This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Janitor: Cut the following ...
- This differs from the Unusual Euphemism in that the euphemism is not itself unusual (such as "passed away" for "died"), but frequently, its usage is, as the euphemism is used in a context where real speakers would be more direct, or use a euphemism with a different connotation (such as "passed away" for "murdered", or "being intimate" for an encounter with a prostitute).
... because I had a little trouble parsing it and, anyway, it seems to be about what the entry isn't.
Red Shoe: Yeah. I originally put it in because I was worried that the difference between Never Say "Die" and Unusual Euphemism wasn't clear enough, but I think the examples make it sufficiently clear now.
Tzintzuntzan: I'm wondering if the movie examples should really count as subversions, since kids' movies have always been less squeamish —The Lion King had characters boasting "I killed him" and dying on-camera, and IIRC so did other Disney classics. (OTOH, The Lion King did cause a small media panic with its violence.)
Tabby: Seconding this.
Ununnilium: They're not subversions, they're exceptions. And frankly, The Lion King is an exception too.
BT The P: Kids movies are allowed to have bad guys say violent stuff, because they are subject to Karmic Death. In a series, if you expect the bad guy to come back every single week ad nauseam, he has to be slightly less bad; his failure to die might send the wrong message. </snarkiness>
Krid: Mythbusters is NOT "Reality TV". I have no idea what you would actually call it (I really believe it may be unique), but it's certainly not Reality TV.
Tabby: I believe TWOP classifies it as "educational/nonfiction," which I think works.
Seth: I think it is called Edutainment, action orientated documentary and whatnot.
Ununnilium: Or, you could just put it in Live-Action TV, how about?
Lale: Reading pages like this and seeing lists like Stock Superpowers and How To Kill A Character make me want to make a list of infamous euphemisms — "sent to another dimension" = killed, "talent"= Most Common Superpower... — to show just how poorly they fail and have the opposite of this cover-up effect.
Tanto: If this ever gets started, the finger has to go on there. The finger is the only hand sign that ever gets censored, so if you see a blurred hand on TV, you know what it is beyond any doubt. At least when you're bleeping out curse words there's an element of mystery...
Tabby: Any comments on how often this happens in The Fairly Odd Parents? There's an overdone example in "Channel Chasers" when Timmy tells Vicky "You can have it over my cold, non-moving, limited-animation body!" It's during the section that's a Dragonball Z parody, so I suspect it's a jab at the bowdlerization already mentioned on this page, but if FOP has the same policy it could just be a jab at Nickelodeon.
Lale: Except they've also said "dead" on that show: "You can't wish him maimed, injured, beaten, or dead." So I'm gonna go with the DBZ parody.
EricaMZDM: Randomish comment, but I'm not entirely sure things like saying "we're all gonna die", "I'm going to kill you", etc. qualify if they're obviously being used as hyperbole. Although it obviously -does- qualify when even the hyperbole is bowlderized.
It seems like some of these examples are more along the lines of fight scenes where both sides are obviously trying really, really hard not to kill each other. Is there a page for that? —Document N
Morgan Wick: Related to "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight.
What I mean is, trying for out-of-character reasons (Contractual Immortality, Failure Is the Only Option, or because it's a kid's show) to not kill each other, while at the same time trying to convince the audience that they're fighting to win. —Document N
Rutee: Re, FFXI, it's been a long time, but I'm pretty damn sure that as a T+ MMO by a company that doesn't shy from death (and is probably marketting higher age groups since it's an MMO), they don't do that. I just can't remember actual death threats from characters in it. Also, in regards to that specific example... that's what you're doing when you kill them. It's not a polite death euphemism (Unless it is; It'd be tough to tell, but I doubt it, as many foes are out to destroy the planet), but the actual metaphysics :P
Pteryx: It's not dying that's being covered up by euphemism. It's eating souls that is. Just because it's not death specifically doesn't mean it's not an example of trying to cover up something that's supposedly too horrifyingly unspeakable to say.
