Death By Irony / Western Animation

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• In the American Dad! episode "Spring Breakup", Steve successfully hooks up with a Carmen Electra stand-in but won't lose his virginity to her unless she gets her breast implants removed. When she does, the stage she's on suddenly collapses on her and, as some guy points out, she would've survived if she still had her implants because they would've cushioned the blow.
• Arcane: Silco has lived his life believing in sacrificing anything and everything in the goal of forging a free nation of Zaun from the oppressed Undercity. He scorns Vander, a man who he once called brother, more for accepting peace rather than for trying to drown him. Yet when the moment comes that would finally grant his dream, he finds that he's unwilling to pay the price: sacrificing his adopted daughter Jinx. In experiencing love for Jinx, he realizes why Vander did the things he did and was ready to abandon his unshaking dream of an independent Zaun altogether to protect her... only to die later that day by Jinx herself in a mental breakdown, just as Powder had accidentally caused Vander's own death.
• Batman: The Animated Series: "Off Balance" features (Count) Vertigo, who uses a special eyepatch device to give people...well, guess. He dies when Batman and Talia try to get at Vertigo in a clock tower. He uses a sonic drill to destroy the stairs, and they try to escape the vertigo by jumping for the bell cords. When the bells ring, they stun Vertigo so much that he stumbles out the tower and falls in the river, presumably to his death.
• In Beast Wars, Megatron says "Yes" in just about every sentence. At the end of the sequel series, Beast Machines, his final word as he's falling to his death is "NO!"
• Parodied in Clone High. In "Litter Kills, Litterally," Ponce de Leon, who was pro-littering and is seen tossing trash aside throughout the episode, is killed by stray litter which binds his hands, trips him onto the ground, cuts at his flesh, and finally suffocates him causing him to die in a pool of his own blood.
• Bender almost died ironically moments after his introduction in Futurama. Driven to suicide by the revelation that he had been unwittingly helping construct suicide booths, he tried to do himself in by using one of the booths. At least the company wouldn't have made a profit, as he used a coin on a string.
  • This becomes a Running Gag with the Waterfall family, a family of stereotypical activists who all end up being killed by the very thing they try to protect (all voiced by Phil Hendrie):
    • Free Waterfall Jr. (son of Free Waterfall Sr., grandson of Old Man Waterfall, father of Freeda and Hutch Waterfall) was the leader of Mankind for Ethical Animal Treatment, an Animal Wrongs Group so dedicated to vegetarianism they made a lion eat tofu, he appeared in "The Problem with Poplers" protesting the crews selling of the titular creatures and showed he was perfectly willing to let Leela be eaten by Lrrr in order to save a gorilla in the end the "Poplers" were revealed to be baby Omecronians and Lrrr, an adult Omecronian, was more than happy to eat him after he annoyed him too much, this earned a round of applause from the audience.
    • Free Waterfall Sr. (son of Old Man Waterfall, father of Free Waterfall Jr. and grandfather of Freeda and Hutch Waterfall) was the leader of a penguin sanctuary on Neptune dedicated to preserving all life (even the molecules that may become life in the future) and practiced non-violent resistance ("their asses are living things too"). Then he was faced with a penguin overpopulation problem and concluded that the only way to protect them was to kill a load of them leaving a small manageable percentage; despite his apparent good intentions, once he had an excuse to start killing them he quickly excited about the prospect of eating the penguins. Of course he never had the chance to go through with this because Bender had trained the penguins to kill anything that wasn't Black and White.
    • Old Man Waterfall (father of Free Waterfall Sr, grandfather of Free Waterfall Jr, great-grandfather of Freeda and Hutch Waterfall) was a veteran of multiple wars, a patriot of Earth, a believer in freedom of speech, a polygamist (Booooo!!!), bisexual (Booooo!!!), satanist (Boooooo!!!!) and a lawyer who is arguably the wisest member of the Waterfall family. In "A Taste of Freedom" he agrees to defend Zoidberg when he eats the Earth flag (something even the head of the ACLU wont do). When the case fails Zoidberg's people declare war on Earth and take over; when he attempts a non-violent protest they crush him with their walking castle. Unlike his son and grandson, whose deaths were either unmourned or celebrated, his death prompts a Heel Realization from Zoidberg who turns against then takes down his own species.
