Anyone Can Die - Television Tropes & Idioms

The price of living is dying. Everybody pays.

You do not greet Death, you punch him in the throat repeatedly until he drags you away.

—No Fear

A rarer trope used by serious shows to prove that they can retain suspense because any main character can die at any time in the show. Note that while this has to often be Killed Off For Real for the trope to have the desired effect, the writers will try to cheat and bring back the guy later (see Not Quite Dead, Disney Death, and Battle Royale With Cheese).

Still, even if all characters are allegedly up for the possibility of a dance with the reaper, the general laws of storytelling (and, more importantly, how actors are contracted) tells us that you can expect the chances of main-character death to increase as you approach the climax of an arc, the final episodes of a season, the final chapters of a book, or the final installment of a series, even if the work averts Death Is Dramatic. A creator needs to be quite committed to the concept to kill off an important character in a completely plot-irrelevant way. As such Super Hero Comic Books as a medium have gained a reputation of "Anyone Can Die... until someone wants to use the character in a story."

Contrast with Tonight Someone Dies, Sorting Algorithm Of Mortality and Contractual Immortality. Compare Second Law Of Metafictional Thermodynamics.

See also Kill Em All, when Everyone Will Die.

It is a Truth In Television.

Red Shirt is the polar opposite of this trope.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Bokurano, made clear when it kills off a character by episode three (or is it two?), and then outright writing it in stone that not only can anyone die, but just about everyone ''will'' die.
Mobile Suit Gundam and its many sequels and spinoffs use this with regularity. There's a reason Yoshiyuki Tomino got his nickname "Kill Em All", you know.
Similarly, Super Dimension Fortress Macross used this. Its western redubbing Robotech is widely known for depicting the death of Roy Fokker.
Soukou No Strain starts off as any shojo series would, except in space with mecha. However, by the time it reveals its true seinen colours after episode one, all but two characters are dead; important members of the new cast die every fourth episode after that.
Starship Operators kills off a main character almost every episode; even the main character's reciprocated love interest isn't safe.
Weiss Kreuz makes its position clear with the opening scene of its first episode, in which a boyfriend and girlfriend spend several minutes making affectionate farewells - and then a van comes flying off an overpass onto the boyfriend. Although the four original main characters never suffer more than Disney Deaths, any other character is fair game, whether it's a one-shot potential love interest, a supporting character who's been around for the whole series, or both of the new lead characters introduced for the Oddly Named Sequel Weiss Kreuz: Gluhen.
During Blood Plus, several beloved major characters are Killed Off For Real, one of them in a particularly horrible manner.
For a romantic comedy, Fushigi Yuugi has a shocking number of deaths: All of the Seiryuu Seven save Amiboshi, all of the Suzaku Seven save Tasuki and Chichiri, Tamahome's father and siblings, and the Emperor of Kutou.
- But the only reason Tasuki and Chichiri are the only Suzaku Seven who count as being alive is Tamahome's reincarnation as Taka Sukunami anyway, so he's not that dead... and yet this troper still prefers to think of them as separate people.
Death Note lives up to its name. No character's survival is guaranteed. The body count of minor and major characters alike grows so high as the series progresses that there's suspense not in wondering who will die, but who won't.
Gantz. See Death Note above, except change "who won't die" with "who won't be utterly ripped to pieces, smashed to bits, squashed like a bug, eaten, blown apart, stabbed, disintegrated, melted, etc." And those are the nice ways to die.
Kaori Yuki in Angel Sanctuary kills of a lot of the cast. Noticeable Yue Katou is killed off four times plus once when he just seemed to be, coming back over and over. At the end of the manga, he sacrifices himself again to save Setsuna, this time there probably was no time left to bring him back.
Monster. Got a favorite character you like? Have they, at any point, so much as made eye contact with Johan? Big mistake.
Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure, being seven arcs long (for now), has this in spades. It gets worse because they are the heroes, and not even main characters are immune. In arc order it has...
- Part 1 Zepelli, Jonathan, Dire.
- Part 2 Caeser, Straights (he counts even though he went evil), Stroheim (twice).
- Part 3 Kakyoin, Abdul, Iggy.
  - In particular Abdul dies twice. The first is earlier in the series when succumbing to an enemy attack, later retconned to make it seem like he had been mortally injured and recovering off-stage, later joining the others when it was called for.
- Part 4 Aya, Shigekyo, Keicho (again, even though he was evil, he counts).
- Part 5 Abbacchio, Narancia, Buccirati, Polnareff (he gets better...almost).
- Part 6 Jolyne, Jotaro, Heremes, Weather Report, FF, Annasui - basically every hero but one.
Now And Then Here And There definitely falls under this trope.
Legend Of Galactic Heroes plays this trope nearly to the extreme. Not even the main characters are safe.
Mr. Satan (Hercule in the U.S.) is the only character (not even protagonist) never to die in Dragonball and Dragonball Z. Anybody else who survived all the way till the end eventually got killed by Buu blowing up the planet. In Dragonball GT, Pan is the only character never to get killed. This probably makes it more of a Kill Em All than an Anyone Can Die series.
- Of course, thanks to the titular MacGuffins, the afterlife of this series has a revolving door.
Darker Than Black uses this trope heavily during the last episodes.
Suddenly kicked into overdrive late into the second season of Code Geass, where a ton of main and secondary characters were killed off in quick succession, starting with the shocking, tragic death of the hero's girlfriend, who had spent an entire season completely isolated from the rebellion's collateral damage.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni combines this trope with a Groundhog Day Loop, allowing it to kill off its main cast repeatedly.
- The causes of death are just about always cruel and gruesome to look at. Rika actually dies the same way in many arcs of the anime.
True to its predecessor, Umineko No Naku Koro Ni also embodies this. The first half a dozen deaths each arc are particularly brutal.
Ga-Rei Zero kills off every single introduced character at the end of the first episode and The newly introduced character with the most focus at the end of the second one.
- Given that in Ga-Rei manga bodycount of "in the know" just for first Yomi incident was stated over 70 and there is no new chief with her secretary, no case-fu user and only one of twins in the manga - many. Also manga continues the anyone can die tradition... or starts it, because it was first.
Fist of the North Star, a lot of heroes, civilians, and bad guys die in this series. Any civilian Ken meets is likely to be killed in some horrid fashion.
- Advice to any Fist of the North Star character not named Kenshiro: Get far, far away from Kenshiro and use your kids as a shield (or the nearest kid if you don't have any) if something happens.
Naru Taru. With emphasis in anyone.
- Ironically, despite falling under Everyone Can Die, a few select members of the cast cannot die.
Rah Xephon seems to avert this at first. Then come the later episodes...

