Black Dude Dies First - Television Tropes & Idioms

"I've seen this movie. The black dude dies first."
- Harry Block, Evolution

For some reason, Fate hates the black man, putting them that much higher on the Sorting Algorithm Of Mortality. The Comedy Black Man? Despised beyond measure.

It's possible that this started by the tradition of having a Scary Black Man being The Big Guy, then killing him off to show how strong your monster is, and that you need the brains and sheer grit of your Mighty Whitey to sort stuff out.

Or it may have been that the Plucky Comic Relief is too upbeat (or possibly too Genre Savvy) for the horror to be taken seriously.

Or the writer may just want to kill Eddie Murphy, and who could blame them?

Or it could just be leftover Unfortunate Implications, as this is happening less and less due to Magical Negro and the occasional black action hero. Sometimes referred to as the "Brother Rule".

It is, however, worth noting that if you're gonna go after the black man, you might want to check the credits to see who's playing him. If it's no one you've actually heard of, they're probably fair game. Denzel Washington? Bad idea. Will Smith? Don't even try. Samuel L Jackson? You'd better start running...

This goes without saying for experienced tropers, but since this is a Death Trope you'd better turn back now or face the spoilers.

Examples:

In the Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The Voyage of the Damned," this happens twice. A chef that shows up in the middle just to say "Our small group survived!" only to promptly be mowed down by the baddies; and once the more important black guy's had an emotional scene with his wife, we KNOW he's doomed. It's a miracle he makes it past the halfway point. And let's just say he doesn't die a hero.
- The later episode "Midnight" runs the gamut with three black characters: one of them is the first to die, offscreen, another heroically sacrifices herself at the end, and the third survives. An equal number of white people die, at the exact same times, but it's an obviously uneven set of survival rates.
Partial parody, In Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, the token black could always be found running around screaming, "Why am I always the decoy!" all while being shot at.
In the 2007 Transformers movie, the only Autobot to die on Earth is Jazz. He's technically not black, but tell that to the fans.
Inverted in the direct-to-video monster movie Frankenfish, where none of the white characters make it to the end.
Parodied in the first Scary Movie: after the Scream parody that opens it, a line of reporters discuss the story in front of the school. The last one is from BET (Black Entertainment Television), and the reporter declares that since people are dying, ''they're'' getting out of the area - at which point he and his crew jump into their truck and speed off.
- Which was actually based off of a similar occurrence in Scream 2, where a black guy leaves town after a few bodies pile up. He lives.
The movie Canadian Bacon features a scene in which this theory is discussed, and various examples are given. It ends with the one black guy looking really nervous.
- He not only survives, though, he goes on to prove that black athletic superiority extends to hockey, too.
In Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 7, the following exchange occurs after some of the potential slayers (including Rhonda, who is black) are "killed" in a training exercise:
Spike: Okay, these three are dead. Why?
Rhonda: 'cause the black chick always dies first.
Parodied in an episode of South Park, itself a parody of the movie The Core. In the original, a black scientist dies after engaging a switch deep while in almost direct contact with the Earth's mantle; in the parody, Cartman explicitly picks Chef as "the black man who will sacrifice himself".
In the horror movie Deep Blue Sea, LL Cool J's character finds himself in a difficult situation and exclaims "Ooh, I'm done! Brothers never make it out of situations like this! Not ever!". Amusingly, he lampshades the trope, is the Comedy Black Man, and survives the movie. According to The Other Wiki his character was scheduled to die, but test audiences liked him so much that they re-shot the ending and allowed him to live. Deep Blue Sea also plays this one straight, to good effect (think Psycho).
- This is the same film that allowed Samuel L Jackson to get eaten by a shark. Sammy J's shark-related vengeance is not possible, it's inevitable. He has had it with these motherfucking sharks in this motherfucking base!
Webcomic example: In Erfworld, Lord Manpower the Temporary is killed on page 2, and is black at the time. (Later, he's green, like the rest of the uncroaked.) Technically, though, he was the last of Stanley's warlords to die. Just the first dead character in the story proper.
- Mentioning that means you need to mention Order Of The Stick. Two Words: Roy and "SPLAT!"
In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Baurus is the first named Blade to die on-screen, and he's black. While it is possible to save him, it's very difficult, as he's not armored and charges headfirst into the enemies.
