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alt title(s): Bring Out Your Gay Dead; Dead Lesbian Syndrome
Unfortunately, this is the sort of plot hole that many a gay character ends up falling into.
"I thought you died after you sacrificed yourself to save us!"
"Nonsense, Queers never die"
Often, especially in older works, gay characters just aren't allowed happy endings. Even if they do end up having some kind of relationship, at least one half of the couple - often the one who was more aggressive in pursuing a relationship, thus "perverting" the other one - has to die at the end (bonus points if this sends the other half running into the arms of a heterosexual love interest). Of course, it can also happen to gay characters who aren't in relationships, particularly if they're Psycho Lesbians or Depraved Homosexuals.
We want this to be a Discredited Trope, but alas, it's not. True Art Is Angsty and all that. This kind of evade will often try to justify itself as Too Good For This Sinful Earth. Sometimes it's because the Magical Queer has died in a Heroic Sacrifice so that the Straights may live. "See, we didn't kill them off as a punishment or to avoid having them together, it was to point out how mankind isn't worthy!" Naturally this is subject to Alternate Character Interpretation. One way for gays to avoid death is to be ''cured''.
Also known as Dead Lesbian Syndrome. This trope can also be seen as a subtrope of the idea that Sex Is Evil.
See also Romantic Two Girl Friendship and Bait And Switch Lesbians for the nicer way to let the ship down. If the characters' relationship is obscured, it drastically increases their chance of survival. (Note from the names of all three that they're most common for female couples. If you're men, you're basically screwed.)
Related trope that happens to Action Girls is Vasquez Always Dies, especially, if there is an implied attraction between two of them.
Please note that sometimes gay characters die in fiction because in fiction sometimes people die (this is particularly true of soldiers at war, where Sitch Sexuality and Anyone Can Die are both common tropes); this isn't an if-then correlation, and it's not always meant to "teach us something" or indicative of some prejudice on the part of the creator. The problem isn't when gay characters are killed off: the problem is when gay characters are killed off far more often than straight characters, or when they're killed off because they are gay. This trope therefore won't apply to a series where Anyone Can Die (and does).
Can be seen as Truth In Television in some cases, as gay and lesbian people are at a substantially higher risk for suicide. And, well, dying violently at the hands of a stranger. And, like many things about the eighties, the fact that AIDS hit the gay male community first provided potent fresh fuel for this long running trope.
See also: Gayngst.
As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Examples
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- Ai No Kusabi Iason and Riki's death at the very end was sad and tragic, and not at all a happy ending
- Hagino and Mari from Blue Drop are obviously not meant to be happy together, despite the whole series being about their growing relationship. When they finally confess their feelings for each other, Hagino dies in a Senseless Sacrifice.
- And Hagino's race is a bunch of evil lesbians who invade Earth and prey on girls. The good one, though, died.
- In Devilman Lady, when Jun's best friend/girlfriend Kazumi dies for no reason.
- Compare the original Devilman, the ending of which was canonically gay.
- Techinically, Akira Fudo was straight, and he died at the hands of Ryo Asuka as a direct result of Foe Yay.
- This likely arose out of the changes from the Devilman Lady manga, where Asuka was Jun's lover. Also, Jun was older in the manga, being a schoolteacher instead of a model.
- Probably parodied in episode 16 ("Take Back Love!") of Excel Saga, where both Ropponmatsus fall in love with Hyatt and Excel, respectively, and are destroyed by the end of the episode. They get better, but they don't like them anymore because they're no longer programmed to love the first person they see.
- Franz d'Epinay, who was secretly and tragically in love with Albert de Morcerf in Gankutsuou: The Count Of Monte Cristo. He was pretty much the only character that was shown to go beyond Ho Yay subtext, and his ending was absolutely horrific.
- To be fair, most people who die in Gankutsuou have an absolutely horrific end. (Not to mention that gay or not, Franz would've had to die either way for plot reasons.)
- Gundam00 has Tieria, whose "love" interest was killed before anything could develop... although whether or not Lockon would have generally reciprocated ANY feelings of a significantly deep nature is highly debatable.
- Also, in Special Edition 1, a very lightly hinted gay relationship is made explicit Alejandro and Ribbons, who turn out to be the Big Bad of season 1 and 2 respectively.
- Honey Crush had an different take on this. The lesbian main character is killed off in the first chapter but brought back as a ghost and not precluded from still getting a happy ending.
- All lesbian main characters in ICE—of which there are quite a few—meet their demise in one way or another.
- In Kannazuki No Miko Himeko and Chikane confess their love to each other. Chikane dies and gets erased from existence. Then, come The Stinger epilogue, Chikane subverts this trope, having kept her promise of not letting even the gods stop her from returning to Himeko. Crowd goes wild. The manga version, however, manages to deliver a Wall Banger: They get reincarnated — as sisters! Yeah, that'sso much better.
- In defense of that particular manga choice apparently there's a legend in Japan that says star-crossed lovers get reincarnated as twins. Makes a lot more sense after learning that... still a Squicky Wall Banger though.
- Maya in Maya's Funeral Procession is burned to death minutes after learning that her love interest is really her half-sister. Said love interest marries a man not long afterwards.
- Mimi and Sheshe of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch are killed in the second arc by their own employer. It's much worse for them in the manga, where they're eaten alive without warning, than in the anime, where their life force is simply absorbed after they rebel.