    • Freeda Waterfall (daughter of Free Waterfall Jr, granddaughter of Free Waterfall Sr, Great Granddaughter of Old Man Waterfall and sister of Hutch) first appeared mourning her Great-Grandfather at the end of "A Taste of Freedom" then appeared properly in "Into the Wild Green Yonder". Leader of the Straw Feminist and environmentalist "Feministas" who protest the equally Straw Misogynist anti-environmentalists who served as the special's main antagonists, she was first seen protesting Leo Wong's wiping out the Desert Muck Leech to make a parking lot (the sole survivor of which becomes the mascot for their protest against Wong). As leader of the feministas she was very ineffectual and focused most of her energy on making lame slogans and inserting male and female pronouns into words, but unlike her grandfather was willing to listen to Leela making her A Lighter Shade of Gray for the Waterfall family. She was killed by The Dark One who was, in reality, the last Desert Muck Leech calling out to her long lost brother to avenge her.
    • Hutch Waterfall (son of Free Waterfall Jr, Brother of Freeda Waterfall, grandson of Free Waterfall Sr and Great-Grandson of Old Man Waterfall) was the White Sheep of the family, a seemingly Crazy Homeless Person with Psychic Powers and part of the legion of mad fellows whose goal is to prevent the extinction of all species (including the ones who already are extinct). Unlike the rest of his family, he lives to see his plan come to fruition only to be killed by The Dark One (who is The Last of His Kind), who is then killed himself before his species can be saved; as a reward Hutch's DNA is taken by The Encyclopod (also voiced by Phil Hendrie) in order to recreate the human race when they go extinct. This means The Waterfall family may well become the longest surviving family in the human race.
• In Daria, we have Tommy Sherman, the former quarterback for Lawndale High, who would frequently run into the goalpost because he would wave to the crowd as he attempted to run a touchdown. At one point, the goalpost left him unconscious, so the school was putting in a safe new goalpost designed to fall apart rather than split the player's skull, and named it after him. However, as he went to go check out the new goalpost, it fell on top of him and crushed him. The fact that it was still in a sharp-edged wooden crate leaning precariously against the bleachers didn't help matters.
• Gravity Falls: Bill Cipher is shown to turn much of the town into stone during Weirdmageddon. He is finally killed after Ford tricks him into entering Stan's mind, leaving his body as stone itself. It's also worth noting that Stan and Ford tricked him into making a deal. (Ford had the knowledge to stop the forcefield that prevented Bill and his minions from leaving Gravity Falls, so Stan and Ford disguised themselves as each other so that Bill would enter Stan's mind instead.) This is fitting for an entity who tricked people into making dangerous deals himself. Finally, even though Bill wanted to leave the town, his death resulted in his stone body being trapped in Gravity Falls forever.
• Justice League gives us a great example of literal irony when Felix Faust summons Hades to bargain for ultimate knowledge, and is killed by the god instead, who claims that "ultimately, pain and suffering are all man will ever know"." Going by the definition of "ultimate," Hades is quite correct: at the end of any life is the experience of death.
• In King of the Hill, Peggy reveals her hobby is collecting newspaper articles of ironic deaths.
• All but one of the villains in season 3 of The Legend of Korra dies this way. The Earth Queen had taken the new airbenders prisoner and she died by Zaheer bending the air out of her lungs. The rest of his crew die by their own elements. P'li, a combustion bender, gets her head blown off when Suyin bends a metal breastplate around her head when she is about to fire. Ghazan uses his lavabending to commit suicide by melting the cavern he's in so he doesn't have to go back to prison. Ming-hua dies when Mako shoots lightning up her water arms.
