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A Plague on Both Your Houses
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"Help me into some house, Benvolio,
They have made worms' meat of me. I have it,
And soundly too. Your houses!"
With his dying breath, a character vents his anger at his killers, or some other personal enemy. It may be an actual dying curse that is believed to (or, in some settings, actually does) have the power to harm the target, or it may simply be a prediction of a well-deserved bad end.
Subtrope of Famous Last Words. With a little pre-planning, it can be a Thanatos Gambit or My Death Is Just the Beginning.
As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- In the Batman story "The Four Fates" (aka "The Curse of the Four Fates"), a dying Indian mystic predicts the deaths of the four criminals who kill him in a robbery attempt. Each comes true in an unexpected fashion. For example, the one who is told "water will be your downfall" heads to the desert, several kilometers from any body of water — and dies of dehydration.
- In The Sandman, The Corinthian is very careful not to kill Loki because of this trope, noting that "the dying curse of a deity is a nasty thing".
- That does not stop the Corinthian from mutilating Loki. He is that Badass.
- He's the Corinthian, what did you expect? It's quite possible that the new version of him associates all violence with the chance of eyes in the offing— like what he does to that wolf he kills.
Film
Literature
Live-Action TV
- In the Babylon 5 episode "The Coming of Shadows", the Centauri Emperor's efforts at reconciliation with the Narn are ruined by the machinations of Londo Mollari and Lord Refa. Just before the Emperor dies, he says a few last words to Londo. Londo falsely tells everyone else that the Emperor had endorsed the launching of a war against the Narns... but privately admits to Refa that the Emperor really said that Londo and Refa were both damned. About a year later, Refa is beaten to death by a mob of Narns... and, compared to Londo's eventual fate, he got off lightly.
- In an episode of Friends (The One With The Screamer), a guest star utters the phrase. He's the director of a play that got bad reviews, where his girlfriend and Joey starred.
- In the Torchwood episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang", the woman that John Hart killed in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" did one better - she hid a bomb, attuned to the DNA of her killer, at the end of an intricate treasure hunt and told her killer where it was, and that it was a diamond. Greedy, cocky Captain John, of course, walked right into it.
- In Rome, after the death of her son and the extinction of her political cause (partly due to Atia's machinations), Servilia goes to Atia's house with a knife and waits until Atia comes out. Then, with the full attention of everybody around, she curses Atia to have nothing but "bitterness and despair" for the rest of her life. To seal the deal, she then stabs herself. While Atia achieves the goal she's been aiming for the entire series, she finds it's Lonely at the Top.
- In the LOST episode "Outlaws", Sawyer hunts down and kills the man he thinks was responsible for causing his father's suicide and murder of his mother. He's wrong, and the guy's last words are, "It'll come round again."
- In the Doctor Who episode "The Stolen Earth", Harriet Jones, Former Prime Minister foreshadows the destruction of the Daleks at the hands of two human-Time Lord hybrids this way.
Harriet Jones: Harriet Jones, former prime minister.
Harriet Jones: Oh, you know nothing of any human. And that will be your downfall.
Tabletop Games
Theater
- The trope namer is Mercutio's line in Romeo and Juliet, after he accidentally gets into the middle of the Montague-Capulet feud and is fatally wounded by Tybalt. He also makes an Incredibly Lame Pun or two in the process.
- Note that despite being allies with the Montagues, he blames BOTH families for the ancient feud that led to his death, even though no one asked him to get involved and Romeo tried to save him from Tybalt.
- There's another layer to the meaning as well. Many scholars interpret the "fighting" between Mercutio and Tybalt as being more a show of bravado than an actual fight; which Romeo breaks up because he sees this as part of the cause to the two families' feud. When he attempts to break up their play, he angers Tybalt, who had recognized him earlier from the Capulet party and been denied the chance to humiliate him. Tybalt attacks in response, either intentionally or unintentionally striking Mercutio instead of Romeo. Most scholars who back this interpretation cite the scene at the party and that Tybalt does not defend himself against Romeo, perhaps from shock, as evidence.
