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Dropped A Bridge On Him / Video Games

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  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic's temporary death at the hands of the villain came without warning or any form of foreshadowing. Despite being the title character, his death was unceremonious and abrupt.
    • In Sonic Lost World, the main villains are the Deadly Six, six entirely new characters each with their own unique personality, and among the darker Sonic villains, while bringing a sense of humor at the same time. How do they go out? Three of them, Zazz, Zomom, and Master Zik, are fought in a row at Zone 1 of Lava Mountain, and only take two hits before they are (presumably) destroyed as if they were common enemies. Zeena puts up more of a fight but goes a similar way, while Zor falls into the lava when Sonic hits a switch. Zavok on the other hand has more of a climactic battle with his giant form and fall down a shaft into lava (which is fitting since he's the main villain, although he is Hijacked by Ganon after his doom). Unlike Metal Sonic in the previous game, their deaths happen during gameplay rather than in cutscenes. However, their deaths are up to debate given that Eggman mentions recruiting them again in the ending.
  • Fallout:
    • After the two creators of the series split up, the remaining one said that all of the non-human characters all died due to a gigantic explosion following Fallout 2, apparently sharing J. Michael Straczynski's overzealous frothing hatred for cute kids and robots. This was mostly a joke, as non-human characters like Marcus returned in Fallout: New Vegas. However, Goris died The Last of His Kind while K-9 and Robodog were disassembled by the NCR for research.
    • Chris Avellone and the Black Isle dropped a bridge on the Wanamingos in the Fallout Bible, having described their sterility, genetic clock and an onslaught of a travelling tribal. Unlike the others, they won't be missed however.
    • In Fallout 3, Liberty Prime (the Deus ex Machina of the main game) is hit by a Kill Sat from orbit during the first quest of the Broken Steel add-on. However, the Sole Survivor can choose to rebuild him/it two games later in Fallout 4, if they side with the Brotherhood of Steel.
    • According to Fallout 4, Owyn and Sarah Lyons died between 3 and 4. The former died of old age (paving the way for Arthur Maxson to take over), and the latter died in battle.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
  • When Eric Chahi created Another World, he had no intention of making a sequel, preferring to let the ambiguous ending (Buddy loading Lester's broken body onto a dragon and flying him to safety) stand alone. Interplay wasn't about to have any of that. So when Heart of the Alien was made, it became clear there was no feasible way of sending Lester back to his home world. Thus, Lester dies saving Buddy and the game ends with his cremation.
  • This trope is played for laughs somewhat in Drakengard's fifth ending, in which Caim and Angelus, having defeated the Mother Angel/Queen-Beast after following it through a rift in the space time continuum, are shot down by Japanese Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets. It's unbelievably anticlimactic to the point where after everything that has preceded it, you have to laugh.
  • Aldo Trapani, the protagonist of the EA adaptation of The Godfather, gets abruptly sniped dead in the opening level of the second game to allow for new player character Dominic to take his place.
  • In StarCraft, the Zerg cerebrates were stated to have died out in between Brood Wars and StarCraft II by Chris Metzen due to the death of the Overmind. But that was because most of the cerebrates had merged into that Overmind, including Daggoth.
    • Which is especially odd considering that the final battle at the end of Brood War wasn't even over Kerrigan (who is on Char with the rest of the Broods). The three strongest armies in the game converge on that platform to kill but one cerebrate: You.
  • Played for laughs and drama in obscure adventure game Shadow of Destiny, in which the entire goal of the game is to travel back in time and prevent your own murder; some deaths are dramatic, some are just plain funny. In the C ending in which the player does the bare minimum to win, Eike finally prevents his own murder, lies down on the road to contemplate his own existence, and, after a soulful monologue, gets run over by a drunk driver.
  • The backstory to Chrono Cross basically does this to practically the entire cast of its predecessor, Chrono Trigger.
    • This only really applies to Crono, Marle, and Lucca. The reason the rest of the cast wasn't present was shown in the ending of Chrono Trigger. The other characters all had returned to their original time periods and only those three characters were still in the present.