- Subverted in The Mikos Words And The Witches Incantations: after setting up the standard yuri Downer Ending, with Tsumugi having to die right after learning about love, the plot does a twist, wherein Letty goes and flips off the local god, risking her life to become a deity herself — all for Tsumugi's sake. The fans go "Awwww!"
- Rei/"Hana no Saint-Juste" in Oniisama E. In the anime she dies suddenly in an accident just when it's beginning to look as though she and her love interest are getting a happy ending; in the manga, it's suicide.
- Happens twice to Sailors Uranus and Neptune in Sailor Moon, the first time when their heart crystals were extracted for the Talismans, and the second time after faking a Face Heel Turn just to try to remove Galaxia's star seed only to find out that Galaxia doesn't have one. Both times the trope then gets subverted because they got better.
- Though the survive the longest out of the main cast (aside from Sailor Moon) in the final arc. Sailors Mercury, Mars Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto are all killed off before them. Not in the manga though.
- Simone in Shiroi Heya No Futari is stabbed by a jealousy-crazed male admirer.
- Clari from the Violinist of Hameln (while the infatuation is only implied), he harbored a crush on Lute for most of his life, ending in said Love Interest dying twice.
- X1999 has this at the core of the story. Kamui's mother Tohru and Fuuma and Kotori's mother Saya were lesbian lovers, but in order to save Tohru's life Saya agreed to marry her Romantic Runner Up Kyougo Monou, in order to take Tohru's place and "give birth" to the holy sword (read: explode into a bunch of bloody pieces). Tohru survived, but later died by bursting into flames to protect her son.
- Subverted in the Lupin III TV Special An Angel's Tactics. Bisexual Bi Faux Nen Lady Joe is the only one of the villainesses who survives.
- Marvel's Freedom Ring defied nearly all the gay stereotypes... other than the one about being allowed to live happily. Killed off within a month of Marvel E.I.C Joe Quesada touting him as the company's top gay hero, his death probably would've sparked calls of Fridging, were he female.
- Word Of God: "Freedom Ring was always planned as an inexperienced hero who would get beaten up constantly and probably die. I wanted to comment on the fact that most superheroes get their powers and are okay at it... and that's not how life works. During working on the book, I was also noticing that most gay characters... are all about being gay. Straight characters are well-rounded characters who like chicks. So I wanted to do a well-rounded character who just happened to like dudes. Then I decided to combine the two ideas." Oops.
- To be fair, Robert Kirkman did apologize when he realized he had effectively killed off 20% of Marvel's gay male characters.
- Moondragon's death in Marvel's recent Annihilation: Conquest series. Considering how many characters died in the series, what makes Moondragon's treatment notable was the sheer brutality of it. In Annihilation, Thanos kidnaps her, uses her as a hostage, rips her ear off, and presents the ear to her lover Phyla. She survives that series, but in Conquest she finds herself permanently turned into a dragon before ultimately dying in a Heroic Sacrifice to protect Phyla.
- The DCU's Monsieur Mallah and the Brain, a... talking gorilla with a gun and a French accent and an immobile brain in a little chamber thing that allows him to talk. Mallah got into a fight with Gorilla Grodd after the latter was offended at the suggestion that they're at all similar. Despite being armed, Mallah lost, and was beaten to death with The Brain, who likewise expired. And that was the second time they died: the first was being blown to smithereens the instant they confessed their love for each other.
- Accusations of this were thrown about when Northstar, Marvel's first hero to come out of the closet, got killed by a brainwashed Wolverine. It didn't help that he died from an attack that he could've easily dodged. It also didn't help that, a few months later, he died in two separate Alternate Universe books that were released in the same week. Northstar was resurrected the next issue, though, although he ended up Brainwashed And Crazy and only recently returned to normal.
- There's also the fact that Northstar was originally going to die from... from the AIDS virus. You see, he was gay, so of course he would have AIDS. Executive Meddling finally did something right by putting that one down before it saw print... Except instead of AIDS, Northstar just had some vague life-threatening ailment.
- For a few issues, it looked like this happened to Northstar again in Ultimate X-Men, after an overdose of a mutant drug apparently made his heart give out... but a few issues later, he turned up fully alive, just paralyzed from the waist down.
- In Marvel's Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways, out of the fourteen heroes we have, the transgendered Xavin gets its neck broken and the gay Hulkling gets dissected, while the gay Wiccan and the lesbian Karolina get kidnapped. The straight characters? Perfectly fine. Fortunately, Xavin and Hulkling are shape shifters but still...
- The most painful part of this twist is that it's only the gay characters who get kidnapped/tortured. The explanation in the book is that the kidnapper sees aliens as unprotected by human rights provisions, which would explain Karolina, Xavin, and Hulkling... but not Wiccan.
- Except that Victor, while not kidnapped and tortured, was blown apart by a missile. It also took him far longer to recover.
- Wiccan is never hurt, at least not physically. He's just made to watch while his boyfriend is repeatedly dissected. The reason he was captured was more than likely to be simply because he was in the close vicinity of the other three when Noh-Varr showed up while the others were attending to issues like the aforementioned being blown apart.
- Likewise, Marvel's The Order axed some superfluous characters in the first issue, but one of the two main characters to die by the end of the series was the lesbian Mulholland Black.
- This troper was actually looking forward to Justice League: Cry for Justice for a little while, because it seemed like one of the more queer-inclusive products DC was putting out in recent days — it has both Batwoman and Mikaal Tomas in the book's main superteam. Surprise! Mikaal's boyfriend is killed off for pathos' sake (offscreen), and obscure gay superhero the Tasmanian Devil is killed and skinned (again, offscreen) to set up the villain as a threat.
