from WWII how the victim of a fatal backstab would behave...
- Additionally, Saruman's death wasn't even present in the Theatrical Cut.
- Same goes for The Hobbit. Thorin Oakenshield is stabbed in the foot and the heart while taking tons of wounds in an epic duel, but kills the Big Bad in the process. Then he stays alive long enough to give one final speech and goodbye to Bilbo that's really quite sad and dramatic.
- Brando's death in The Godfather is very anticlimactic. 8 shots in the back? No sweat. Playing hide and seek in a tomato garden? Deadly. They almost left that scene out of the movie, and were just going to skip on to his funeral.
- Averted in National Treasure: After a distinct lack of frivolous deaths for the entire movie thus far, when one of the villain's mooks takes one wrong step and dies in the endgame, it has a lot more impact.
- Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. "MADE IT, MA! TOP OF THE WORLD!"
- Subverted by No Country for Old Men, which oddly kills off most of the numerous Red Shirts in a relatively graphic if unspectacular fashion onscreen without shying away but has all of the main characters, including the Decoy Protagonist, killed offscreen and in increasingly undramatic ways.
- Burn After Reading (also by the Coen Brothers,) repeatedly averts this, with the deaths being ridiculous and/or so fast it takes viewers and characters a moment to realise what's actually happened.
- Averted with The Departed, which kills one of its three leading actors instantly with no warning whatsoever.
- In The Matrix Revolutions, Trinity and Neo both receive exaggerated death scenes. Trinity is impaled by metal beams after she crashes a ship into the Machine City, and spends more than five minutes saying her goodbyes to Neo before dying, and as for the title character himself, he is carried away on a metal platform, while other machines look on, because he finally managed to destroy the entire Agent Smith program. Of course he got an overly dramatic death scene. He's Jesus.
- Aversions are used to good effect in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Humans are totally defenseless against spirits, so all it takes for someone to die is a single swipe from a possibly invisible spirit for them to suddenly collapse in a lifeless heap.
- Played straight and subverted in Serenity, with the deaths of Book and Wash, respectively.
- The third live action Death Note movie L: change the WorLd has a virus that causes people to die extremely dramatically. Doubly so for the scientist that injects himself, it takes him like 5 minutes in completely agony to die!
- The Thing (1982) averts this in a few cases: Bennings, for example, gets one hell of a death scene, while Copper and Windows' deaths are easily missed, what with all the Transformation Trauma going on simultaneously. We never find out what happens to Mac, Childs, and Nauls, but it's strongly implied that they all die. That is one ambiguous movie.
- King Kong (1933) had Kong's epic death throes before his fall off the empire state building.
- Many creatures in Ray Harryhausen's movies get this (others die Mook Deaths). Ray tried to give most of his iconic, major characters a bit of pathos as they died, and it often worked.
- Extremely clear at the end of Road to Perdition: the main character is shot in the back by a rival assassin, multiple times. Despite the fact that both are supposed to be experts at dispatching people, he has the time to stay alive for several more minutes, during which he shoots his rival when he threatens his son who collapses instantly and has a little heart to heart with his son before succumbing.
- Most of Reservoir Dogs is spent watching Mr. Orange slowly bleed to death from a gunshot wound to the gut.
- Hornblower:
- Clayton is a prominent character in the first episode; he's a kind-hearted midshipman on Justinian who helps Hornblower to cope. He's shot in the first duel with Simpson (he was supposed to be Hornblower's second). He doesn't die immediately, though. First he has a heart-breaking scene with Horatio at his deathbed, explaining why he did what he did.
- In "Retribution", Archie is shot in the chest, sits down amids the battle and manages to appear all right. When Hornblower talks to him after the won battle, he asks if that's his blood... He lives long enough to take sole blame for their captain's demise, saving Horatio's life in the process, then dies from his wounds before he could be hanged for mutiny.
- Pay It Forward. The main character gets stabbed at the end of the story. Once. With a knife that was at most two inches long. The wound was on his left side near the bottom of his rib cage. Cue Slow-Motion Fall and then cut to the ER doc telling the family he's dead.
- Unforgiven: In a disturbing scene where a victim of a fatal gunshot wound dies slowly while his partner cries out in desperate rage at the protagonists. The protagonists are forced to awkwardly wait around to make sure the kid dies.