    • It also applies to Prometheus, aka Robo, whose circuits (which apparently carried his personality) were used to construct the Prometheus Lock that kept the Frozen Flame sealed away from FATE. The most ignominous part is that, once she has recovered her access to it, she could have deleted Prometheus at any time. She was just waiting for Serge & Co (who have ZERO connection to Prometheus and don't even know who or what he is) to arrive at her inner sanctum, so the player could watch as she unceremoniously destroyed him without fuss or fanfare.
    • It should be mentioned that the Crono, Marle and Lucca that had Bridges Dropped on them were versions of them from failed timelines ending up in the Darkness Beyond Time and were likely the same ones fought as bosses in Chrono Trigger DS (of course if they are then their death would be at the hands of the main versions of Crono, Marle and Lucca in the bonus boss fights).
  • The moral based horror puzzle video game Catherine kills off the main character like this in the action stages if the player is not careful.
  • Cid in Final Fantasy VI dies from eating bad fish. Which you, the player character, fed him. What makes this especially infuriating is that there is a way to ensure he doesn't die, but you're unlikely to figure it out without a guide the first time around. Granted, letting him die actually leads to a much more touching and emotional scene, but it's still a pretty random way to go out.note 
  • In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Ryder and Big Smoke are revealed to betray the Grove Street Families. But while Smoke is the one who gets all the focus, Ryder is killed midway in the story in an extremely anticlimactic way (via murdered in a boat explosion at an attempt to escape) and is completely forgotten about afterwards. He doesn't even get a single cutscene for his demise, unlike Big Smoke, Tenpenny, and Pulaski.
  • Metal Gear:
  • In Mortal Kombat 9, this happens to nearly everyone who dies. Granted, Word of God isn't even denying that they'll all be back but that doesn't make it any less annoying.
  • Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Gaiden appeared to have bridge-dropped Lamia while after just addressing how glad she was that she had friends...she was unceremoniously shot down and all signs show that she's Killed Off for Real. Then, several chapters later, it's revealed that the bridge didn't really completely splatter her, and Duminuss lifted that bridge up, ensuring her survival.
  • Brad Vickers, S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team's pilot in the original Resident Evil, appears as an easy-to-miss enemy zombie in Resident Evil 2 who only exists to grant the player the key to the wardrobe locker when defeated. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, being a Non-Linear Sequel to RE2, had to come up with a more satisfying explanation for Brad's demise. It turns out he was killed by the Nemesis, Umbrella bio-weapon trained to kill the survivors of the mansion incident.
  • Several examples in Baldur's Gate II:
    • In the very first dungeon, you'll soon find out that Minsc's witch Dynaheir and Jaheira's husband Khalid (both recruit-able NPCs in the first game) were killed off-screen by the new Big Bad.
    • If Yoshimo was in your party Spellhold, he'd sell you out to the Big Bad - but he's unable to refuse due to a geas spell. The frustrating part was if you knew this was coming, and left him back at the inn (say, if you were trying to do it again with a different class and/or party), then to prevent you from being able to pick him up again later, he'd be stabbed in the back the second you walked in the door. Wallop.
    • In the Sahuagin City side quest, if you choose to help Prince Villynaty against King Ixilthetocal after reaching the prince, King Ixilthetocal has two of the people who suggested that you go talk to the prince executed for reasons unrelated to your decision.
    • If you take Keldorn with you to the Windspear Hills, he'll recognize that his squire Ajantis, the NPC paladin from the first game, is among the paladins you are forced to kill due to Firkraag's manipulations.
  • In WinBack, nearly all of Jean-Luc's teammates unceremoniously have bridges dropped on them over the course of the game. Jake's death was the biggest Player Punch , since he survives until near the end of the game, to get you attached to him, then Bang Bang he's dead.
  • Rave Heart: Lumina is abruptly killed off after the second boss fight, due to the shrapnel from the boss's explosion.
  • In Syphon Filter 2 Teresa appears to be Killed Off for Real by The Mole Chance at the end, and there's even a funeral. However, in the third game, she is back from Faking the Dead, via Retcon.