Comic Books

This is a large part of the premise of DC Comics' aptly named Suicide Squad, about a black ops group (mostly composed of expendable Boxed Crooks) sent on frequently lethal missions.
Pretty much standard operating procedure for any comic book summer Crisis Crossover, it's very well-known that as soon as it's Crisis Season, nobody's safe.
- Mike Allred's X-Statix took a similarly lethal approach to its cast, killing off the entire titular team in the first issue and continuing to bump off regulars with regularity. It's not strictly germane that one of the longer-running characters had, as a super-power, the fact that she was already dead.
A comedic example: Marvel's Great Lakes Avengers. Er, X-Men. Er, Champions. OK, Initiative. Their big day in the sun, the 4-issue miniseries GLA Misassembled, featured as the gimmick that one member would die each issue. This doesn't count Mr Immortal, of course.
The '80s series Strikeforce Morituri, about an alien invasion being defended against by Super Soldiers whose powers would inevitably kill them—and did; characters were constantly dying and being replaced by new recruits.
- Characters frequently died long before the projected one year lifespan granted by the Morituri Process. For example: Viking died within four issues, perhaps less than four months of time.
This happens often in Judge Dredd. Even the best villains are usually dead by the end of the story they're introduced in. Judge Giant, Dredd's frequent sidekick and one of the most easy-going and humorous characters, was instantly killed after a terrorist casually shot him In The Back during the "Block Mania" storyline. Meanwhile, violent death practically counts as natural causes for the Chief Judges.
Commonplace in The Walking Dead, where usually at least one main character dies per graphic novel. The latest, Made To Suffer, seriously ups the ante by killing off a total of nine characters (only one of whom is a villain)...over half the cast at that point. The only consolation is that most of them died of head wounds, ensuring they don't have to become zombies...and when that's the bright side, you know you've got a Crapsack World. Oh, and also, their sanctuary is destroyed, kicking them back out into the zombie-infested outside world. Sucks to be them.
Marvel Comics' Exiles, a book about a group of six characters from alternate universes who are pulled into MORE alternate universes to save them from being "broken" and thus eventually return home, is known for being quite lacking in Comic Book Death, especially for a series with all these alternate universes running around.
In Marvel's Transformers Generation 1 comic, any character whose toy was no longer available would almost certainly be killed off to make room for the new merch. While Death Is Cheap in Transformers, Meddling Executives prevented most of these characters from coming Back From The Dead unless they had a new toy out. The writers also introduced a large number of important characters without toys for the sole reason of killing them off. This got even more extreme in Transformers Generation 2, in which the writers got more freedom, and suddenly even characters who did have toys on the shelves weren't safe.
The gritty crime series 100 Bullets establishes from early on that any character can die at any point.
Watchmen has a high death rate for major and minor characters. Not only do The Comedian and Rorschach die, but many secondary characters die as a result of Ozymandias' fake alien attack on New York, showing that no characters are safe.