- The Assassination of Jesse James. After Bob shoots Wood Hite in the head, he is alive for a brief period afterwards, long enough for some friends to comfort him as he dies.
- Training Day. When Roger (the Scott Glenn character) gets hit in the chest and abdomen with a shotgun blast moments after a completely friendly chat with the main character, he heaves and sputters in pain and shock for several long moments as he is cruelly mocked by his shooter.
- The Baader Meinhof Complex (or Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, depending). A young conservative shoots Rudi Dutschke three times at close range for his communist ideals. The first shot hits Rudi in the temple, knocking him against a wall. He gets up, and is shot a second time, now in the chest. After he falls down, the gunman tries to shoot him in the head, but hits him in the cheek. After the gunman runs away, Rudi spits up blood, takes off his shoes, and then lurches unsteadily down the street muttering nonsensical phrases until he collapses. This is fairly accurate to what actually happened.
- Harsh Times. Jim, Christian Bale's character is hit violently with a blast from a shotgun while escaping the scene of a drug deal gone bad. The blast absolutely rips the entire side of his head and face apart, and he ends up crying and begging his friend to end his life for a few minutes.
- Zero Dark Thirty: Averted, with a nice touch of realism. Bin Laden is gunned down just as easily and quickly as the other people in his safe-house, by an unnamed SEAL no less. Though those keeping score will know that once Khalid is killed, Osama is the only adult male not yet accounted for in the house. For bonus points, the hero doesn't even go on the mission as she's a CIA analyst not a soldier or assassin. She spends a decade hunting him, and only sees him after the SEALs kill him.
- Equilibrium: Mary's character is an important person that John Preston happens to meet when he has to raid her apartment when she's discovered as a sense offender. Especially since after Preston went off Prozium, she makes him think and hits a lot of his nerves which let him admit his guilt after what he's done and what kind of cause he's believing in. Her death hits really hard with the constant use of POV shifts which become more frequent the closer she gets to her execution, making it all the more tear-jerking when he literally misses it by about a second regardless of how fast he was running. Yet, we are still made to witness it as the scene dwells on the POV of both characters.
Literature
- In David Wingrove's Chung Kuo, this trope fits the final moments of Wang Sau-Ieyang, T'ang of City Africa
- "El hombre muerto" by Horacio Quiroga plays this trope as straight as possible: the entire story is nothing but one man dying of a machete wound.
- In Harry Potter, almost nobody dies dramatically. Voldemort has a Karmic Death (his own spell rebounds. Again.) and there's a big audience and a big build up, but the actual death itself is rather sudden. Sirius falls through a magic curtain, Dobby dies from a knife wound, Fred is killed mid-sentence, Remus and Tonks just show up among the casualties without us even getting to see them die, and even the greatest wizard since forever (Dumbledore) dies from a single curse - though it is described in a suitably dramatic manner.
- This was true as far back as Book Four, where Cedric Diggory was killed casually and quickly. It seems to be a theme of the series that death is sudden and undramatic.
- Snape's death was pretty damn dramatic, though, dying whispers and lingering looks and all. Probably due to the fact that he was mauled by a giant poisonous snake, which would naturally lead to a few minutes of agony before death.
- The movies, however, are a different story. Dumbledore, Sirius, Dobby, Hedwig, and Snape have the drama milked out of their deaths, much more so than the books. But with Snape being played by Alan Rickman, you can't expect it to be any other way. But the drama for Fred's death was cut entirely.
- Subverted in Dragonlance when Flint Fireforge dies of a heart attack. Granted, Weis and Hickman never really let Flint save the day or actually do anything meaningful besides serve as the Butt-Monkey all through the storyline, so maybe this isn't too surprising.
- The writers claimed that this was done deliberately to prove that one did not have to die a heroic death in order to be remembered as a hero (to contrast the earlier, very dramatic death of Sturm Brightblade).
- One of the more gut-wrenching aspects of the Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels is how easily and often important named characters get killed. One of the most shocking and out-of-left-field ones is Colm Corbec at the end of Sabbat Martyr. Then again, this series is about the Imperial Guard, who are the permanent underdogs of the setting.