  • Bridges are dropped all over in the last route of Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel. Caster, Assassin, Lancer, Berserker, Archer, Gilgamesh and Saber.
    • There's plenty of bridge dropping (and Long Bus Trips, in Sakura's case) in the other two routes, though — most notably Caster in Fate and Ilya/Berserker in UBW, who each get one scene to say "Hi, I'm a villain!" and then die in that scene or the next time we see them. HF does it slightly more due to it pulling in some completely new characters, but the real reason why HF's bridge dropping stands out more is that all of its characters had bridges dropped on them after the scenes that made fans care about them, whereas nobody cared about Caster yet when Gil insta-killed her ten minutes after her introduction in Fate.
  • Modern Warfare: In Call of Duty 4, all the SAS members except Soap and Captain Price are unceremoniously executed at the end of the game. In Modern Warfare 2, all of TF-141, again barring Soap and Price, are killed off by General Shepherd. In fact, if you're a player character in a Modern Warfare title who isn't Soap or Price, you'd better call home and say your goodbyes while you can, because there's a rickety ridge overhead with your name on it. As of Modern Warfare 3, even Soap isn't safe.
  • Soldier of Fortune II: Madeline Taylor. By nothing more than a faceless Mook that you tear to shreds as easily as all the others before him, to boot. Hawk suffers a similar fate in the first game, albeit at the hands of the Big Bad.
  • Star Ocean: The Second Story had one where Ronyx, a character in the last Star Ocean game who had survived many confrontations in the first game is killed off suddenly in the second by a laser beam meant as a demonstration of power by the Big Bads.
  • Silent Hill 3 killed off the main character from the very first Silent Hill game, Harry, by having his beloved daughter, your character, Heather, arrive at their house to find him dead. For those who played the first Silent Hill and may have had some sympathetic attachment to Harry, this was an extremely abrupt off-screen affair. A bit of time is spent mourning him, but not much. It's odd when you think that the things Harry knew could probably have prevented most of the game, if he'd been alive to tell Heather. Also combines with Stuffed in the Fridge, since it's done to fill Heather with hatred and give her a motive for revenge.
  • Halo:
    • Sgt. Johnson's death in Halo 3 is a strong example. Johnson was repeatedly shown as a formidable soldier who survived numerous dangerous missions despite being simply an ordinary human compared to John-117 or the Arbiter. Johnson was also one of John-117's most enduring allies who had been with him on numerous missions throughout the series. Him getting killed by 343 Guilty Spark, a character that is basically a support character with no previously-demonstrated combat abilities, comes across as abrupt and disappointing. Rather than go out fighting the Covenant or the Flood (which would make John-117's battle against them all the more personal), Johnson gets anticlimactically killed by a minor character.
    • Halo: Reach: We knew all of Noble Team was going to die going in. But Kat's was probably the most emotionally effective because it was the sudden, out-of-nowhere kind of death that could have happened to anyone.
    • Pre-Halo: First Strike retcon, Johnson's death in Halo: Combat Evolved counts as well. The fact that it was so easy to retcon him back into the series shows just how little his original death was even touched on.
    • Jul 'Mdama was a significant character in the Kilo-Five trilogy's first two books, Spartan Ops, and Halo: Escalation, but is killed by Locke in the first mission of Halo 5: Guardians.
    • Halo: New Blood featured Supporting Protagonist Rookie from Halo 3: ODST's first appearance in several years. He ends up being killed by Insurrectionists (who are the weakest of Halo's bad guy factions).
  • The Elder Scrolls:
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade has the Dark Is Not Evil magic-user Canas, father of Hugh from Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, as a recruitable ally. The problem is Binding Blade, set 20 years later, has Hugh Raised by Grandparents and mention his parents being dead. Blazing solves this by, infamously, having Canas and his wife unceremoniously die stopping a snowstorm in his "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue.
  • In the Golden Deer route of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Prince Dimitri's Roaring Rampage of Revenge sent him off the deep end and after getting his troops slaughtered, he's speared by a swarm of mooks and Killed Offscreen with Hilda being the only witness.
