Dropped A Bridge On Him / Western Animation

Dropped a Bridge on Him in Western Animation

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• Archer:
  • Bilbo was suddenly killed off when Mallory slapped him so hard on the back he had a heart attack.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Jet. Lampshaded in "The Ember Island Players" episode, wherein the main heroes' journey is re-enacted in a play, including the rather ambiguously depicted death of Jet.
  Zuko: Did Jet just...die?
  Sokka: You know, it was really unclear.
• Ben 10: Alien Force apparently did this to the Galactic Enforcers, a group of Justice League spoofs from the original show, in "Vengeance of Vilgax", with the three of them being easily defeated and possibly killed (or, for Ultimos, at least stripped of his powers) by Vilgax at the beginning. We never heard of them again.
  • Also, Pierce, a secondary but well-characterized character introduced in Alien Force, was unceremoniously disposed of by the Forever Knights in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien to show they had finally gone out of their Badass Decay. His death is never mentioned until six seasons into Omniverse, and we don't even get to see the reaction from his sister.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Invoked in-universe in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Joker's Favor", where Charlie Collins makes the Joker back down with the threat of being ignominiously blown to bits by "a miserable little nobody" and deprived of a final showdown with the Dark Knight.
  • In the finale of Justice League Unlimited, the combination of Killer Frost and Darkseid's return drops a bridge on roughly two-thirds of the Legion of Doom, including established and well-characterized (if secondary) villains such as the Shade, Parasite, Copperhead, and Weather Wizard.
• Family Guy:
  • Played for Laughs and as a status quo reset: In the episode "Dead Dog Walking", Brian's Awful Wedded Life to his new wife Jess culminates in her having him put down when she can't bring herself to take care of him when he breaks his hip. After Brian escapes, they decide that they really might be meant for each other after all and stay married, only for Jess to die during the commercial break of unknown causes and be cremated.
  • Paddy Tanniger, a minor character, dies this way in “Hell Comes to Quahog”, being run over by a tank while Stewie and Brian try to destroy a new supermarket called Superstore USA. This is because the character was loathed by the writing staff.
• Lampshaded in the Futurama episode "Calculon 2.0". Calculon, whose acting style is akin to William Shatner's, is dramatically brought back to life for a final performance and then crushed first by a falling studio lamp and a catwalk that looks suspiciously like the bridge that killed Kirk in Star Trek: Generations.
• G.I. Joe did this to Serpentor in the "Operation Dragonfire" mini-series that launched the DiC-produced seasons after the original Sunbow-produced series was canceled. After Cobra Commander was turned into a snake during the events of G.I. Joe: The Movie, he returned to his human form to get his revenge. Serpentor, the one who turned him into a snake, is easily captured and turned into an iguana. Gnawgahyde, one of the Dreadnoks, says "I think I'll put him on the barbie". We never see Serpentor again after this...
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
  • Myron Reducto was hit by a bus as he crossed the road when his voice actor, Stephen Colbert, left to focus on The Colbert Report. Probably a little more predictable than some examples, considering Phil Ken Sebben (who's also voiced by Colbert) had also been hit by a bus earlier that episode. However, Phil doesn't count in this case, cause, well...
  Phil: HA HA! Final episode stunt casting!
  • Harvey Birdman himself suffered this fate in the final episode. To make it even more of a whiplash, he had just finished saving the city from two villains when Phil ran him over with a bus.
• Rahan: Mogo, the chief of the Wolf Clan, is killed in episode 22 after he is hit by the head of Sagan's axe, wielded by his son Enok as he fights Rahan. The death is quick and instant.
• Happens In-Universe on the Rocko's Modern Life episode "I Have No Son": A Fatheads episode opens with two pigs having a picnic near a lake. One comments on the absurdity of pigs speaking English, only for the Fatheads' spaceship to abruptly drop on both pigs.
• Samurai Jack: Actually gets Played For Black Comedy. When the Scotsman eventually makes his return to the series in Season 5, he is an old man bound to a wheelchair and Aku incinerates him down to his bones, all within a minute of his reappearance. When Aku leaves, his daughters go over to mourn him and he comes back as a ghost thanks to the ancient Celtic magic in his sword. He's only really dead in the physical sense.
• The Simpsons:
  • Parodied with Poochie, a short-term addition to the in-universe Itchy & Scratchy show, who is so intensely disliked by the audience that his character is literally pulled out-of-frame in his final apperance, saying "I have to go, my planet needs me", followed by a still frame that states "Note: Poochie died on the way to his home planet".
  • Ms. Krabappel has a bridge dropped on her after the actress playing her passed away suddenly. The last episode she appears in ends with her and Ned Flanders dancing, which is revealed to be Ned's daydream, as she has already passed away. Given how infrequent character deaths are (up to that point, the show had had around 5-10 canon, permanent deaths, some of which were played for laughs anyway), the scene is incredibly impactful. The cause of her death is never revealed, and several episodes in the season that followed deal with finding a replacement teacher for her, which ended up being Ned himself.
• South Park:
  • Happened to Ms. Choksondik, Veronica Crabtree (the old bus driver), Ted (the Mayor's mustachioed aide), and Pip. Ms. Crabtree's death was lampshaded:
    Sergeant Yates: I know she hadn't been in any recent episodes, but DAMMIT she deserved better than this!
  • Also, Pip. No appearances for eight years and then he shows up for ten seconds just to get stepped on by Barbara Streisand.
  • Happens to a lot of one-episode characters, especially during the first two seasons. For example, Tom and Mary in the episode "Cow Days." They won an all-expense paid trip to South Park and were thrown in jail after arriving, where they were completely neglected and eventually died of starvation.