- Lampshaded and subverted in Alcatraz and the Scrivener's Bones. In the parts where Alcatraz is writing from the narrator's point of view, he talks about why authors love to kill off important characters and mentions that a certain character will die. Then, just as it looks like said character is about to bite the dust at the climax, they end up just fine, aside from a broken rib and a bit tongue. He then comments (as himself) that if he writes his memoirs when he's older, that the story will "seem really boring because nobody was narratively dynamic enough to get themselves killed." The character is then killed on the last page of the book, but not really.
- Fantastically averted in Mostly Harmless when it describes that, between the events of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless, Fenchurch died by way of a rather literal Critical Existence Failure — during a hyperspace jump, she simply vanished, mid-conversation, never to be heard from again.
- It wasn't that she disappeared, it was that Arthur fell into another universe, as evidenced by how Earth wasn't even the same anymore and how there was no evidence of Fenchurch ever having existed at all.
- Usually played straight in Warrior Cats, where Anyone Can Die, the villains get creative send-offs that combine Cruel and Unusual Death and Moment of Awesome, and the heroes almost always manage an emotional Final Speech before they expire, sometimes by Heroic Sacrifice.
- When protagonist Hollyleaf apparently died rather suddenly from a cave-in, fans suspected that she wasn't actually dead, due to the lack of usual fanfare surrounding a character's death. Sure enough, she returned 5 books later.
- One notable subversion where the character actually did die is Leafpool's death: she was a previous protagonist of the series and a major character for several arcs afterward, but in Lost Stars it's just mentioned in passing that she had died in a rockfall in between books. Her death was later seen in Squirrelflight's Hope, but even then, the accident itself was rather abrupt with no chance for final words to her Clanmates, and her actual death was just due to her injuries offscreen.
- The Hunger Games trilogy has a balance of dramatic deaths and non-dramatic deaths. For instance, in The Hunger Games, Rue's death was extremely dramatic, while in Mockingjay, Finnick just dies from a bite to the head. However, some of the non-dramatic deaths of the people that were extremely close to Katniss were made slightly more dramatic in narration, because Katniss is so close to them. It's Prim, by the way.
Live-Action TV
- Game of Thrones: Each of the Anyone Can Die moments generally merits a sendoff consistent with their role.
- Lost has had a few dramatic main character deaths, some not so much. On the one hand, Boone, Charlie, Eko, and Charlotte had dramatic deaths, as did Nikki, and Paulo, although those were by bridge dropping. On the other hand, Shannon, Ana-Lucia, Libby, Rousseau, and Michael had rather sudden and shocking deaths.
- Doctor Who:
- There's a nice subversion in "The Caves of Androzani" when a major character is taken out like a third-rate extra.
- The death of the Tenth Doctor in "The End of Time". After expressing relief that he survived the return and banishment of the Time Lords, the Master's Moment of Awesome and a large explosion, the prophecy surrounding the Doctor's death comes true.
Carmen: He will knock four times.
The Doctor: I could do so much more! - In "Amy's Choice", Amy, Rory, and the Doctor are trapped within two different worlds, one of which is real and one of which is fake, which they switch between at random. In one of these, parasitic aliens called the Eknodines have taken over a bunch of old people. The Eknodines can make people disintegrate by breathing some sort of poisonous gas on them. When they attack a random person, he dies instantly. When they attack Rory, he dies a slow and dramatic death in Amy's arms, which causes her to realize that that was the dream world, because she didn't want to live in a world without Rory. Of course, it turns out that both worlds were dreams.
- As the first companion to be Killed Off for Real in 30+ years, companion Clara Oswald's Heroic Sacrifice in "Face the Raven" plays this trope to the hilt: the Doctor rages at the woman partially responsible for her impending doom, Clara ponders her fate and gives him a loving speech to motivate him not to seek revenge, he is driven to tears, they (in their own unique ways) express their love for each other one last time, and finally she heads out to face her fate. The death itself happens in slow motion with no sound effects, just background music.
- Supernatural:
- In a nice touch, none of Dean's onscreen deaths in "Mystery Spot" are dramatic/demonic-related. Especially his final death, where he gets shot by a mugger. No going out in a blaze of glory, it could have been easily prevented and nothing heroic about it whatsoever.
- Played straight with many other deaths, most notably those of Jo and Ellen and Bobby Singer.
- Deaths in Spartacus: Blood and Sand are usually very dramatic, so it's a little surprising when Mira gets hit with an axe out of nowhere in a skirmish, and dies while being transported before anyone has time to make any speeches.