  • A quest in Runescape brought us a variation on this: "Drop a Pillar on him". How? A quest called Salt in the Wound was released to end the Sea Slug quest series, and in it, you "fight" the big bad Mother Mallum, who's been built up as one of the biggest threats in the world of Runescape. How does she die? You topple over a pillar and crush her. Players were not pleased.
  • In Tekken 3, it was stated that Jun, Baek, and indeed most of the cast of the original games had been killed and absorbed by Ogre. Later games Retconned this by revealing that Baek and a few others (such as Lee, whose fighting set had been copied by Ogre, implying his death) had survived- the original King was the only one who's death was conclusive. Other characters did actually die between Tekken 2 and 3- the original Kuma died of old age (except that it was later stated that he was only in hiding), while the original Armor King was killed in a bar brawl with Craig Marduk before the start of Tekken 4.
  • This happens to the main character in Riddle School 4 about 3 seconds after you start the game, but is ultimately Retconned in Riddle School 5.
  • Bill in Left 4 Dead 2's DLC chapter "The Passing". What makes this a particular odd choice is that the death in question was announced by Valve well ahead of time and given plenty of limelight... and then the actual event was limited to a single line on-screen: "A good man died today."
    • Bill is an unusual case; Valve had trouble getting him back to record dialog for later DLC chapters because he was busy with his day job (radio DJ). A later campaign, "The Sacrifice", shows the original L4D characters' last adventure, with one of them having to do a Heroic Sacrifice to protect the other three. In the game any character can make the sacrifice, but canonically Bill is the one who does it. And to Valve's credit, unlike many others on this list he at least went out like a hero and a badass, facing three Tanks by himself in order to let the others get to safety.
      • Made even cooler by the fact that when you saw his body in 'The Passing', it's lying right where the comic shows him sitting for the last stand. Which, given the zombie propensity for vanishing into thin air, probably means he managed to off all three tanks before bleeding to death.
  • The death of Corporal Hart at the end of TimeSplitters 2. After the splitters break into the control room, she's killed in one shot by one of the lightning bolts the splitters fire, an attack that, in gameplay, does no more damage than a mildly powerful bullet.
  • In Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, after going through utter hell, seeing all her friends brutally murdered, and learning that she was nothing more than an Unwitting Pawn all along, April is randomely attacked, impaled and left to drown in a swamp in literally the last few seconds of the game. The death was so abrupt that most fans assumed that it must have been a fakeout to be resolved in the sequel, but then Dreamfall Chapters squashed those hopes by opening with her funeral.
  • It's possible to do of this to two of the playable characters in Heavy Rain. Among other ways, FBI Agent Norman Jayden can have his brains blown out by a two-bit thug, and Madison can be tortured to death by a random Mad Doctor.
  • In The Godfather 2 you get to drop a bridge on Agent Mitchell. The boss fight against him... isn't, and he doesn't even get a "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner or Pre-Mortem One-Liner, much less a full death scene. You simply kill him however you want and walk away.
  • In one of the GDI endings in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn (if you destroy the Temple of Nod without the Ion Cannon), Kane walks down a corridor and is suddenly crushed by falling debris. Subverted because he is alive and well in the next game.
  • Hilariously done in the opening credits for the Nintendo 64 shooter Star Wars Episode 1: Battle For Naboo. We see Jar-Jar Binks walking around, only for the Nintendo 64 logo to suddenly drop on him. It's the only time we ever see him in the game.
  • As of Soul Calibur V, most of the original cast who don't appear are simply Put on a Bus. However, it is explicitly stated that poor Sophitia died at some point between V and IV. The artbook suggests that she had the fragment of Soul Edge near her heart surgically removed, forever freeing Pyrrha from its influence at the cost of her own life.