    • There was also a minor classmate known as Lizzy, who seemed to be a Distaff Counterpart of Kenny when they gave her a speaking role in season 4 (wearing a pink parka and having lewd language, though she was not muffled). She winds up being carried off by a bear at the end of "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime" after her and the other girls have a sled accident. While the official site FAQ doesn't give a clear answer, they do suggest that she died. Still didn't stop the animators from utilizing her character model in later episodes (though it appears they phased her out completely after a while).
  • The episode "Spooky Fish" opens with a space ship landing in South Park and a creepy alien coming out to presumably wreak havoc on the town. The alien is immediately run over by the school bus, and nobody even notices.
  • One of the early Running Gags of the series was repeatedly dropping bridges on Kenny, only for him to be perfectly fine once the next episode started.
  • In-universe, Cartman writes a Christmas short story and does this to the story-version of Kyle, who survives being impregnated with the Anti-Christ and then having an abortion (It Makes Sense in Context) only to be killed off two weeks after the denouement just to troll the real Kyle.
• A Cartoon Network promo for the show Taz-Mania did this. Taz squares off against Kwicky Koala in a fictional game show called "Pick Your Marsupial." Just as the host is about to describe what Taz eats, he abruptly devours the unsuspecting Kwicky and is declared the winner by default.
• This is how Tom apparently dies in the Tom and Jerry cartoon "Heavenly Puss," as he gets flattened by an oncoming piano. After a failed chance at redemption, Tom discovers it was All Just a Dream.
  • Tom also ends up dying in the earlier cartoon "Mouse Trouble", when he's spectacularly blown up by the many, many explosives he planted in a last-ditch attempt to take out Jerry. The ending is quite comical, though; since everything explodes except for Jerry and his mousehole, and a halo-clad Tom is seen floating up to Heaven with a disgruntled look... and still feeling the effects of the wind-up doll he accidently ate earlier.
  Tom's Ghost: (hiccup) Come up and see me some time! (hiccup) Come up and see me some time! (hiccup)
• Transformers as a whole is very prone to this, given that its Merchandise-Driven nature means that it tends to accumulate lots of new characters to represent new toys, and said characters then become expendable when the toy leaves the shelves.
  • The Transformers: The Movie is infamous for doing this to a lot of characters: Optimus Prime and Starscream get decently climactic deaths (the former succumbs to injuries sustained fighting Megatron in a Heroic Sacrifice, the latter finally has his luck run out after years of being Easily Forgiven for his betrayals), but everyone else's death is the sort of thing you'd expect of a common Red Shirt, even the ones who were fairly important players in the cartoon. Many of them simply get shot a few times in a brief firefight and then fall to the ground dead, or even end up Killed Offscreen without getting any dialogue. It was particularly strange after years of the characters treating enemy laser fire as a moderate annoyance, or being able to put themselves back together after being blown to pieces.
  • Beast Wars had to kill off a good number of characters to make room for new character models, due to major budget issues and immature technology. While characters like Dinobot, Depthcharge, and Rampage all got pretty fitting or climactic deaths, others weren't so lucky. Inferno and Quickstrike die at the end of the show due to friendly fire, basically as a joke. Tarantulas and the Vok get blown to pieces in a freak accident. Tigatron and Airazor are abruptly abducted by aliens halfway into the second season after doing very little for its run, and don't return until they've been fused into a superwarrior, Tigerhawk, who then dies three episodes later. And then there's the case of Terrorsaur and Scorponok, who fall into lava and die during the second season premiere, with most of the characters barely noticing.
  • Transformers: Prime kills off Breakdown very abruptly, despite him being a major supporting villain for most of the show up to that point. He's essentially just the collateral damage for Airachnid going rogue, and it happens early in the episode with him being slaughtered easily and brutally. Of course, his death does have some longstanding impacts, as it cements Airachnid as a rogue and allows the evil human organization MECH to obtain his corpse.
• In The Venture Bros., the Sovereign transforms into an eagle and flies away after The Unreveal regarding his true identity... only to be killed when the nearby sniper Headshot stumbles and his rifle misfires. Initially, nobody present realizes he's just killed the Sovereign.
• Winx Club: Not a death, but still anti-climactic. One S3 episode sees the Winx breaking a Brainwash spell on Sky to take him back from his original fiancée Diaspro (who had done this for revenge). Several episodes pass without either of them, before Sky finally shows up at the end of one episode to mention that Diaspro was banished. This was anti-climactic because the last shot of Diaspro of season 3 looked more like she was thinking of getting back at the Winx for that. (And she actually did say, "This isn't over! Sky will be mine!" in the original.)
  • She's back in Season 5, first helping Skye regain his memories, then as an advisor to him/his parents. She seems pretty deliberately unhelpful, and tells Bloom to her face that she's trying to steal Skye from her. Again.
  • Mirta also went this route. She was turned into a pumpkin halfway through the first season and, once she was restored, only seemed to show up in the background unless the Winx were going to Cloud Tower; considering that she saved the Winx's lives a few times, this seems particularly harsh. And apparently, just to show the fans that she's never going to be a major character, she was shown to have been held back a grade at the beginning of Season 5, being the only character from the Winx's time as students (the first three seasons) who is still attending Alfea when they return after spending a year after graduating on Earth.

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