- In Matt Wagner's Grendel series, bad-ass bodyguard and fighter Susan Veraghen is portrayed as a lesbian. Her first lover abandons her. Her next lover is brutally killed. Her next lover abandons her and THEN is brutally killed. Veraghan herself lives to a ripe old age, but only after she falls in Courtly Love with the (male) Grendel Prime.
- Unfortunate Implications hint at this with Rotor and Cobar's torture (and the latter's death) at the hands of King Shadow in the "altered timeline" version of the "Mobius: X Years Later" storyline. Why? Because of Word Of Gay: in the preceding "unaltered timeline" version, written by former Sonic writer Ken Penders, hints were dropped that alluded to both characters being an item. The "altered timeline" was written by Ken's successor, Ian Flynn, who is notorious among fans for his tendency to treat characters he doesn't like in the comic as The Chew Toy, with the torture being one of the first things he wrote when he took over. The connotations aren't helped when Shadow and his cohort Lien-Da treat the torture as fun, with Shadow labeling Cobar's death as "a true pleasure" with Lien-Da sniggering in the background, and Ian has since gone on record to say that he won't go on record about Cobar and Rotor's relationship, either way.
- Knockout, one of the lesbian bad-guys in DC's fantastic "Secret Six," died essentially offscreen between the first mini-series and the ongoing comic. Her lover Scandal Savage is left devastated although thankfully not insane or any more evil than before. Knockout was a "New God" and killed off with the rest in the Final Crisis arc so I would give it a pass if her death didn't come off like such an afterthought within the confines of someone else's comic book.
- Gail Simone gave a trifecta example of the evil/dead/man hating lesbian cliche in Wonder Woman 38-39. Alkyone the over the top eeeeeevil lesbian kills off her lover Phinea as a blood sacrifice to call up a nasty god/demon thing and then dies. Special points for being the only intentionally ugly Amazon I have ever seen in DC comics. Shame on you Gail.
- The Children's Hour is the Trope Codifier.
- 9 Dead Gay Guys: All there in the title. The two protagonists both straight, live.
- Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in some way subverted this trope. Though the lesbian couple in the film were not the only ones to die in the show, their fate was specifically mentioned in the sarcastic voice-over ending as not being based around the fact that their relationship was in any way evil. Of course, they also weren't the only people to die, just the only ones for whom it wasn't supposed to be a consequence or punishment of their wrongdoing according to that monologue.
- Brokeback Mountain and Philadelphia both suffer from this trope, even though they were embraced as "progressive" by many. In its defense, Philadelphia's entire plot was already about dying of AIDS. And in its defense, Brokeback Mountain was about how repressive societies destroy lives and hurt everyone involved, not just the gays.
- And one of the two main gays survived.
- Yeah, he was just destroyed emotionally and economically by the end... it's all good.
- There's a montage in the documentary The Celluloid Closet (a history of homosexual depictions in film up through the early 1990s) of a litany of gay/lesbian characters either dying or being Depraved Homosexuals or (most often) both—including the two above examples.
- Martha in The Children's Hour commits suicide after confessing her love for another woman.
- After all the crap she and her fellow teacher got put through when she wasn't 'out' yet, and the child who accused them was known to have made the whole thing out of cloth anyways, can anyone blame her? Well, not too many people endorse suicide, but the only other way this could have worked out would be for her to leave town and disappear forever somewhere else.
- Jack from Four Brothers, maybe. In a deleted scene
 , his older brother Bobby joked about him being gay. Bobby went as low as making fun of his tongue ring.
- Milk is sadly a Truth In Television example.
- Harvey Milk wasn't assassinated because he was gay. Basically Dan White (the assassin) got pissed off that the San Fransisco mayor, George Moscone, wouldn't re-appoint him to a seat he just resigned from. And it further pissed him off that Harvey Milk heavily lobbied against his re-appointment. So he got a gun and shot 'em both.
- While Dan White's assassination may have been motivated by local politics, the defense relied heavily on painting him as a "decent", "normal" American, driven to despair by all those darn perverts. (Also, twinkies.)Whether or not Dan White killed Milk and Moscone out of homophobia, conservative elements in San Franscisco certainly took it that way—not to mention most of the gay folk there, who rioted in protest.
- Don't forget how nearly all the main characters boyfriends over the years commit suicide. Again, sadly Truth In Television, and proof that Harvey Milk was a Horrible Judge Of Character.
- In Prey For Rock & Roll, Faith, the one half of the prominent lesbian couple in that movie, is hit by a car and killed when two punks try to take her guitar.
- Happened to Mrs. Danvers in the Hitchcock film Rebecca, though this wasn't the case in the original book.
- An early example would be the 1924 film Michael.
- Rent had this: gay cross dresser Angel dies of AIDS, while heterosexual AIDS victim Mimi comes close to death but survives for no clear reason. Worse, Rent was based off an opera called La Bohème, where Mimi's counterpart died of tuberculosis but no one else did.
- Then again, there is the impression given that Angel was Too Good For This Sinful Earth, so there's a good chance she would have bitten it regardless of sexual orientation or gender.
- Also, La Bohème was a typical operatic tragedy, while Rent's theme was hope.
- Also also, it's generally understood that Mimi didn't exactly survive— she got a temporary reprieve. (See cast commentary on the movie version DVD for discussion of this.) Mimi's fate will be the same as Angel's in a short time; she just got a little extra time to get her affairs in order, while Angel already had it together. This example is definitely open to interpretation.