Film

In the The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, main characters drop like flies, providing real tension in the third film as Nicky flees from the CIA assassin following her. Compare with the novel series.
As the name suggests, The Departed is filled with death, and has a startling abundance of X's to go along with that theme.
The films of Guy Ritchie.
In Psycho, the death of Marion Crane was nearly as shocking and unexpected as the Twist Ending. Naturally, these aren't secrets anymore.
The most shaggy-dog extreme of this trope is the film Death Proof, the whole first half of which is spent following characters who don't survive into the second half, just to establish this trope for the film. It then makes up for it by giving us the best car chase ever put on film.
Cube, in typical thriller fashion.
- Cube 2: Hypercube
Movie critic ~~John Bloom~~ Joe Bob Briggs has long made this trope his fundamental statement about what makes a good horror movie: "Anyone can die at any time."
Cloverfield
In Last Of The Mohicans (1992), all the main characters die except the romantic leads and the titular character.
- Exactly What It Says On The Tin, since the drama is all about who will be the last man standing to watch all those forests get cut down by the victorious British.
  - After the Revolutionary War, they were Americans doing their own cutting.
Saving Private Ryan. The first major scene in the movie establishes the tone pretty well, if the fact that's a war movie didn't tip you off first.
No Country For Old Men: no character was safe - even Anton Chigurh. And the movie lets you know it.
Serenity. Sudden deaths instilled this trope in the second act of the movie and it runs to the end.
Star Trek: The planet Vulcan, including Spock's mother, Amanda Grayson, who may be a more appropriate example for this page, in the new movie.
Dead Set really drives this one home by killing off every single main character in the entire mini-series for good, turning them all into zombies.
Scream. Even the main character can (and does) die in the first ten minutes.
The Great Escape fills this trope. Everyone but about three characters gets Nazied to death.
Glory. Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Carey Ewes, just about everybody gets it.

Literature

In fantasy novels, George R.R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire series leverages this very heavily.
- On the subject of fantasy, let's not forget Glen Cook's gritty The Black Company, where an appropriately gritty amount of main characters drop off like flies from the titular mercenary group, occasionally brought back to life via deus ex machina so Cook can kill them in an even nastier way. It gets so that by the end of the series so far the company has been near-annihilated TWICE, and not a single character remains from the first book.
  - This is partially the point, seing as a major message in the novels is that men may die but the Company lives on.
Harry Turtledove's war-themed novels stress this element quite heavily. Many characters, including long-lived favorites, die, sometimes in completely random incidents.
- He seems to have a quota of "At least one death per book".
  - And in Colonization, he just uses it to clear out characters he Put On A Bus after the Time Skip.
So do the characters in Derek Robinson's WWI and WWII novels.
Apparently, a body count of six-billion-plus in book one wasn't enough for Remnants - characters continue to die in every book following. By the series' end, less than ten Mayflower passengers were still alive.
Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts series of novels, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, are filled with plenty of fallen heroes. While the first few novels in the series don't feature many important character deaths beyond a few named soldiers and minor officers, by the later books the major Ghosts are being killed left and right as fast as new characters are introduced.
- Similarly, by the end of Abnett's Eisenhorn series for WH40k, the eponymous character is the only one that survives all the way from the start. The rest are all dead or severely incapacitated.
  - The Warhammer Fantasy Battles novel Inheritance ends up with every single character seen in person in the first half of the book dead or, in the case of minor side-characters, probably dead. Although two of them are still undead, as opposed to dead-dead. Both of them having started out alive.
Joel Rosenberg's Guardians Of The Flame novels abide by this, including a major character dying within the first fifty pages of the first book, the all-time fan favorite secondary character dying in the third, and the central character dying horribly in the fourth book. Justified, though, the world may seem like a simple D&D pastiche, but every decision made has real consequences, people choose wrong on a regular basis (which makes the times they make the right choices into crowning moments of awesome ), and no one is sanctified.
At least one good rodent in each Redwall book dies, usually somebeast(s) quite close to the main protagonist.
Probably an average of three cats, usually major characters, are guaranteed to die in any one volume of Erin Hunter's Warriors series.
- They've so far killed two protagonists. (If you count Feathertail's few chapters of narration as being a protagonist.