Fast Eddie: Pulling out this rather amazing quantity of non-evidence:
- Averted in one episode of Gargoyles, where Goliath vows to hunt down and kill the people responsible for injuring his daughter — in a Disney show for kids, even. Creator Greg Weisman later commented that they would never have gotten away with it today, and that it was a big discussion even back then.
- Aversion: Rattrap, on Transformers: Beast Wars was frequently heard to remark, when a situation looked especially hopeless, "We're all gonna die." This is not an unusal phrase in the context of the series, nor was death itself shied away from. The deaths of Dinobot and Transmutate were particularly dramatic, while Terrorsaur and Scorponok, by contrast, were nonchalantly dropped into lava and never missed.
- Aversion: Darkwing Duck was not so restricted — they said "dead" early in the first episode. Might have something to do with how nobody really ever died.
- Aversion: Completely disregarded in Avatar The Last Airbender. In some cases, it features children realistically being knowledgable of and using the words. The only time this was used was when Sokka said Bumi "might not...be around", but he was just skirting around it because he Aang was objective to thinking Bumi might have died.
- Helga Pataki from Hey Arnold! said "We're all gonna die" quite a few times.
- When the "no D-word" rule was completely discarded, the then-new show As Told By Ginger, not only used the word, but actually showed an eldery woman die on screen ("Carl and Maude", the 2nd episode).
- Batman The Animated Series had a visual version of this in an early episode. Batman fought a Mook in a zeppelin flying at the tops of skyscrapers. He accidentally knocks the mook from the zeppelin, and you see him fall, and then it cuts to him landing softly on a fabric balcony. Batman knocks another mook from the zeppelin and you see him land safely in a tree. (The guy fell dozens of stories but was fine because he landed in a tree!)
- Aversion: An episode of Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends includes Goo trying to start a seance. Not only does she not shy away from repeatedly saying that she's trying to contact dead people, she cheerily speculates on what they might have died of.
- Another aversion is in a Smurfs short in which Smurfette adopts a field mouse who later dies. The topic of death is dealt with rather lightly, but openly and honestly.
- Aversion: Justice League and Justice League Unlimited had no problem with throwing the words "kill" and "dead'' around like they were buzzwords.
- Rugrats unabashedly used the word "dead" in the episode when Chuckie's pet potatoe bug died — of course, the babies' grasp of death is only that it's "when you sleep for a long time... like forever." — but eventually shied away from it. Ex. in the Passover special, the 10th plague on Egypt is called "taking away the first born."
- Interestingly, the major studio film Over The Hedge is a big exception — one of the main villains, a bear, repeatedly threatens to kill one of the main protagonists, a raccoon. This trope may be weakening.
Lale: Finally! Except for the second half of the Rugrats example. I'm restoring it whole to keep the explanation, but feel free to cut what you may.
Ununnilium: I disagree with this. Notable exceptions should be, well, noted.
DomaDoma: Err, why is there a redirect from I Hate Empty Buildings?
Because I couldn't remember where to find this page and that was the first thing I tried. And apparently I wasn't the first one, since the nonexistent page showed up in a Google search. —Document N
Pteryx: Wasn't I Hate Empty Buildings a suggested name for a split of this trope into the originally-described one and the censorship of mass civilian death into everybody somehow escaping?
No idea. —Document N
Sniffnoy: It was.
Eryk The Red: I know it's kinda nitpicky, but you can (and ought to) just call the Jewish God "God". No one actually calls God "Yahweh". That name is, at best, a good guess at the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (the name of God). God is just called God. Even in Hebrew, the word El is used. Which just means "god". I thought about changing that bit where this is used in the 4th paragraph, but I figured I should bring it up here first. In case someone strongly disagrees for some reason. I would just rewrite the sentence as "in Judaism, pronouncing the name of God without being the high priest is considered to be a sin, hence the custom of saying "Lord" instead of "God"." This removes the presumption that Yahweh is the correct name.
Then again, I am a nerd about Jewish stuff. Maybe no one else cares as much about this stuff.