- It should also be noted that the two other gay characters, Maureen and Joanne, are HIV-negative, don't die, and generally reconcile by the end of the show.
- Anyone order a Tom Collins? He's gay (Angel's lover), HIV-positive, and alive and in much better health than Mimi at the end of the show.
- It should also be noted that Jonathan Larson died before the show opened. It's entirely possible that the 2nd act had not been completely ironed out and that some of these issues would be edited.
- Land of the Dead features an incredibly gratuitous scene, even considering some of what happens in the rest of the film, where two women are passionately making out until one of them is pulled through the wall by a bunch of zombies.
- Subverted in the 1931 film Mädchen in Uniform ("Girls in uniform"), which ends with a lesbian teenager's class mates preventing her suicide. The original stage play, Gestern und heute by Christa Winsloe, ends less happily, thus fitting the trope.
- The 1919 German film Anders als die Andern ("Different from the Others") used this trope to a much better effect than Brokeback Mountain, because it was genuinely trying to educate the public about the senseless persecution of gays and included real life sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld giving a lecture that homosexuality was completely natural. That said, the main character still gets thrown out of school, loses all of his clients, blackmailed and eventually commits suicide.
- The lone gay man in Single White Female gets in the villain's way...
- This is typical of modern thrillers and horror films, sadly - gay guys and lesbians are the new black guys. If your movie has both a high body count and a gay character, the latter will die, guaranteed. Bride of Chucky, Cherry Falls, and Cut are just three examples.
- Darkly subverted in Heathers: the football players weren't gay Star Crossed Lovers and the suicide was actually a murder, but the only people who know this are the ones that killed them.
- "I love my dead gay son!"
- Discussed (and ultimately averted) in The Boys In The Band.
- No mention of Tenebre where the first of the two killers comes right out and admits that he's killing people for sexual deviance. Including the lesbian newscaster and her bisexual lover.
- Many people remember the sixties hit song "The Ode to Billy Joe," about a young man who kills himself by jumping off the Tallahatchee Bridge, for reasons unknown. What few people remember is that in 1976, Hollywood decided to make a movie of the song that would explain exactly why Billy Joe jumped. Turns out it was the gayngst.
- Maybe I'm thinking of a different song, but I seem to recall that in an earlier verse, he and is girlfriend were seen throwing something off the bridge together (presumed to be an unwanted baby)and he jumped off due to guilt...
- You're thinking of the right song. The movie (which was not written or suggested by the songwriter herself) explained this by revealing that it was actually the heroine's childhood doll that the two dropped as a sort of "letting go of childhood" ritual. After he died, she allowed the rumor of an illegitimate child to spread in order to help keep his dark secret safe. Better to be remembered as a potential baby drowner than a gay man, after all.
- Watchmen begins with a briefly-glimped lesbian couple (One of them is one of the masked heroes, though it's not clear to those who haven't read the comic) getting snuffed out hate-crime style, with "lesbian whores" written on the wall in their blood. In the comic at least one other masked hero suspected of being gay got into a certain amount of trouble for it. Didn't help that this was during the fourties and fifties.
- The movie also implies that the same two characters are gay, but it's only hinted in a single line by The Comedian. *
In the comic it was revealed without specific names (But by putting the pieces together you can pretty much figure it out) in the book within a book.
- Braveheart has the prince's male lover being murdered by King Edward right in front of him. Mel Gibson had to defend this scene frequently against charges of homophobia.
- Which is a strange example of American PC, seeing how Gibson's religious stance generally comes bundled with homophobia, and no one cares, unless you are famous.
- Um...some people most definitively DO care.
- Nevermind the fact that this was a Truth In Television example. Nope. Blame Mel Gibson's homophobia.
- Bride of Chucky. The sole gay character gets whacked on the highway.
- In Warlock, the main character's gay roommate is killed off quite early and in brutal fashion by the Warlock.
- On the other hand, "It's not always the way it is in plays. Not all faggots bump themselves off at the end of the story!" Averted!
- The 2003 film Monster. A stifled young woman attempting to leave "her parent's closet" finds love with a serial-killer-to-be. Coulda been a heartwarming and subtle film where a gay kid break from a crushing middle class existence and a lower class woman on the spiral down gradually break through to a better life. They are gay, no they don't, she kills and is executed.
- James Baldwin's feel bad classic, Giovanni's Room is a stunning example. The novel is narrated by a sexually confused young man who is counting the hours before his lover is executed.
- Les Miserables is a granddaddy of this trope: there's stacks of historical and mythological references to homosexuals in the scenes featuring Enjolras and Grantaire, and they eventually die together, hand in hand, in Orestes Fasting And Pylades Drunk.
- Partially subverted in China Mieville's Iron Council: Cutter, who is gay, is one of the few characters to survive but his on-off boyfriend Judah is shot in one of the final scenes.
- For all of the death and destruction that happens in Warhammer 40 K, this trope is oddly enough subverted during the Ciaphas Cain novels. Magot and Grifen, the lesbian couple, are pretty much hinted at being the only actual couple with names to survive long enough to see retirement aside from Cain and Amberley. Indeed, it is their relationship that's the main reason that they make it away from the Necrons without a major mental breakdown, which actually impresses Cain a bit, saying that he wishes there were more soldiers like them in the Imperial Guard.