- However, this stops completely in Series 3, when except for one or two deaths of minor characters before the first book began, NO ONE DIES. Not even in Book 4, where despite containing the biggest battle since the First Series, NO ONE dies. They had two near-deaths. Then Book 5 came...
- Counting the deaths seen in Jayfeather's visions, the third series only killed off 6 characters (one of them an unnamed elder) and a whole bunch of Tribe Cats, which is pretty minor considering the first two series have body counts in the twenties. And of course, Hollyleaf might not actually be dead .
- Counting unnamed characters, kits, deaths that are only mentioned and not seen, deaths by famine and sickness, and the four cats that were left behind to die in Dawn, the actual average number of deaths in the first two series is around 4.75 per book. (Until the Power of Three series, which brings the number down. But then of course, No one knows how many Tribe cats were killed in Outcast.)
Watership Down is known for its atmosphere of pervasive dread, but the author turns out to be much too kind-hearted to pull the plug on his favorite characters, and settles for simple maiming instead. (I guess being rabbits, Kill Em All would be the default outcome, nothing to write home about.) See animated film version, however.
The norm in the Left Behind series, where cast members are constantly dying and replaced. And to rub salt in the many wounds, most of them die completely random and pointless deaths. By the climax of the series, not one of the original cast introduced in book one is still alive. But they all got better in the end.
The literature trilogy His Dark Materials, starting with the utter lack of Infant Immortality, displays this trope more and more in each book, to the point where characters start dropping like flies in the third book the second they have finished furthering whatever minor plot points they had to serve.
David Weber's Honor Harrington series doesn't kill off memorable characters very often, but it is always a possibility. This can extend to characters who were present for several books of the long, ongoing series, such as Alistair Mc Keon, and to a lesser extent Jamie Candless. Rumor has it that Weber very seriously considered killing off the titular protagonist at one point a few years ago, but later decided against it.
- Weber's said the only character that's really safe is Honor's steward MacGuinness because his wife is fond of the character.
Scarecrow by Matthew Reilly. Just prior to the climax of the book, Gant, the main character's love interest that has been part of the team for three books is suddenly and gruesomely killed off. Not to mention that 90% of the cast in each and every one of his books dies.
Brandon Sanderson of Mistborn has no qualms about killing plenty of unnamed commoners and noblemen, the occasional minor character, and at least one main character per book.
The Zone World War III action novels by James Rouch.
The Star Wars Expanded Universe, more and more lately.
- In the X Wing Series, we lose a number of Rogues and other characters in the Stackpole books, but since he never got us to make an emotional investment there's not much impact. When Allston writes the Wraiths, each character is individual and interesting, and their deaths are more shocking and saddening. Jesmin Ackbar, Falynn Sandskimmer, Eurssk "Grinder" Tri'ag, Ton Phanan, Castin Donn.
  - We do have some apparent deaths in Stackpole's mains, but they rapidly get better, usually by the end of the book (I'm looking at you, Lieutenant Horn).
- Characters first introduced in The Thrawn Trilogy are dying left and right recently. Zahn mentions that he's told that this is more realistic, and he admits that it is, but this is Star Wars, and he prefers entertaining to realistic. He's a bit higher on the "idealistic" side of the scale.
"While some authors (and readers) like the tension of wondering who will live and who will die, I prefer the tension of seeing how the heroes are going to think or work their ways out of each difficult or impossible situation they find themselves in."
In The Acts Of Caine, many central characters have died. Several have died and come back. One character got killed, came back as a semi-god, got killed again, and then became a true God.
In the Harry Potter books: Cedric Diggory's death in Goblet Of Fire managed to blindside the entire readership and served notice that no one was safe for the rest of the series. A message that was hammered home with Sirius's death in Order Of The Phoenix and Dumbledore's death at the end of Half-Blood Prince.
- Let us not forget: Hedwig, Mad-Eye Moody, Colin Creevey, Tonks, Remus Lupin, Fred Weasley, and Dobby in "Deathly Hallows", not to mention numerous bad guys.
- Arguably, even Harry dies at one point.
  - It was Dobby that really epitomises this trope, especially given that even Mugglenet gave 100:1 odds on the death.
The Deepgate Codex books. Well, it does take place in a World Half Empty.
The Tomorrow Series. As if it wasn't bad enough that two of the main protagonists are comatose or dead by the third book, The Night Is For Hunting sees a raid on the group of children they've been keeping an eye out for; all but five of the children are killed, and one of those remaining dies of exposure not long afterwards.