• Metalocalypse: The Dethklok song "Bloodtrocuted" tells the story of an electrician who is being chased by bounty hunters because he happens to look like a dangerous criminal with a large bounty on his head. He escapes into the woods and stumbles across a power station, where he kills the bounty hunters by cutting his arm and electrifying a puddle of his own blood for them to step in. However, he cannot stop his arm from bleeding and dies as a result.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Alright, he didn't die (given he's a spirit, he probably can't die), but Discord receives his Fate Worse than Death in this fashion. After spending two episodes using the mane cast's flaws to break and Mind Rape them, his own flaws — namely his inability to think the mane cast could reunite their friendship after he effectively broke it apart and his ego further blinding him to that fact — are his undoing. Because of this, he lets them take a second free shot at him under the belief the Elements of Harmony are useless thanks to their broken friendship and it'll fail. He realizes he was wrong when the Elements actually fire and it's too late for him to do anything about it, resulting in him being Taken for Granite (until his resurrection and reformation in Season 3).
  • In the movie, the Storm King betrays Tempest once she has outlived her usefulness and tries to kill her rather than hold up his end of the bargain, but she is saved by Twilight. This motivates Tempest's Heel–Face Turn, and she saves the Mane 6 from the Storm King's final attack, resulting in him being turned to stone, falling over the balcony, and shattering to pieces.
  • In Season 8, the Mean 6, Evil Knockoffs of the Mane 6, were created by Chrysalis to use the Elements of Harmony to kill the Mane 6 in front of Starlight as her revenge on all of them for destroying her throne and ursurping her as leader of the Changelings with Thorax. The Mean 6 instead seek to use the Elements to overthrow Chrysalis and take over themselves, but the Tree of Harmony destroys them. Thus, they meet their gruesome demise by the power they sought to use for evil (and were created to do so, to boot). This is also inconveniently timed to save Chrysalis, one of Equestria's greatest foes, from being killed by Mean Twilight at the last second.
• In the Grand Finale of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, the evil entity below Crystal Cove had spent centuries manipulating groups of mystery solvers together in an effort to free himself, corrupting them in the process. He tried to do this to the gang, but they managed to catch on, and in the end, they destroyed him, erasing him from existence.
• The Simpsons
  • Famously (or infamously) done by Frank Grimes in "Homer's Enemy" where during his rant about Homer's incompetence and him being Too Dumb to Live, ends up electrocuting himself by grabbing High Voltage wires without gloves.
  • Subverted in one episode, in which Sideshow Bob is hoisted by his own petard when getting into a debate with Lisa that would end with his plan failing, but that was the plan all along.
  • Ned Flanders decides to watch the car race from the top of the stands to avoid flying debris (and the drivers' swearing). Their spot high up helped do Maude in. Well, kinda. Homer 'kills' Maude by picking up a frickin' bobby pin on the floor. This causes the T-shirt cannon to hit Maude, knocking her off the stadium and killing her. He also parked in an ambulance zone, preventing the first responders from having any chance of reviving her.
  • Lampshaded by Lisa in a potential future in "Bart Gets Famous" where Bart is reduced to her trophy polisher and she kills him by kicking him onto her pyramid-shaped Nobel Peace Prize, impaling him.
    Lisa: Impaled on my Nobel Peace Prize. How ironic.
• Pre Vizsla of Star Wars: The Clone Wars lives by a Social Darwinist philosophy of only the strong ruling. So Maul challenges and defeats him in front of his people, knowing Vizsla couldn't afford to decline. In fairness, Vizsla goes out calmly, given Maul had just proven himself stronger.
• Skull Island (2023): The Croc Monster in Episode 3 eats a merc alive in a Dynamic Entry, then it receives the exact same kind of death from a hungry Kong.
• In Superfriends episode "Death of Superman", while on a planet looking for mineral samples for his research into a Kryptonite antidote, Superman apparently dies when he end up being exposed to an extreme amount of said substance. When Darkseid and his forces learn of this from Firestorm, his son Kalibak can't help but find the irony amusing.
• In Titan Maximum the first episode has a guy who works at the Aviation Disaster Museum about to be killed by a jet that was shot down. He even lampshades this trope just before it hits him.
  Museum Worker: (Looks up) Oh, this is ironic as hell!

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