- C J L Almquist's The Queen's Tiara, which is set in Sweden in 1792, has Tintomara, who pretty much personifies Attractive Bent Gender. Two sisters and their respective suitors fall in love with her, the men thinking she's a woman, the girls convinced that she's male (at least initially). The men fight a Duel To The Death over her, the sisters go insane, and Tintomara herself is eventually killed for her refusal to pick a gender role and stick with it.
- In Clive Barker's Imajica (by Clive Barker), a fantasy novel by British horror author Clive Barker (published in 1991), a subplot introduces an openly gay male couple who are friends of the Christ-like protagonist Gentle. One of the gay men, Taylor Briggs, dies of Aids near the beginning of the story, while his partner Clem survives and goes on to help the protagonist. It is mentioned in passing that both men were in a lot of open relationships during the 1970s and "slept around" a lot, back before HIV became public knowledge; but only Taylor, the party animal, contracted HIV while his partner was plain lucky and never did, something for which Clem feels survivor guilt. Subverted Trope in that both men had been lovers for a long time and their love and relationship are depicted in a very positive light. Later on, Taylor returns as a ghost and reunites with Clem. At the end of the story, after the Reconciliation of all five realms, when all the souls of the dead of Earth and the other four Dominions are free to travel on to... somewhere else, before he departs Taylor asks his lover not to forget him but to go on with his life and find someone new to love.
- In James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere, police detective Danny Upshaw commits suicide rather than submit to an interrogation that would reveal his homosexuality.
- Quentin in William Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury was heavily implied to be gay, and in love, perhaps even in a relationship with his roommate Shreve, constantly is depressed for not being manly enough, as well as having a weird incestuous obsession with his sister to the point where she names her daughter after him. He, of course, commits suicide.
- Consciously averted in Maurice by E. M. Forster (it was written in 1913, but only published posthumously in 1973 because of this trope). The whole point of the novel is arguably to avert this trope.
- In Terry Goodkind's Blood of the Fold, one member of the only same-sex couple mentioned in the series comes out to the main character, who manfully tells her that he does not approve of their relationship but will deal with it. Not too long after, her partner dies of plague. She then goes on to have absolutely no sexuality for the rest of the series.
- Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness, which was for a long time the only well-known novel dealing with lesbianism, is arguably the Trope Codifier.
- In Joanne Harris' Holy Fools, the only lesbian character goes crazy and then kills herself because her lover leaves her for a man. It turns out she was actually murdered because she was going to reveal the villain's plot. Not to save anyone, just because her lover left her for the villain. So, not actually any better.
- Somewhat subverted in Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald Mage trilogy, when Vanyel's lover Tylendel dies, who is then reincarnated two books later and basically pick up their soulmate status. Only to have Vanyel perform a CMOA / Heroic Sacrifice
- The Fox, a short novel by D.H. Lawrence published in 1923, has two female characters becoming close and eventually acting on their feelings for one another — at which point the male character in the Love Triangle cuts down a tree which falls on the weaker of the two women, killing her.
- His Dark Materials has the angels Balthamos and Baruch. Baruch is attacked by enemy angels on his way to Lord Asriel's fortress and dies shortly afterwards; Balthamos, grief-stricken, kills the assassin stalking the two protagonists and then dies whispering Baruch's name, apparently because he had no more reason to exist. Somewhat justified in that angelic forms - particularly for angels as low-level as them - are far more fragile than flesh and blood, but still...
- Of course, by the time of Balthamos's death, six other characters on the protagonists' side had died in the series, most of them fairly major characters.
- Also, note that angels are made of Dust, the sentient particle; a common theme of the third book is that dead people's souls reunite with their loved ones, daemons or other people, once their Dust particles spread across the universes, after getting out of the underworld for humans of course. Having this in consideration, maybe Balthamos and Baruch had a happy ending after all...
- Subverted in Mary Renault's The Charioteer - the main character believes Ralph is about to commit suicide, but manages to interfere in time, resulting in a relatively happy ending. Considering the book was published in 1953, when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK, this came as a genuine surprise.
- The Front Runner, while being one of the first modern novels to treat gays as people, still follows this trope.
- The Picture Of Dorian Gray, in which the three main characters (Lord Henry, Basil Hallward and Dorian Grey) are all heavily implied to be gay or bisexual, ends up with two of the three dead, one murdered by the other. The other later effectively committed suicide.
- To be fair, this is less an example of the trope and more that they were the lead characters in a tragedy, since Wilde himself was a flagrant homosexual.
- This may also have to do with Wilde's experience of being a gay Irishman in Victorian England. Let's not forget that Wilde himself eventually died in poverty as a result of being jailed for "gross obscenity" for having sex with men, which is darkly ironical in the light of this trope.
- Kiss of the Spider Woman, in which the gay protagonist demonstrates his new-found bravery by accepting a suicide mission to pass a message to political revolutionaries.
- The first—and so far only—plainly gay characters in R.A. Salvatore's The Dark Elf Trilogy were... pirates. The horrible joke is (thankfully?) ruined, as they're lesbian pirates (bisexual in the case of one). At least they're properly pirate-y, not just Fan Service, though that makes them bad guys. But guess what? All the gay ones die, Going Down With The Ship (ugh). The bisexual one, who also happens to have maintained a male lover she coerced into working for the pirates, is a sorceress and manages to escape with him after he talks her into doing the right thing.
- Margaret in Affinity intends to take her life at the end of the story. The TV adaptation explicitly shows her jumping into the Thames.