Live Action TV

24 established its Anyone Can Die cred early in the first season by killing off Spawn's (oh, sorry, that's Kim Bauer for those of you not following Television Without Pity) innocent friend Janet York early in the first season, then in a big way by killing off Teri Bauer in the first season finale. By the end of season six, only Jack and Tony are still alive out of the Season 1 agents.
- Well yeah, except, as said, Jack never dies, and it's highly unlikely he ever will die, no matter how hopeless a situation he gets in. If he does, then that must mean it's the last episode ever.
Jenny Calendar, Tara Maclay, and Joyce Summers on Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- In fact, Joss Whedon had hoped to start the series on this note by including Xander's friend Jesse in the opening credits of the pilot. When financial considerations prevented that, he ensured that Amber Benson joined the opening credits for the episode that Tara died.
- Not to mention Buffy herself twice, Spike and Angel, though since they got better, the validity can be argued. Anya didn't fare as well, though this was the series finale.
Angel. Full stop. The show that killed one of three main characters in the eighth episode and then three of five main characters in the fifth season, Fred, Cordelia, and Wesley - one in the last episode. Not to mention said last episode ended with four main charcters, one of whom was dying, charging into battle against a huge army of darkness, with the very strong impression that no one would survive. And that's not even getting into After The Fall...
The X Files was notorious for their Anyone Can Die attitude, given how important characters such as "X" and Mulder's father died in otherwise relatively unimportant episodes. Krycek and the Cigarette Smoking Man were also killed frequently, but it didn't take until they were eventually Killed Off For Real.
Oz is notorious for leveraging this psychological trope and it was a big part of the premise of Tour of Duty.
- Oz is so committed to use of this trope that its official website includes an interactive death map showing all the characters, which ones were still alive at the last show, and where the rest of them died. Borders on Kill Em All.
An early example is Blakes Seven, which killed off approximately one major character per season, including the title character (Though he later turned out to be Not Quite Dead after all).
- Of course, the title character ended up being Killed Off For Real in the same episode he returned in, and was as a matter of fact the only confirmed fatality in what was otherwise a Bolivian Army Ending.
Babylon 5 tended to do this too — one watched each episode wondering who was going to "get it" this year, although in this case it was all part of the Myth Arc and less of a shock effect. One character was created and introduced specifically for the purpose of being later killed off in order to let the main characters know about the existence of the Big Bad.
- And the first season episode "Believers" hammered it home: An alien child will die without surgery, but according to his parents' religious beliefs, cutting his skin will cause his soul to disappear and leave him a soulless abomination. Dr. Franklin goes against their wishes and performs the operation. The parents then kill the 'soulless' child.
- Babylon 5 seriously pushed the envelope in this way, by removing the commander of the station by the end of the first season and replacing him. He wasn't dead, and he was described as being alive on Minbari, but he wasn't active in the show very much. When he does show up for a big two-part episode later in the series, he does die in the technical sense of the term. That is to say, he's not alive after that, because he travels 1000 years into the past. From the moment he goes back in time he's just as dead in the show's continuity as anyone else who dies.
- Not only do they kill off main characters, they do it with style. Bester, in one episode, implies not only that Talia Winters is dead, but that she was actually dissected for research. Furthermore, Marcus Cole dies without telling Ivanova how he feels, really only dying because he doesn't know how to operate an alien healing machine properly. Then, of course, there's G'kar and Londo killing each other in a flash-forward.
Helen on Spooks (killed off after 2 episodes). Furthermore, Spooks established that if you're going to invoke this trope, it's best to do it as nastily as you can, as this death was caused by getting her arm dunked into a deep-fryer, and then her face being pushed in, before she got shot, all on screen. This gave the show a lot of credibility in the trope despite, in fact, it being the only instance of it occurring for quite some time.
- While not everybody dies, characters are far from entirely safe in the show. Major characters have resigned, been sacked, forced into hiding and, yes, killed off with no warning, including all three main characters over the course of a single series. As of the end of season 6, only two season 1 characters remain employed at Thames House.
- The recent Spin Off, Spooks: Code 9, naturally had to play with this, killing off the team leader at the end of the first episode. Of course, this being Spooks, everybody was pretty much expecting it.
- Series 7 went for the double, with Connie James being arrested for treason, and then getting blown up while saving London from a nuclear bomb. Pity she'd murdered another main character the previous episode.
- Beckett's resurrection wasn't originally supposed to happen, but was only brought in after fan revolt over the Wall Banger that killed him.
The father of the family in Six Feet Under was killed in the first scene of the first episode, though his "ghost" appears throughout the series conversing with the characters, manifesting their subconscious thoughts. Multiple main characters die throughout the course of the series, which itself deals constantly with death, using it as a magnifying glass for life. The most shocking example is the death of Nate Fisher, the lead character, a few episodes before the end of the series. He dies of a brain hemorrhage, and is given a private burial by the Fisher family. The series finale includes depictions of the deaths of every other main character.
Five members of the original cast of fourteen have bought it on Lost. Only two of them ( Locke and Charlie) were really popular, though. Also, six of the eleven characters that have been added to the cast since the first season have been killed off. Again, however, only one of them ( Eko) was truly popular with the fans, and three of them ( Ana Lucia, Nikki, and Paulo) were downright Scrappies. Additionally, many recurring characters have been killed off, including some who were more popular than some members of the main cast, such as Tom, Mikhail, Rousseau, and Alex. The series' body count has increased in frequency since the third season finale, and it seems all bets are off on who will survive and who won't.
- The nature of the show does remove some edge from this as even really really dead characters can turn up in flashbacks or as ghosts.
- Locke is the only character to have died and actually come back to life. Everyone is incredibly surprised by this, since it has never happened.