- Tiberius too is killed quickly and with no fanfare, which may be because nobody thought he deserved a glorious death.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Played straight and subverted. Joyce and Tara's deaths come out of nowhere. Jenny Calendar's death scene left her fate in doubt until the last second. Buffy's Heroic Sacrifice, on the other hand, is much more dramatic — though even that has barely two minutes of buildup.
- Played straight and subverted in the same episode, even. In "Chosen", Spike gets a long, drawn out, dramatic death (which doesn't stick) while Anya gets a quick slice through the torso.
- Mocked thoroughly with Amilyn in the film, who milks his death so hard and so long Big Bad Lothos dies before he does.
- Averted in the Dollhouse finale, when Ballard takes a no-fuss, no-warning stray bullet in a gun battle.
- In the Saturday Night Live short "Dear Sister," this trope is taken to its logical conMMMMWHATCHASAY, THATYOUONLYMEANTWELL'
- Which is apparently a parody of The O.C..
- Xena: Warrior Princess Xena and Gabrielle's many, many deaths, but the Crucifixion in stands out.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles averts this. Derek Reese runs into a Terminator at close range with only a pistol. He is killed instantly, with zero warning. No drama, no build-up, just pow, and one of the show's leads is dead. It doesn't even linger. It's an action scene, so it happens, and then the scene switches to Sarah and John before you can say "What!?" And this from a show that is in so much love with slow motion. But no, nothing. Just bang. The only thing that could possibly be called foreshadowing is in an earlier episode, where John asks him how long he would last if he had nothing but his bare hands to fight Cameron with, to confirm for himself that Riley wasn't killed by any Terminator.
- Derek's death was kind of a Viewer Punch, but it was supposed to be handwaved with the Season Finale, where he shows up in the alternate future timeline John winds up in, obviously alive and well, and we're all supposed to get used to that version, since he acted exactly the same. Unfortunately, it was never meant to be.
- Another aversion on The Wire, in season 5. Fan favourite Omar Little, the Baddest Ass (and Longest Coat) in Baltimore, has been in a guerrilla war with sociopathic druglord Marlo for most of a season, and gets killed by...The Mouthy Kid, Kenard, who shoots him in the back of the head while he's buying cigarettes. Even the killer is shocked by how anticlimactic it is.
- On top of that his death doesn't even make the paper and his toe tag gets mixed up with another guy's.
- And of course, played straight in-universe afterwards, when his anti-climactic, even pitiful death is exaggerated and distorted by word of mouth in the street, by the Series Finale becoming a wild tale of an epic and dramatic Last Stand against an army of police and soldiers.
- Ultimately subverted on The League of Gentlemen with Edward and Tubbs, who get a properly dramatic death scene, but then it turns out that they're not dead. While leaving town, they are suddenly killed by a train.
- Also averted with Harvey and Val. It's ambiguous whether they even die, although considering where they were left, suffocation seems likely.
- Another aversion would be the death of Vinnie, which comes right out of nowhere. Mostly killed off so that the actor, Reece Shearsmith, could spend the rest of the episode playing Keith Drop, and another character...
- Marian in Robin Hood: Guy of Gisbourne stabs her right through the stomach, but she holds on long enough to give a speech, get married to Robin Hood, yank out the sword, and die. The Merry Men are considerate enough to hold back and avoid spoiling the moment.
- Averted in Band of Brothers. Characters who are established beginning in the first installment are at times killed off abruptly and without ceremony. Although much of the drama of the miniseries centers on the effects these deaths have on the survivors, there is often little attention paid to the deaths as they happen because the other characters seldom have the time to dwell on them.
- Played rather straight in its spiritual follow-up The Pacific, however, as the only main character killed (Basilone) has a prolonged slow-motion death scene.
- The series of Fargo has several deaths that are very underplayed/somewhat comical, with much more focus being placed on the survivors and their reactions than on the deaths themselves. This series is also by the Coen Brothers, who have a couple of other examples listed under "Films" above.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Subverted with John Garrett, aka the Clairvoyant, in the season one finale. In the climactic confrontation, he seems to die very dramatically, after an extended confrontation with Agent Coulson and Nick Fury, and a betrayal by his Dragon Mike Peterson. However, a following scene reveals him to be Not Quite Dead. He crawls into the super soldier machine, which builds him into a cyborg, and starts shouting about how he's unstoppable... Only to be casually vaporized by Coulson wielding the 0-8-4, who proceeds to go about his day without so much as a second thought.