  • World of Warcraft: In Warlords of Draenor, Admiral Taylor, a recurring Alliance character since Cataclysm, is Killed Offscreen along with his entire garrison in some random questline in Spires of Arak by some no-name villain who is easily dispatched by the Player Character. The sheer randomness of the death and the lack of any narrative purpose it serves really makes it feel like he was just killed because his Horde counterpart General Nazgrim died in the Siege of Orgrimmar (his death, though still disliked by some, was at least suitably epic) though Word of God has denied this. Even worse, Taylor's ghost can then be recruited as a follower, making it seem even more pointless.
    • Amber Kearnen was a recurring Alliance character in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, being part of the Alliance Five-Man Band in the latter. Come Legion she's found dead outside the Rogue Order Hall with a knife in her back, though she at least serves as a Plot-Triggering Death.
    • Rhonin, leader of the Kirin Tor was unceremoniously killed in a novel: leading many players to go "wait...what?" when a quest-giver mentions his death. At least it was protecting Jaina Proudmoore.
    • Tirion Fordring, leader of the Argent Crusade. After his destiny was built up in a speech by Bolvar Fordragon, Tirion just gets force-choked and dropped into a fel pond by a random demon. He survives long enough to give the player the Ashbringer. Still, a lot of players felt cheated, since Varian Wrynn got an epic send-off cinematic.
  • It's later mentioned in the True Mastermind Edition of Time Crisis 5 that Christy Ryan, the Damsel in Distress from the second game who had just become Keith's girlfriend, was Killed Offscreen three months before the events of the game when Robert went rogue on the VSSE.
  • Aya Brea, the fondly remembered protagonist of Parasite Eve and its sequel, is bumped off in The 3rd Birthday by a SWAT team that shot up her wedding for a reason that is never explained. As a result, Eve is forced to shoot her to correct the timeline.
  • Gears of War 3 features Marcus Fenix and Anya Stroud getting into a relationship that had been hinted at since the first game. Gears of War 4 reveals that Anya has died in the 25 years since the previous game, with not a single word of her fate revealed beyond that.
  • In Quake IV, shortly after Kane's Stroggification, Medic Anderson meets an unexpected end when he gets trapped behind a glass shield and carried off by a Strogg Scientist.
  • Golden Sun has Babi, the ruler of Tolbi and a major character in the first game who tasks Issac with the duty of finding acquiring more Lemurian Draught to prolong his life, granting them invaluable information and a ship of their own to complete their quest. Not only does he never even appear in the sequel, but you're just told unceremoniously by Alex that he died off-screen. The end.
  • The gimmick of Mass Effect 2's Suicide Mission is that anyone in your squad can die. The game tries its best to make sure that Death Is Dramatic, with several potential deaths using tropes like Died in Your Arms Tonight, Say My Name etc. In the end, though, some deaths end up being very abrupt, such as if you did not install the Thanix Cannon in the Normandy (where either Thane, Garrus, Zaeed, Grunt, Jack, Samara or Morinth is impaled by a metal beam with a brief "Oh no! [Character] is dead!" comment) and the Hold the Line segment (where the camera just pans over the corpses of whichever characters did not make it). This can be especially bad if the character who dies is Shepard's Love Interest.
  • Saints Row: The Third has this happen to Phillipe Loren, who gets crushed by a large counterweight (it's more like "Dropped A Ball On Him"). Somewhat alleviated by you specifically dropping the massive orb down on top of him, though the intent was merely to catch up with him, not crush him outright.
  • In the first chapter of Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die, Satan/Shinnosuke Yamazaki returns to battle the Imperial Combat Revue after he is revived. By the end of that battle, however, Yamazaki gets unceremoniously Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by the Demon King, aka Kazuma Shinguji.
  • Henry Stickmin Series: In the Master Bounty Hunter route of Completing the Mission, Henry is accompanied in his infiltration of the Toppat Clan's soon-to-be-launched space station by a squad of three other bounty hunters. In the middle of the path, all three of them are killed by the Right Hand Man Reborn. Afterwards, nobody ever mentions them again (let alone acknowledges their loss for a moment) for the rest of the route.
  • Played for laughs in Hangaroo, where after you manage to rescue the kangaroo from the noose, a meteor falls out of nowhere to crush him to death just as he's hopping away.

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