  - Nope. He died just as he lived, an unimportant man, duped and used by everyone he ever trusted
- The producers had originally planned for the arguably main character, Jack, to die in the first episode after portraying him as the protagonist just to prove anyone can die.
- In fact, the producers have half-jokingly confirmed that the only character who will absolutely survive until the end of the series is Vincent, the dog who was on the plane.
Doctor Who features several of these as a general reminder that the cast isn't contractually immortal, least of all the Doctor, who's died nine times already...
- An early television example is in the 1965 serial "The Daleks' Master Plan", which featured the death of a companion in the 4th episode of the 12-part epic adventure. This served as warning for the eventual death of one of the story's main characters (although not technically the Doctor's companion, yet) in the final part.
- The 1982 story "Earthshock" killed off The Wesley, aka Adric, much to the relief of many (though not all) fans of the show.
- The 2005 season finale "The Parting of the Ways" featured a prime example of Dead Star Walking where the character of Lynda was introduced and took up the Doctor's offer to travel with him in the TARDIS, only for her to be ruthlessly exterminated by the Daleks near the end. So when Captain Jack is then shot, he's Killed Off For Real, but then comes Back From The Dead and is accidentally made immortal.
- In a similar case to Lynda, "Voyage of the Damned" has Astrid, who is played by Kylie Minogue (who's BIG in the UK). She dies saving the Doctor after the Doctor accepts her request to travel with him.
- About the only people safe from death in a Doctor Who episode are historical figures... usually.
Earth: Final Conflict was infamous for taking this to ridiculous extremes. Only one character is featured in all five seasons and most characters die or otherwise in some way get practically removed from the main cast within one and a half season of introduction.
- In fact, one episode was completely devoted to an episode-long demise of a minor character which only featured in four episodes. Though the character was instrumental for the plot as she was one of the three parents of a character which lasted three whole seasons.
Primeval is sometimes turning to Anyone Will Die, as at least one major character died each series, with Nick Cutter himself dying MID-SERIES in Series 3.
- As of the end of Season 3 there are only three main characters left from S1. They must be nervously checking their contract for S4...
Beginning with its second season, Prison Break kicked its extreme Anyone Can Die atmosphere into overdrive, bordering on Kill Em All with its penchant for killing off main characters with the zeal of a slasher film. There's at least a 2:1 ratio for make up kills and subverted deaths, and in one hell of an example of Not So Fast Bucko, the series finale delivers in a big way with the most shocking death of all.
On The Unit, they had a Tonight Someone Dies episode right out of nowhere. And no cop-out either. A real main character dies. And it's not even sweeps week.
On The Wire, at least one major character dies in every season: Wallace in Season 1, D'Angelo Barksdale and Frank Sobotka in Season 2, Stringer Bell in Season 3, Bodie and very nearly Randy in Season 4, Proposition Joe and Omar Little in Season 5.
The very very very long running drama ER has featured deaths of multiple main characters. However, as the cast is forever large and rearrangable, with plots being recycled all over, this is perhaps not so difficult as for a show with a smaller established cast.
Torchwood has a Dead Star Walking in its first episode. In series two it has Owen, who is shot and comes Back From The Dead as a sapient Zombie, and the finale episode of series two has Owen dying for real, it seems and Toshiko being Killed Off For Real. It should be noted that Owen's (and, possibly, Toshi's) death can be seen as a Heroic Sacrifice, as he stops a nuclear meltdown.
Arguably the most infamous user of this in the past decade, Anyone Can Die pretty much became the hook of The Sopranos. No one was safe, be it the lowest goon or Tony himself. Due to the fact that they were never informed well in advance, many of the actors explicitly expressed suspense and fear for their careers should the writers suddenly choose the sword to fall on their head.
The original concept behind Heroes was that, not only could anyone die, but by the end of the first season it was expected that a majority of the cast would die with the survivors Put On A Bus to make way for a new season 2 cast (the actors were told as much when they originally signed on). This changed due to the popularity of the original cast with fans, and many of the characters who appeared to die in the Season 1 finale would turn out to be Not Quite Dead. Nonetheless, they did manage to kill off 2 of the main characters, as well as most of the recurring supporting cast.
Each series of Black Adder was set in a different era. The final episodes of each era were ones in which indeed, Anyone Can Die.
Band of Brothers is pretty much a documentary with actors instead of "plain old television", but it's a case where reality beats the holy snot out of this one. Granted, it's war, and in war anyone can (and does) die, but it's still rather jarring to spend hours getting to know characters only to have them disintegrated by a direct hit from an artillery shell, have a leg blown entirely off while trying to help a squad mate, or finally find the Luger they've spent the entire series hoping to find, only to have it go off shortly after finally getting it and having the bullet hit the femoral artery and have the man bleed to death while being held by his buddies.
Veronica Mars kills off Sheriff Lamb and Dean O'Dell quite unceremoniously.
V killed characters without warning, especially characters from the miniseries, to the point in which no character was safe. (Of course, one actor was brought back as his own twin...)
Supernatural: If you find a recurring character that you like, chances are that he/she will be dead in a couple of episodes, except for Bobby Singer and Castiel.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles. First off, minor characters, like Andy Goode, Charley Dixon's wife, Doctor Sherman, or Allison Young. Then, Riley is killed. Then, possibly Jesse. Then, Charley himself. Then, Derek frakkin' Reese!. And there are implications of even more characters dying in the future.
- Though both Derek and Allison appear to be alive in the current future timeline.
Greys Anatomy. Both Izzie and George die in the season 5 finale. Who knows whether they'll return in season 6 due to contractualimmortality.
This became the case for the new Battlestar Galactica series. Although some characters could come back due to being Cylons and halfway through, over half the main cast end up being cylons, most other characters had permanent deaths and it happened frequently. Even a Redshirt death tended to matter, since background characters were recurring. This usually cynical Troper recalls honestly believing that Admiral Adama might truly die after the mutiny in Season 4.
NCIS. Especially if you happen to be female. Title credits offer no protection.