- What Mercutio meant was that they houses were stupid to have this feud. He realizes that if it weren't for the feud, he would be alive.
- They must have liked this trope in the English Renaissance. Barabas, the title character of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, curses the "Damned Christian dogs and Turkish infidels!" who brought about his death - as he boils in oil.
- The whole plot of Ruddigore comes about because a burning witch cursed the whole line of the Baronets of Ruddigore. Heck, the subtitle is The Witch's Curse.
- A possible interpretation of Caesar's legendary last words, "Et tu, Brute?" (You too, Brutus?). Instead of a question, asking if even Brutus is betraying him, it is sometimes thought as a statement, basically meaning "Your turn next." Marc Antony made the curse come true.
Video Games
- Mass Effect 2's Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC has rogue Spectre Tela Vasir's final moments, in which she tries to justify working for the Shadow Broker and expresses her disgust at Commander Shepard for working with the pro-human terrorist organisation Cerberus before succumbing to her wounds mid-sentence.
Tela Vasir: "You want to judge me? Look in the mirror! Kidnapping kids for biotic death camps! Hell, your own unit on Akuze! And you're working with them! Don't you dare judge me! Don't you..."
- Zaros from Runescape had one of these, and it was rather powerful, turning all humans involved with his assassination into barely-perceptible spirits. Of course, Zaros is probably Not Quite Dead.
- In Quest For Glory IV, the first major plot event sees the townspeople capture a gypsy on the (false) accusation of murder. If you fail to either clear his name or break him out of jail within a couple of days, the gypsy is burned at the stake. With his dying breath, he curses the town to share his fate, and you get a Have a Nice Death screen saying that his curse came true.
- When you fail to save a prison guard trapped in an active gas chamber in The Suffering (and you will), he'll die shouting, "Fuck you! Those are my last words, you urrrgghhhh...."
- The plot of Castlevania: Curse Of Darkness centers around a curse like this uttered by Dracula when he met his end from Trevor Belmont, in Castlevania III.
- "CURSE YOU, SAGES! CURSE YOU, ZELDA!! CURSE YOU... LINK!!"
- And before his transformation into Ganon and the aforementioned quote, the human Gannondorf uses his "last breath" to bring the house down on Link... literally.
- Ganondorf's very existence is due to one of these by Demise, the demon king.
- WarCraft: "I hope there's a special place in hell waiting for you, Arthas." - last words of Uther the Lightbringer.
- Shiro Tagachi's death wail in Guild Wars Factions might as well have been one...I mean, it bloody petrified an entire forest, and turned an entire sea to Jade.
- In Beyond Good And Evil, the dying General Kheck uses his final breath to deliver a final insult, right in Jade's face—she's doomed to fail, she will be consumed by the Eldritch Abomination who has been looking for her soul for centuries, and even if she does succeed, it will be meaningless because everyone she ever loved is already dead. She stares him down fearlessly, though—not only because she's a Plucky Girl, but because she still has the two most steadfast members of her True Companions with her, and for the rest, well, now death is a minor technicality.
Web Comics
Web Original
Western Animation
Real Life
- The Dying Declaration
 is a recognized hearsay exception, allowing someone's last words to be used against their killer in court in some instances.
- The original source of the trope was a commonly-held belief in various cultures that dying and/or dead people were extremely close to the supernatural and, thus, their words were extremely powerful. This is evident in the mythologies and legends of numerous ancient civilizations (the ancient Greeks come to mind) and a dying foe was considered extremely dangerous (in some ways moreso than a healthy one) for his ability to call down curses on those who had killed him, particularly if the death was a result of foul play.
- When Shaka of the Zulu was assassinated by his half brother Dingaan he told Dingaan that the white people, not he, would rule.
- Dingaan did rule for twelve years though, and was overthrown by another half-brother (who admittedly had British backing) not directly conquered. That happened later.
- The Master of Knight Templars Jacques de Molay cursed the engineers of his chapter's demise — King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V — from his pyre. Before long both died and then a long streak of lethal calamities haunted Philip's descendants.
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