- In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Sam Clay's too-good-to-be-true boyfriend Tracy is killed in action in World War II. Soon after, Sam marries fellow comic book writer Rosa Saks.
- Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter. Of course, he wasn't revealed to be gay until after he died.
- The Book of Lost Things features the knight Roland, who is trying to find out what happened to his lost lover, Raphael. He is, of course, dead. Roland ends up dying as well, once he finds out what happened.
- In Fritz Peters' Finistère Michel drowns at the end, probably intending to die though this is only hinted at. When the book was published—in the early '50s—the tragic-conclusion trope was still de rigueur.
- Ally McBeal had a Very Special Episode guest-starring Wilson Cruz from My So Called Life as an Attractive Bent Gender Magical Prostitute, who of course died at the end of the episode.
- Babylon 5, which rather unsubtly implies a certain sapphic essence to the relationship between Talia and Susan, doesn't really go all the way to acknowledging that they sleep together until the episode in which Talia's personality is wiped, which is called "death".
- Battlestar Galactica has an unfortunate history with this trope. Fans speculated based on hints and the actors' performances that Admiral Helena Cain was a lesbian or at least bisexual and had had a relationship with Gina, the Six she had confined to a rape room aboard Pegasus. This was borne out in Razor. Gina was later rescued, then killed Cain, before committing suicide by nuke at the end of season 2.
- More recently, Gaeta was revealed as bisexual as well, and he also had a very unfortunate experience with a Cylon that ended up pushing him over the edge into a full-blown insurrection against Adama and his proposed Alliance with elements of the Cylons. For his part in the attempted coup, he was executed. All in the span of four episodes. Although in this case the Cylon relationship was heterosexual and his homosexual relationship was the nice one.
- Hoshi, on the other hand, not only survived but was made Admiral during Adama's suicide mission of rescuing Hera.
- The Bill. Lance Powell, murdered. Juliet Becker, murdered. Luke Ashton, large scale-heartbreak. Gemma Osbourne, suffers GBH. Thankfully, Paul Marquess has gone...
- Bramwell: Frederick,who was initially the Wholesome Crossdresser, gets hit by a carriage, gets his throat torn open with a smashed bottle by a drunken Thrift patient, gets sent away to a religious institution and then dies of infection. His drastically older lover who got him into all of this, however, gets off scot-free unless you count getting shouted at by a woman doctor punishment.
- Obligatory Buffy example: Of the four confirmed gay (or bi) characters in the show, half wind up dead. Yes, Sunnydale has a very high mortality rate, but still ...
- There was a subtle lampshade hung on this trope in the Season 6 episode wherein Amy gets de-ratted. She mentions to Willow that she hopes Larry, a minor character from earlier seasons, will take her to Prom. Willow responds that there are three things wrong with this, the first two being "One, Larry's gay. Two, Larry's dead." This troper was highly amused.
- Interviews suggest that Joss Whedon actually had plans to bring Tara back in the seventh season, but scheduling problems meant this could not happen. There were then other plans to make her appear as a manifestation of The First Evil, but it was decided that this would not be proper to the her memory, so another character was used who said she was bringing a message from Tara.
- On the flip side, Willow and Kennedy were the only romantic couple that remained intact at the end of the series.
- I notice no one who has this bone to pick with Joss ever notices that he killed off straight love-interests at a much higher rate, and that Tara's death was treated in the same fashion as Jenny's: this season's villian dispaches the beloved ex-girlfriend of a main character after hope of romantic reconcilliation and happiness is dangaled in front of the audience. The grieving survivor then goes crazy and tries to get bloody revenge and fails, left with nothing but misery and regret. The Jossverse death sentence isn't gayness, it's happiness.
- The worst thing about the first season of Damages was Ray's plot, which looked horribly reminiscent of one of those would-be sympathetic 1950s/60s films confronting the Homosexual Problem, in which gay people are tragic victims of a terrible burden but still suffer perpetual torment and death. It would have been less unfortunate if he hadn't been the only gay character in the show ever (as of the end of S2).
- Dark Angel. Original Cindy's one serious girlfriend onscreen, Diamond, dies of being used as a disease lab rat. At least she took her murderer with her.
- Original Cindy was fine at the finale, though.
- And did I mention Diamond was her one serious girlfriend onscreen?
- Dirty Sexy Money killed off its transsexual character Carmelita, who was played by real life transexual Candis Cayne. Making it even worse was that the show had just been canceled, giving the impression that they just had to get that death in before it was over. Viewers had had their eyes on the show right from the start as well, as in the pilot episode Cayne's voice was digitally lowered an octave. Word Of God offers a reasonable explanation, though: Cayne is so convincing as a woman that they were afraid the audience wouldn't get that the character used to be a man.
- In an episode of Foyle's War, Foyle lets the handsome young gay pilot in love with Foyle's son, Andrew, atone for his crime (his "girlfriend"'s death) by dying heroically in battle.
- Greys Anatomy is not immune. Hey, look, the Patient of the Week's a gay Marine! Guess we better- oops... But hey, this other one called Benjamin probably has a chan—damn. Note that there are no gay main characters. But then Torres and Hahn were an item, but Hahn ran back towards men, but then Torres got a new GF who was already out as a lesbian so ...
- "Note that there are no gay main characters"?! You Fail Statistics Forever - the proportion of gays in the general population is much too small to necessitate a gay main character, and the simple acknowledgement of the existence of gayness in the show's 'verse, to this extent no less, already makes it nearly over-the-top with the PC. Well, that, or lazy writers wanting to create something sensational without any creative investment whatsoever.