- Incorrect. Captain Renault dies on-screen in the opening tutorial, and she's white. Furthermore, she's scripted to die - you have a chance of saving Baurus, but there's no way to save her.
  - This Troper didn't even know Baurus could die until the "epic" battle, which he almost survived (he had the poor fortune of standing directly under the siege engine when it collapsed).
  - In fact this trope is pretty much averted in Baurus' case. Of the 3 blades protecting the emperor, the black guy is the only one to survive, the emperor. Glenroy and Capt. Renault are scripted to die. Its quite doable to keep Baurus alive for the entire storyline the hardest part is keeping Mehrunes Dagon from killing him by stepping on him. And even then, he's unlikely to be the only one that dies.
Hilariously sent up in, of all things, a piece of House Fan Fic dealing with a zombie apocalypse at the setting hospital. House (who seems to be getting off on his own Genre Savvy) repeatedly comments that Foreman, being black, is doomed, and at one point Foreman himself says that he's not going to do anything stupid because he doesn't want to be the Black Dude of the picture. In the end, Foreman, House and Wilson are the only main cast characters to survive, what with Chase being shotgunned by Tritter and Cuddy and Cameron falling victim to particularly egregious examples of Die For Our Ship - both the women are dead before the story even starts, so there's no question about House and Wilson hooking up.
- LINK ME, PLZ. Seriously. I won't tell anyone if you do.
- Yes please, since Google reveals there's too much awesome Zombie Apocalypse-themed House fanfiction to find any particular one.
  - Your wish is my command: "The Rampant Disease"
In the interestingly titled Thir13en Ghosts, the maid Maggie inverts this by becoming an Indestructible Black Woman. Despite indulging in an excruciating level of stereotypical head-waggling and "Mmmm-HMMMM, girlfriend?" she manages to walk out of an exploding house full of pissed off ghosts and spinning blades. And then carries on with the same shtick like nothing happened.
Inverted in Night of the Living Dead. The only black guy in the group survives the night, and then gets shot in the morning, after being mistaken for a zombie by the police. Talk about a Downer Ending.
- The original Dawn of the Dead also inverts this trope, but takes a somewhat different tack: this time around, the only black guy is one of the two survivors, and he manages to escape with his life. This was changed at the last minute from the original plot ending, where the last two surviving humans in the mall choose to commit suicide.
Vin Diesel, the surrogate Token Black of Saving Private Ryan, is the first to be taken down by a sniper.
- Of course, he's supposed to be Italian...
  - Since the actor is half Italian. And he doesn't die first. Remember the first act?
Painfully prevalent in the Stargate movie. A group of soldiers are attacked and the black guy is the first one to die. Especially bad because the weapons used are usually nonlethal, and the rest of them show up alive later in the movie.
In United 93, between the the two pilots of the aforementioned plane, one is white while the other is black. Give ya three guesses who's the first to get shanked by the hijackers.
Samuel L Jackson actually did die in Jurassic Park, before he hit the big time.
- But he was like the THIRD to die... The Lawyer died first!
  - Technically, the raptor handler in the opening scene died first...
  - Who was probably South American.
- Plus, it was a pretty badass death. Samuel L. Jackson trying to actually fight off the raptors is second only to the white African hunter muttering, "Clever girls," right when he realizes he's been drawn into an ambush. Whereas Samuel L Jackson has had it with these motherfucking raptors in this motherfucking shed!
In the movie Damnation Alley, the token black guy is eaten by killer cockroaches.
In 28 Days Later - Lieutenant Mailer. On a chain. In the yard. Though this is more of a subversion/avoidance of this trope- Selena, who is played by the lovely Naomie Harris, is just fine (and the Action Girl/romantic interest to boot) and the non-white members of the cast seem to be just as doomed as the white ones- Jim treats Mr. 'I haven't got any fucking bullets!', who is black (and terrified) just the same as he treats Jones (who is similarly terrified, but white, and if anything gets a more cold-hearted death.)
Stephen King's short story and later movie adaptation The Langoliers had the sole black man in the group of survivors dying first.
Inverted in Mindhunters, where the black guy is the mysterious tough newcomer, and near the end it is heavily implied (though not stated) that he is the murderer... and then he gets hit really hard in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, and the movie seems to end. However, it is then revealed that the black guy WAS NOT the murderer, and just as the REAL murderer is about to finish off the last survivor, the black guy wakes up and saves the day, becoming one of two survivors.