- And again in season 2. Cal Zabo has spent the last twenty years of his life seeking revenge against Daniel Whitehall, who tortured his wife to death and stole her superpower. Just when they're about to have their big climactic showdown, Coulson appears out of nowhere and shoots Whitehall in the back, killing him. Cal is not amused.
- Mahabharata: Played straight with Bheeshma and subverted with Abhimanyu. Bheeshma was in a way, the show’s tritagonist, having been there from the beginning of this epic tale, and being considered a wise, honored elder. So, when he is defeated in battle, a dirge plays, both sides completely stop fighting for the day to come pay their respects, Arjun weeps and people mourn his downfall throughout the night. And when he finally chooses to die, Arjun cries dramatically and Time stops. However, when Abhimanyu, a rather minor character is killed, a sad dirge plays, both sides stop fighting note for the day to come pay their respects, Arjun weeps and people mourn throughout the night. And on the next day, Arjun goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. While Bheeshma’s death is given gravitas due to his importance in the overall story, Abhimanyu’s death is given gravitas because of the brutal way by which he is slain being a Moral Event Horizon.
Theatre
- Giacomo Puccini's operas La Bohème, Madama Butterfly and Tosca all end with the death of the leading female character accompanied by a fortissimo reprise of a minor-key theme. In the case of La Bohème, it's actually Rodolfo's realization of Mimì's death that sets off the outburst; likewise in Il Tabarro, which ends with Michele opening his cloak to show Giorgetta her lover's corpse. Liù's suicide in Turandot is no less dramatic, with practically the entire cast going into mourning.
Video Games
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: EVA and Big Boss both have dramatic death scenes. In EVA's case, it's trying to incinerate herself while saving the corpse she believes is Big Boss, then dying in Snake's arms. This is only after she was impaled by a spike in the exact same area she was punctured in during the third game. In Big Boss's case. it happens because of FOXDIE. Even though he's dying, he manages to tie up some of the game's plot points, sit down for a couple of minutes, stand back up, keep talking for a while longer, salutes his former master, collapses, then has time for a smoke break before he passes on. Not bad.
- For the basic Utsuge of the event the death of Naomi is dramatically awesome. How often do videogame characters die of cancer?
- The Metal Gear series has made a habit of these. MGS1 has an impressive series of dramatic boss deaths that manage to get one invested in the characters despite the fact that the plot sounds like it was sketched out by a 15 year old with a couple of books on conspiracy theories and a bad meth habit. When Meryl gets hit by Sniper Wolf, her last on-camera moments even get their own flashback for added drama.
- This trope was the main reason why most fans refused to believe that April Ryan died at the end of Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Getting stabbed in the stomach with a plain spear and drowning in a swamp? How is that supposed to be dramatic for a person who single-handedly saved two worlds?.. It turned out, however, that this was a very intentional subversion of this trope, as Dreamfall Chapters literally opens with April's funeral. According to the writers, such an anti-climactic death was the only logical conclusion to April's post-TLJ character arc, in which she had gradually lost faith in everything, from her own self and her friends to her powers and her destiny, and, with it, all relevance to the grand narrative. Too bad the writers have never actually revealed the vast majority of said arc (focusing instead on not one but two Dreamfall spin-offs) and most likely never will, now that The Longest Journey Home has been effectively canceled.
- Subverted in Clive Barker's Jericho. Your 7-man squad (each member of which is a fairly developed character) spends the entire game fighting through a nightmarish hell without any casualties. Just before the final battle, the Big Bad blows up two of your squad members without any fanfare or build-up. Plus, they were pretty much the only two squad members who weren't complete and utter JerkAsses.
- Mass Effect 2 averts this with your entire crew. There are ten (possibly twelve) characters besides you and the fellow with Plot Armor, thus their deaths are very sudden and not dwelled upon at all, Justified by the fact that you are up to thirteen foot-soldiers taking a single frigate to invade the enormous space station from which the designated Hero Killers launch attacks using a cruiser armed with a decidedly deadly laser cannon. There simply isn't time to mourn in this critical a mission. Commander Shepard is the only member of the crew who can receive a dramatic death, and that can only occur after the mission has been completed.