Video Games

In the third installment of Silent Hill, the protagonist of the first game, Harry Mason, is found dead with his heart gouged out in his own home.
Final Fantasy IV. One of the party members Tellah suffers true death, and most of the others are subject to Not Quite Dead, Heroic Sacrifice, and/or No One Could Survive That for fairly lengthy periods of time, letting the characters think that they are dead. However, they are removed from the party permanently when they make their near-ultimate sacrifice. The GBA remake allows them to return to the party for the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
Final Fantasy II. 4 (out of 7) of the temporary party characters die. In this case, it is fully dead - the four casualties appear in a version of 'heaven' in the GBA remake.
Call Of Duty 4 went a step further than most games do, and actually not only killed a major named character, but also killed one of the player characters in a nuclear explosion. The most chilling part is that you can actually play this character in his final moments as he staggers around on one broken leg through a nuclear wasteland, before finally collapsing and dying from his massive radiation exposure.
- Not only that, but the end of the last level features the entire SAS squad getting killed by Russian Ultranationalists.
- Well, pretty much entirely killed, the actual deaths of Soap and Price are still debatable, though Price less.
  - It's confirmed in the Modern Warfare 2 gameplay video that was released at E3 (the one in the Tian Shan mountains with mountain climbing and snowmobiles) that Soap lives on to become a captain, the fate of Price is not stated.
Drakengard features this to some degree. When all endings are taken into account (even the straight-played Kill Em All one), only the kid always lives. Well, technically.
Metal Gear. The trend started with Metal Gear 2 where only two characters survived the mission, and by Metal Gear Solid 4 all but seven characters who appeared in more than one game are dead, with one only having a few months to live.
Fire Emblem. Between the random number generator, the lethality of critical hits, and every death being a Final Death, every game in the series was made with this trope in mind. Even perfect strategy doesn't guarantee everyone lives. (The player can avert this, but it becomes notoriously difficult. Of course, a main character dying is a simple Game Over.)
- Except for a handful of plot-essential characters who, at worst, will get wounded and never take to the battlefield again. Like Mist in FE 9 and 10.
- Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu deserves a special mention. In the fifth chapter, the player is treated to a scene near the beginning where Cuan and Ethlin, brother-in-law and sister of the main character, return from a short visit home only to be massacred by an army of Dragon Knights with essentially no chance of survival. At the very end of the chapter, the entire party is killed off in a trap, save for a few whose survival you only hear about much later through word of mouth. The game picks up in Chapter 6 with the children of the original team a little less than twenty years later.
In Valkyria Chronicles, any of your soldiers can die if you don't pay attention.
- Also, Isara in Chapter 11.
In Chrono Trigger, after battling the Queen of Zeal, she still manages to summon Lavos, who is able to knock out the entire party in one or two hits. (Unless you're on a New Game Plus, where he is beatable, but that's not the point here.) Main character Chrono manages to stand up, however, and readies his katana... only to be vaporized by Lavos' death beam. You can get him back through a side quest involving the titular device, but it is actually not necessary to complete the game.
Killzone 2 has the death of some of the series' named characters, including main hero of the first game, Templar.
After fifteen years, Resident Evil 5 sees off Wesker. As the battle takes place across a lengthy boss fight, a lengthy QTE, ANOTHER boss fight then a final QTE on top of several suitably awesome cutscenes, it's safe to say they went all-out on this one.
- And yet, he may still return! In the final cutscene his head seems to retreat back into his body. He may still live!
Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) Sonic is killed by Mephiles,while looking at something shiny. The princess that Sonic was protecting, dies when he screws up and is too slow to save her (ironic). BUT! Thanks to those magical chaos emeralds, they can just go back in time and try again...
Two Words: Dead Space. Pretty much everyone in the main game, prequel games, prequel comic and movie is dead. Isaac is still alive though, according to Word Of God.
Seeing as there's essentially one living character in the game, I'll hide the title, but Shadow of the Colossus is a good example of this. You basically play out the main character's death at the end of the game, one level after losing your horse over a very high cliff (though, (s)he got better) This overlaps as a twist ending.
The original Saints Row dabbled in this by having Lyn, a main character of the Westside Rollers arc, murdered by said gang's Man Behind The Man. The sequel, however, breaks out this trope in full force. Aisha, a major character from the first game's Vice Kings arc, is decapitated in the Ronin arc, supporting character Carlos is brutally mutilated in the Brotherhood arc. (which forces the Boss to Mercy Kill him) Oh, and a bonus mission reveals that Julius, the original leader of the Saints and Boss' mentor, had betrayed him by planting the boat bomb in the first game's ending. He is subsequently killed by Boss.

Webcomics

Schlock Mercenary has its fair share of this, frequently killing off supporting cast members. Although anything short of a headshot can be healed thanks to Applied Phlebetonium, and major characters were brought back through Time Travel.
- Being the demolitions tech for the Toughs is pretty much a one-way ticket out of the strip....
The pre-It's Walky Roomies featured the (then) shocking death of Ruth. Her death marked a Growing The Beard moment in the strip's history (The strip started the transition to It's Walky in the immediate aftermath) and served to show that the gang's wacky hijinks were no longer consequence-free. It also set the "No warning" tone for many of the deaths to come ( Dina's in particular).
Although set in a world with functional resurrection magic, Order Of The Stick has featured a number of shocking deaths, particularly Lord Shojo, Miko Miyazaki, Therkla and Roy himself, who is the main protagonist of the comic. Only the last of those has been reversed.