Averted in Crysis: The leader and Token Black Guy prophet lasts the longest of your squad. The first one to die (not counting the enemy Koreans)? The Hispanic squad member.
- Actually, the Crysis squad had two black guys, Prophet and Jester, making it so neither one was the Token Black Guy. Prophet makes it to the end, but Jester dies on the first level.
In Serenity, who is the first important named character to die? Shepherd Book.
- But isn't this trope when most of the cast dies, not just a few?
John Carpenter's remake of The Thing has two black characters, the Jive Turkey chef and Scary Black Man Keith David. They both make it to the end of the movie, at which point they both die, probably. But so does everyone else, probably.
Possibly inverted in Cloverfield, in which the only character to have even possibly survived is a black woman. She might have died, too, though.
- Really? I tought she was indian. Stupid low quality shot-in-the-theather download...
Averted in the House on Haunted Hill remake, not only is the black dude not the first to be killed, but he is the only male to survive.
In Resident Evil: Extinction, the only black guy was the first to be attacked by a zombie, resulting in an ultimately fatal wound. Of course he covers it up and endangers his fellow zombiepocalypse survivors. Not to mention his black girlfriend managed to sacrifice her own life, and on a bus no less.
- And to top it off, the same character managed to survive all the way through the previous movie, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, despite being a minor character and the Ethnic Scrappy.
Avoided in Gears of War, where the black squad member makes it to the end along with the rest of the team. The only squadmate to die is The Korean-analog squad leader, whose command role is taken up by the player character afterwards. A Red Shirt squadmember also dies early on, but apparently he's going to return for the sequel. Somehow. So Yeah.
In Virus, the black crew member appears to die halfway through the movie, but in a surprise twist, comes back at the end armed with a rocket launcher to save the hero and the heroine from the monster. Only to die in the process. So Yeah.
This eventually happens in The Shining, but so late in the story it's almost a double subversion.
- Actually, in the book Dick gets to live. He gets possessed for a bit, but there's a happy ending where Danny and Wendy are crashing at the new resort Dick works at. It's sort of sweet.
In the movie Vertical Summit, one of the first two to die on the mountain (in the same avalanche) is actually Pakistani. Then his brother goes after him (he lasts a bit longer relatively)
The first named character to die in Metal Gear Solid was the black DARPA Chief, Donald Anderson. Possibly subverted when it turned out that he was a white man disguising himself as Anderson.
- Metal Gear Solid 2 is divided into two chapters. In both chapters, the first named person to die is a black man - Scott Dolph in the first and Peter Stillman in the second. It's a small relief, but none of the characters are at all comical.
- Apparently averted in Metal Gear Solid 3 when Sigint lived through the end of the game. However, in MGS4, it's revealed that Sigint was actually Donald Anderson, who was, of course, the first character to die in the very first Metal Gear Solid!
The first person to die in the pilot of Andromeda is a young black officer named Thompson. He's named after Cronan Thompson, a young black internet personality who was involved in many online arguments with the show's creator, Robert Wolfe. Cronan died of cancer at 19, and Wolfe included Thompson in his pilot as a tribute. Having him die first might seem tasteless, but it would probably have appealed to Cronan's sense of humor.
A episode of Scrubs has Turk hang a lampshade on this trope when talking to Laverne who was in a coma and which machines were soon turn off.
Clearly intentionally inverted in Alien, where the white males are systematically eliminated, and the black guy dies at the same time as a white female.
Occurs twice in Apocalypse Now, where the two black members of the boat's crew are the first two to die.
Apparently Robo Cop is somehow racist considering he aims for the black guy first in the final showdown of the first movie in the series.
- Robo Cop probably took him out first so he wouldn't have to hear any more of that horrible, nails-on-a-chalkboard cackling.
In The Edge, Harold Perrineau is eaten by the bear first.
Subverted repeatedly in Predator. Of all the elite soldiers that accompany Arnie into the jungle, the first to die is the white, bespectacled nerd (at least, compared to the other guys he was...) followed by the hulking mountain of white-macho that was Jesse Ventura. The two black guys make it an appreciable way through the film, until one goes Ax Crazy and the other attempts a Redemption Equals Death mission to find him.

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