- The ratio of straight peoples to those of alternative sexuality is 9:1 respectively. Considering the size of Grey's Anatomy's cast, one or two gay characters would not be hugely improbable.
- Hex managed to subvert this somewhat. The first episode introduced Thelma, the main character's lesbian best friend. Then it had a demon murder her. Cut to her funeral, at which the priest is talking about how Thelma was very much her own individual and saying it was this individuality which left her isolated and led to her tragic death... at which point Thelma's ghost walks up beside the main character and says: "God, they're loving this. Don't be a dyke or you'll end up topping yourself." Thelma then goes on to be one of only two of the original cast to be left after the show's Kill Em All ending.
- Two more lesbian ghost characters turn up. Peggy, who has been long dead, and Maya, who was killed by the villain to provide Thelma with a girlfriend, thus giving him a hold on her. Admittedly, when you already have one lesbian ghost, who else is she going to get physical with? But then Maya proceeds to get even deader at the hands of the heroine.
- Male gay character Tom ends up dying. At the hands of the man he fancies. Ouch.
- The British soap opera Hollyoaks recently had a one-week series of Hollyoaks later, which is the same but Darker And Edgier. It concluded with the death of Sarah Barnes after her psychotic girlfriend mistakenly slashed her parachute instead of Zoe's.
- Hollyoaks also featured the death of Kieran, the gay priest, but averted this troper nicely when John-Paul and Craig went off into the sunset together, both full comfortable with their sexuality and their relationship. It should also be noted that Hollyoaks features character deaths quite frequently, and that the majority of the gay or bisexual characters on the show remain alive and well.
- The Spanish soap opera Los Hombres de Paco recently wed one of its most popular pairs, lesbian couple Pepa and Silvia, in one the biggest and most hyped weddings of the year. All went well and the wedding was lovely— and then Silvia was shot when gangsters beseiged the reception. Unable to get medical help for hours (and still in her Blood Splattered Wedding Dress) she slowly and painfully bled to death on the floor as Pepa held her and told her she loved her. The episode is almost Whedon-esque in its ability to cause maximum trauma to shippers.
- General Arcadius dies saving the life of the title character in the first episode of Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire after finding the love of his life and his true nature in prison. However his lover has become a series regular.
- Lost was said to be adding a gay character. In season 4, this was revealed to be Tom, who by that time was already dead.
- Tom's homosexuality was implied earlier, though not directly stated, when he said Kate was "not his type" with a If You Know What I Mean smirk.
- Steve from Reaper. Somewhat subverted by the fact that his boyfriend, Tony, is the only survivor after the Devil killed all the other demons. And he doesn't die, instead regaining his status as an angel.
- Well, he does die, but yeah, he also is redeemed and goes to Heaven as an angel. And provides an example for more demons who want to (attempt to) be good.
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Poor Jadzia, who meets Lenara Kahn in season four. Their symbiotes were married in a previous life, but thanks to a Trill taboo, they're forced to separate when Lenara's mission is finished. The heartbreaking part is, they almost worked it out...
- So if they both survive, thus make this entry a aversion rather then a subversion. Why is this entry here exactly?
- Jadzia did die. Just three seasons later.
- Supernatural had a third-season episode called "Ghostfacers" in which a gay character is introduced and immediately killed, only to come back as a ghost for a bit... and then perform a Heroic Sacrifice to become Deader Than Dead. Everyone else survives.
- There is also Lily in the finale for the second season, and while this is likely overlooked as just about everyone else in that episode dies (even if they get better), she is the first to go. Notably, after mentioning that she "touched her girlfriend and her heart stopped."
- Finally averted in an episode where Sam and Dean meet a gay couple who are fans of theirs and like to cosplay as them, help them take down a bunch of poltergeists, and survive the episode.
- A major occurrence in Brazilian soap opera Torre de Babel was a shopping mall explosion. Said explosion was also used for the author to kill characters the audience wasn't liking, including a lesbian couple.
- During the first two seasons, Torchwood built itself a wonderful reputation for having an omnisexual protagonist on a homosexual relationship in a sci-fi show, and not treat said relationship as an issue. Then, on season 3, the show was moved to BBC 1 and suddenly new characters started bashing Ianto for his sexuality, he was clearly shown as the weakest and most insecure on the relationship and finally died a non-heroic death. To make things worse, the following episode established him as a liar. He also told Jack he loved him, and never heard it back.
- In terms of Jack never saying it back, it was pretty obvious the feeling was mutual when Jack offered to take back every threat he had made in return for Ianto's life. And then spent half the next episode sitting in a cell, hopeless and grief-stricken, having completely given up.
- Something he would just as likely have said if ANY team member were in that position as a result of his own stupidity and arrogance.
- Vito Spatafore in The Sopranos is beaten to death for being gay. Justified in that the Mob is hardly a bastion of cultural liberalism, especially not on the subject of homosexuality.
- In the original book and movie of The Andromeda Strain, Dr. Hall is straight and lives. In the tragically decayed 2008 miniseries adaptation, he is replaced by Major Keane, who is gay and dies. Draw your own conclusions.
- Nicely subverted in Flash Forward. The episode in which Janis is confirmed to be a lesbian ends with her lying alone in the street, bleeding out from a bullet to the stomach. In the next episode, she gets to a hospital and is saved.
- Veronica Mars does this in the second season as it is revealed Big Bad Beaver engineered the bus crash because two characters established to be gay were going to reveal that Woody had molested them when they were in a little league baseball team, and that he had done the same thing to Beaver, and Beaver didn't want people to think he was gay.