Otempora: Why is Pan'sLabyrinth in here? It's 'not' a kids' movie.
That Other 1 Dude: Just not having outright death threats does not qualify you for Never Say "Die". The Incredibles is listed as an aversion (why?) and it was pretty much the same.
- One instance where the Shadow Realm replacement would have made complete sense was Yu-Gi-Oh GX Season 3... but they chose to invent something new that is too ridiculous for words. The good news is, after hearing it, you'll never complain about hearing use of the "Shadow Realm" ever again.
Arsenal Tengu: Will someone please reveal what this other invention is? I'm curious now.
Anticitizen Two: I cut out the patronizing "kids don't understand death until they're 9 or 10 years old" bullshit. Kids are smarter than that.
That Other 1 Dude: Once again, we're not suppose to list non-examples (the Gargoyles thing is still worth noting though as it has to be the few where a protagonist makes an actual death threat, possibly the thing about Naruto as it at first appeared to use it, and the part about Disney because you'd really expect them to do it)
EDIT: The thing about the DCAU wouldn't be noticeable if it didn't mention that it actually shows them executing someone.
Prfnoff: Removed this, for being less example than Conversation In The Main Page:
- The final scene from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi has Luke saying something like this: "If you want to turn me to the Dark Side, you'll have to destroy me!". Make note that at its core, Star Wars was made for kids.
- Actually it's earlier, and Luke says "I will not turn, and you'll be forced to kill me." To which Vader replies "If that is your destiny." Then later during their duel when Luke extinguishes his Lightsabre, Vader references the earlier exchange when he says "if you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny!" At the very end, Palpatine also says "Now, young Skywalker...you will die."
- On the other hand, several characters in RotJ use the "die" word, including Jabba, C3-P0 (relaying Jabba's words), Han Solo, Mon Mothma (famous "Many Bothans died to bring us this information"), the Emperor, and even Luke himself, who in addition subverts the trope when his response to Yodas veiled "Soon will I rest. Yes, forever sleep" is simply "Master Yoda, you can't die".
- This troper always took that line in the context of Obi-Wan coming back as a ghost; in other words, that the Emperor would have to kill his spirit in addition to his body, a rather different prospect than a straight killing.
Caswin: Regarding one of the Dragonball examples...
- Always eager to one-down themselves, mere episodes later, Nappa destroys an entire squadron of fighter jets and half a dozen ships. Nobody bothers to comment on the lack of casualties, but we are subjected to radios repeatedly telling everybody to "eject" or "abandon ship".
Nobodymuch As far as OZ goes, the peculiar origin of the Tin Man indicates that the unkillability of people in OZ was there right from the start.
Caswin: Cutting it.
However, somewhat direct use took place hypothetically in the Made-for-TV Movie, "Or I could kill you now and make it so none of this ever happened." Only to shy away from it again a few minutes later, "What are you gonna do? Waste me?"
Lale: Actually, the line was "I could just destroy you now and prevent this future."
Vampire Buddha: Removed this because Megatron actually does say 'kill' and 'die' quite a bit:
- *In the original Transformers, Megatron constantly speaks of "sending them to oblivion."
** Sparks can also be "extinguished", which presumably is even worse than merely dying (the Spark is a Transformer's soul, after all, and is implied to go to some sort of afterlife)...
Klaue: I don't know if that would fit in here, but what about George Carlin's famous speech about it? I quote:
- "There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can't say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 . . . to seven. They must really be baaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large. 'All of you words over here, you seven . . . baaaad words.' That's what they told us, right? 'That's a bad word!' Awwww. No bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions, and wooooords. You know the seven, don't ya? That you can't say on TV? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the words that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war. Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits, wow! And tits doesn't even belong on the list! It seems like such a friendly word. Sounds like a nickname. 'Hey Tits, come here man! Tits! Meet my friend Toots. Toots, Tits. Tits, Toots.' Sounds like a snack . . . oh yeah, it is. Right. But I don't mean your sexist snack, I mean new Nabisco Tits. Corn Tits n' Sesame Tits n' Cheese Tits . . . Tater Tits. Bet you can't eat just one!"