- Mass Effect 3 on the other hand plays this very, very straight most of the time.
- Final Fantasy VII. Since Aeris had been an important character up to her death (and still after it), she had to a die in an elaborate and outstanding way. Her death happens in a FMV and there's some drawn out, meaningful mourning by Cloud. Also, her death is still brought up later in the game. However, there's also Biggs, Jessie and Wedge, three non-playable characters that helped your party at the beginning of the game and died to Shinra's sector 7 upper plate. Barret is visibly angered that they died, but their deaths receive fewer mentions.
- Final Fantasy XIII-2: Despite the fact that Yeul has been seen dying in exactly the same ways (several times, in fact), Serah's death by visionary powers at the end of the game is played for as much drama as possible - complete with a Big "NO!" on Noel's part and a variation of Died in Your Arms Tonight occuring.
- Exaggerated hilariously in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare with the infamously dramatic death of a random sidequest character at the hands of the zombies:
Herbert Moon: You can't kill me!! I'm HERBERT MOOOOOOOOOON!!!
- Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and its rereleases are the only Harvest Moon games where the protagonist dies. Your death is thus rather dramatic, with you suddenly dying at a rather young age (in your 50s or 60s). This applies to the animals as well (which is common in the series) If not taken care of properly, you will get a cutscene of them dying by falling over and you will get called out for your poorly caring for your animals.
- Fire Emblem usually leans heavily into this. Since ever player character is unique and death is permanent, the games typically have dramatic music, camera angles, and Last Words for every player character and key antagonist. So it adds to the Player Punch in Fire Emblem: Three Houses when Jeralt's death is just so... quiet. After the storied Knight of Serios is ignobly stabbed in the back, he quietly bleeds out on the ground with only his child's tears to comfort him. The scene has few sound effects and no music whatsoever, really driving the moment home.
Web Animation
- Vinesauce's The Blue Shell Incident milks Mario's apparent death for all it's worth, with dramatic slow-motion, Luigi shedding a single tear, and screaming Mario's name.
Webcomics
- MAG ISA — Eman Cruz loves to question the meaning of life in the TWO TIMES he's "died".
- In Kid Radd, the death of Sheena's "little sister" was plenty dramatic, but the second Radd's death was barely acknowledged, poor guy.
- In Homestuck, this is actually a requirement for players who have reached the god-tier. They become immortal - unless their death is either just or heroic. Essentially, they're only allowed to die if it's dramatic. Other than that though, this trope is often averted. Deaths are usually dramatic in context and In-Universe, but the deaths themselves are nearly always undignified and often even comical.
Web Original
- In The Gamer's Alliance, this is played straight with Belial, Hiroshi Hayabusa, Ismail and Leon among others but averted with Koryaksky who dies an undignified death in a back alley.
- Used and averted/subverted in Survival of the Fittest, literally depending on the writer. Most people seem to think that in order to have a good character, their death post has to be milked for every last bit of drama and Angst they can get. While sometimes this is satisfying and can evoke excitement or sympathy, a lot of the time it falls flat, with the readers wanting the poster to just get on with it. Conversely, inactive or fodder characters tend to be killed off like nothing.
- Raku's death in Neko Sugar Girls is very dramatic. She died of a broken heart surrounded by her tearful friends and was able to deliver her final words. It's also noticeable for having the best visuals in the series.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender only gets to have a few deaths, but the show milks them for all its worth. Zhao, Jet and Yue all get dramatic death scenes, even if one of them was a bit vague. Roku fights an entire volcano before dying. And although we don't see the actual death, Kya- Katara and Sokka's mother- also gets quite a dramatic one as we see her sacrifice herself for her child.
- "Future Tense", one of the more unnerving Gargoyles episodes, plays with this trope in just about every way possible. Some major characters like Hudson and Xanatos are already dead so we don't even get to see a death scene. Others are killed suddenly without a word like Matt, Bronx, Claw, Angela, and Brooklyn. The only ones who get dramatic deaths complete with last words are Alexander Xanatos, Broadway, Demona, and Face–Heel Turn Lexington who reveals his Evil Plan and unleashes a Motive Rant before going down. Ultimately, the trope is subverted since the entire episode was All Just a Dream and nobody is actually dead.