- In the Cold Case episode Forever Blue, the cop who calls him and his partner 'the lucky ones', tells his father that he is a man, and all but admits that he's in love with said partner is the one who's killed. Meanwhile, his partner, who in present day, still insists until near the end of the episode that he isn't gay (and to add insult to death, claims his partner also wasn't 'like that') is the one who lives. He lived because he broke things off the night they were supposed to go patrolling together. Granted, it was during the 60's and ashamed closeted people had a much higher chance of surviving than people who dared not to be filled with self-loathing, but this troper is just plain sick of the more accepting-of-self partner in queer relationships dying. In A Time to Hate, again, the partner who was more accepting of his own sexuality was killed, while his partner in the present day was still closeted.
- In a complete (deliberate?) subversion of the trope, Strip Mall's series finale "Tammi Takes a Dive" features every main character bumped off except the lesbian couple.
- Spoon's "The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine":
I wanna play the part of Eddie in The Stranger Dance
He makes love to the duke
He swordfights the queen
He steals the whole show in his last dying scene
- Beautifully subverted/averted in Angels In America. Although deaths of Prior and Belize's friends are mentioned, the only one of the gay characters to die is Roy Cohn, the malicious, heartless bastard of a closet queen who refuses to think of himself as gay.
- Averted/Subverted in Spring Awakening. Hänschen and Ernst don't appear again after their kiss, which is a pretty good fate, since saying the lives of the heterosexual characters (well, those who are left alive) suck would be an understatement.
- Dog Sees God
- Jason Mc Connell in bare: a pop opera.
- To be fair, Peter survives.
- Abu'l Nuquod in Assassin's Creed is very, very strongly implied to be gay due to his speech about being taunted by his neighbors for being "different" and refusing to serve a god who considers him an abomination. Unfortunately he's also a bad guy, so Altair chases him down and stabs him in the throat. It doesn't help that while Altair mentions Abu'l's greed, decadence, and theft from his people as reasons that he needs to die, nobody ever said that. Going purely by what you hear around the city he's not such a bad guy. Granted, he does poison his party guests, but Altair didn't know that was going to happen.
- May be an in-universe example. Altair carried out his assassinations because Al Mualim, who is actually killing the Templars because he wants to rule the Holy Land himself, tells him to, and would presumably massage the truth about any Templars who aren't as bad as, say, Garnier de Naplause. As well, the investigations Altair goes through before making the hit strongry suggest that Abu'l Nuquod is an ass, it's just never said plainly.
- "Be at peace now; their words can no longer do harm."
- Chrono Trigger. Cyrus. Maybe. We're not sure. The bit at his grave sure seemed to imply something.
- Aren't he and Frog supposed to be brothers too? Or at the very least best friends since childhood.
- In the Japanese Mai-HiME computer game, if you as the main character choose to date Natsuki Kuga, her best friend Shizuru Fujino is so hurt that she kills herself.
- Sorta subverted but not really in Phantasmagoria 2. Trevor is the last out of four characters to be murdered, and specifically because Curtis loved him the most. However, he also dies right after admitting that he loves Curtis and right before they can kiss. The female love interest survives, apparently remembering that she was, in fact, a character in the game after disappearing from the last half of it or so.
- Subverted in the Shadow Hearts series, where straight couples kick the bucket with astonishing regularity while gay characters fulfill their romantic relationships.
- In Star Control 2, practically the only named character to die is [Admiral ZEX. Granted, he did try to capture you for his harem but it still leads to Unfortunate Implications.
- Viranus Donton in Oblivion. The only one character to be strongly hinted to be gay, and guess what happens to both him and his apparent romantic interest? The short version: mistaken for cavern trolls by a bunch of heavily armed mercenaries on acid.
- Subverted in Talesofthe Abyss. Camp Gay Dist is the only one of the villains who survives.
- The Metal Gear Solid series on top of Ho Yay has four obviously non-hetero men. Scott Dolph, bisexual, dies after the prologue in MGS2. Volgin the Big Bad of MGS3, Depraved Bisexual, dies at the end. Raikov, Volgin's lover and Depraved Homosexual (there's nothing in game that shows this but a radio conversation with EVA reveals he likes to punch his subordinates in the face for no reason.), fate unknown. He was mostly a gag/minor plot device as it was. Then finally there's Vamp who is also a Depraved Bisexual and survives 2, dies in 4.
- Portable Ops confirms Raikov's survival... well, as long as you rescue him, that is. If you don't, it's fair to assume this happens. Either way, just as in MGS3, it's up to the player to decide his fate.
- Snake and Otacon are also gay/bi, and the former is dying from the Fox Die virus.
- In Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, Mara and Elsa are revealed to be a lesbian couple, and are subsequently killed.
- There are three homosexual characters in Tactical Noobs, all of whom die horribly within seconds of being introduced. The first blasts himself with a rocket launcher. The second two are flame-throwered by someone who disagrees with their choice to vote Barrak Obama for president.
- Tract writer Jack Chick believes that gays don't ever deserve happy endings. After all they are promiscuous, depraved, demon-possessed, and swarming with AIDS. Right?
- The Motion Picture Production Code, or Hayes Code, made it illegal to show or reference sexual perversion (which at the time included homosexuality) unless the people involved ended up suffering or villainous.
- 100% of gay people die.(Aversion: Exactly the same percentage of straight people die.)
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