Data Cable: Does it count for this trope if the dialogue actually changes the plot? I wanted to amend the G.I. Joe entry to mention Duke's rather bloody death in The Movie becoming a "coma" via additional dialogue.
- In the United States, no children's show can have any characters dying. For example, when planes are shot down, there's always the pilot being able to escape the explosion with a parachute.
This is just plain wrong. GI Joe is infamous for this, sure, but there are other shows that don't shy away quite as much - every Batman series features occasional violent death (albeit without nearly the frequency of the comics or movies). Plenty of people die in JLU. I've seen more than a few "splatstick" sight gags on Cartoon Network (prime time, not Adult Swim - not to say Adult Swim doesn't have them, of course). And Avatar goes without saying.
Red Shoe: It's one of those things that is true only at some periods in history. Maybe a Cyclical Trope, maybe not. In the 80s, it was fairly true, today, not so much. Daffy Duck could take a shotgun to his face, but back in the 1940s, Bugs Bunny murdered an entire pacific island full of Japanese soldiers.
DoKnowButchie: A couple of notes on the page. First, it's not clear whether the page is about a show's inability to kill off anyone regardless of how unrealistic that would be, or about a show's inability to simply say the words "death" and related derivations or synonyms. The trope name indicates one thing; the examples another. Given that it's quite possible for a show to have one but not the other—TMNT 2003 and the 4Kids dub of One Piece could kill off characters but not refer to it explicitly, while Batman: TAS could say the words but very rarely killed anyone off—and the difference needs to be clearly established, and if necessary, split into its own page.
Second, there's a large number of non-notable aversions to the trope, perhaps reflecting the misconception that this is an absolute trope, which is completely and utterly wrong; it's just something that some series show, and that some don't—as evidenced by, well, the large amount of examples here. The only way an aversion would be notable is if it comes from a show where the rule is normally enforced. Gargoyles, the main DCAU shows and Avatar, which never followed the trope, should not be included. None of the movies example fit either, since "not saying die" was never among their rules to begin with, and noting that they don't say the word is like mentioning they don't mention golf—true, but it would have nothing to do with Standards and Practices and/or objections from the producers.
Heck, I'll just do it myself. Removed:
- In Pan's Labyrinth (not a kid's movie, and one cannot stress this enough) the word 'pregnant' is tossed around, but 11-year old Ofelia has trouble with it, preferring to think of her mother as 'sick with baby'. Which makes sense, given that her mother nearly died during childbirth.
- Despite Disney reputation for white-washing, none of the films in the Disney Animated Canon has ever actually shied away from referring to death. They're not overly explicit about it, but certain characters do die, the villains do throw around death threats, and of course a Disney Death wouldn't work if people didn't think that the characters were dead.
- In fact, The Lion King even has the cycle of life and death as its central theme.
- The western spoof Rustler's Rhapsody subverted this in one scene where the villain tells a couple of his henchmen to "take care of" his distraught daughter. The pair exchange looks, shrug, and pull out their pistols. Fortunately for her, the villain sets them straight before any gunfire erupts.
- Averted in The Incredibles, part of why it's rated PG. In one memorable scene, Elastigirl explicitly tells her children that the villains are not like the ones in kids' television shows, and will use deadly force if they see fit.
- Pocahontas averts the trope like crazy, with a large portion of the film devoted to the two sides talking and even singing about how they're going to kill the other side.
I'd like to think that not all of these examples are necessarily aversions to the word "die" I mean, if all anyone ever said was "I KILL YOU!" it would get pretty annoying after awhile. I think instances where a show does recognize death and says "die" or "kill" only some of the time would just be an example of using word variety. "I'll destroy you", when not sounding forced, could just be the writer using more variety in dialouge. Besides, if YOU were an evil villian, wouldn't it sound much more menacing to say,"PREPARE FOR ANNIHILATION!!!" or "PREPARE TO MEET YOUR DOOM!"?