WebOriginal

A number of main characters in lonelygirl15 have been killed off unexpectedly, including lonelygirl15 herself.
KateModern has unexpectedly killed off a few major recurring characters, often midseries, quite casually, and with bodies shown so that we know they aren't just hiding. It also once killed off a central character offscreen, with no fanfare, as a major plot point.
Although the situation was averted, one of the main characters came very close of dying in the imageboard adventure Ruby Quest. Weaver says he was prepared to kill him off had the players made any harsh decisions. It is likely that such situations might arise once again in the future.
Survival Of The Fittest exemplifies this trope, being based off of Battle Royale. Of course, if you really want to get into the nitty gritty aspect of it, it's much more of a Kill Em All. This is doubly true in that the vast majority of deaths (or at least, when they are to occur) are determined randomly.
Tech Infantry killed off main characters, supporting cast, and Big Bads with abandon. Then came the Y3K Arc, which killed off pretty much every major legend in the TI Universe, before killing off pretty much everyone in the Galaxy.

Fan Fic

The Command And Conquer fan-novelization Tiberium Wars makes it a point to often, suddenly, and repeatedly kill off well-developed characters. Some characters get less than a scene to their names before they get slaughtered, and you've really got no idea if a character is going to survive until they bite it.

Western Animation

Transformers: The Movie (1986) was famous principally for introducing this phenomenon to millions of Saturday-morning TV fans, when Optimus Prime dies, along with Megatron, Starscream, almost all the Autobots and an entire planet of Red Shirts in the first ten minutes, followed by the pointless on-screen maiming of several more robots including the last survivor of aforementioned planet for good measure, just to impress upon young'uns that Fiction Is Not Fair.
The animated series Exosquad also used this trope, inspired by Macross and Robotech, quite daring for the time.
Transformers: Beast Wars probably had one of the highest Saturday-morning cartoon mortality rates out there. In the first episode of the second season, Terrorsaur and Scorponok fall in lava and die with relatively little fanfare. Near the end of the season, Dinobot sacrifices himself with quite a bit more fanfare to save a tribe of proto-humans. Tigertron and Airazor die, come back, and then almost immediately die again, this time for good. Inferno and Quickstrike get toasted by their own boss. Depth Charge and Rampage go up in an immense explosion. Tarantulus gets hoisted by his own petard. And this is only counting for-real deaths.
Transformers Animated was also pretty brutal. In the first season finale Megatron kills Starscream with the Allspark key, although he gets better a few episodes later. In the third season it got worse.
- Blurr is crushed into a cube by Shockwave in Transwarped, Master Yoketron is left to die in Prowl's arms by Lockdown, Prowl sacrifices his life to stop the Lugnut Supremes from blowing up, and Starscream dies after the Allspark fragment keeping him alive is sucked out of his head. Since this was the final episode of the show, he probably didn't get better.
- There's also the sorta-deaths. Ultra Magnus is beaten nearly to death by Shockwave and we never do see him wake up from his coma and the Constructicons are blown up, with only Scrapper seen to survive There's also the business with the gathering of the Allspark fragments. Since many of them had brought other Transformers to life and removing Starscream's fragment killed him, he may not have been the only casualty.
In a rarity for a children's programme, The Animals Of Farthing Wood had a fairly high mortality rate, with a lot of the major characters being killed off as the series went on. By the end of the show only a few of the original animals still survived.
Frisky Dingo is one of the few Adult Swim original cartoons in which death is permanent, which it makes liberal use of by killing off both major and minor characters left and right during the second season.
Star Wars The Clone Wars of course doesn't touch any of the characters from the films, but they are not afraid of introducing an original character and then kill them in the same episode. Jedi and well as clone troopers. Sometimes any original, named character surviving past an episode is a surprise.
- With the exception of Ahsoka.
The entire message of Watership Down being "Small Furry Animals Will Eventually Die Anyway, so get used to it", so it includes all variants of on-screen cute rabbit death in order to drive home the message. It was felt that too many rabbits actually survived the book (Show, Don't Tell!) due to author's reluctance to pull the trigger. So additional doomed characters are introduced and a particularly sympathetic Woobie who played a bit part in the novel is highlighted in order to be gruesomely Stuffed Into The Fridge near the climax.
- The movie must be pretty different from the book then, because while the book could be harsh at times the Aesop was that you have to Earn Your Happy Ending. Of what use could be the message Small Furry Animals Die?

Theatre

Older Than Steam William Shakespeare example: the death of Mercutio in Romeo And Juliet. Up until that point the play seems like a comedy if you weren't paying attention to the prologue, and killing off the witty best buddy character like that is a huge subversion of the conventions of the time.

Toys

Bionicle has begun to show traits of this trope. Ever since the web-serial chapters arrived (though mostly from 2008), former main and side characters have been dying left and right. Now that the happenings of the Matoran Universe have to be restricted to a web-serial, since non of the characters are part of the main line of toys, everyone who survived the story's first 8 years can begin to worry. Don't think of Heroic Sacrifice, rather blowing up or being pulled beneath the ground for just the heck of it. Or simply eaten. Exceptions are, of course, some of the main heroes and the invulnerable Big Bad. And if a side-story happens to take place in an Alternate Universe, absolutely no one is safe, save for those who don't belong there and will eventually return to their own world... Although, that isn't guaranteed either.

RealLife

The world death rate seems to be holding steady at 100%.
- Except for the many who are still alive. Hope springs eternal!
- But are these for-real deaths? Or is there something wonderful waiting for us after life?

Antagonist In Mourning

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