Deathbed Confession

The Girlfriend's final confession to the player character "You".^note  Just for your information, the one who is lying on the bed is The Girlfriend. Don't worry, she gets better in the sequel.

"They say, the tongues of dying men,
Enforce attention, like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain."

— John of Gaunt, Richard II, Act II, Scene i.

Bob is dying. As his last hours on this earth approach, he calls for his daughter Alice to come to his bedside so he can give her an important message before he passes on. Once Alice arrives, there are multiple possibilities as to what Bob may tell her:

1. A major character revelation, such as the fact that he's her long-lost father presumed dead all those years ago.
2. A piece of information vital to advancing the plot, like the location of the blueprints for the secret weapon he was developing for the government.
3. A secret from his long-dead past that he feels he needs to get off his chest. May overlap with either of the above two.

If the work is a comedy or Bob is a right bastard, he may take the opportunity to deliver a parting shot along the lines of "I never really liked you anyway!"

A Last Request, related to the confession, may follow

Then, having spoken his last words on Earth, Bob will suffer from one last fit of his Incurable Cough of Death and give up the ghost.

Overlaps considerably with Final Speech. Differs from a "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner in that the latter is generally spoken under duress, while this occurs in a (relatively) peaceful setting. The subverted version is usually a Not-So-Final Confession (the character erroneously thinks he's dying but remains very much alive to deal with the aftermath of the confession). Sometimes the person witnessing the deathbed confession will lie to others about what was said. This is a Post-Mortem Conversion.

In evidence law, such a confession (or anything said while dying, really), is a dying declaration. Dying declarations are not subject to the usual rules of hearsay, and can thus be admissible when they otherwise wouldn't be. The theory behind this is that someone who knows they are about to die would have no reason to lie, would they? Or, at the very least, it can be presented to the jury for them to determine its veracity, when otherwise the law requires the testimony to be given in person so the jury can see the person giving it. May also overlap Dying Reconciliation.

Avoid real-life examples. Many historical figures have accumulated any number of myths and rumors of Deathbed Confessions. Putting words in someone's mouth is always more popular after they can't deny the statement.

As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Kriem from Tiger & Bunny gives one to Barnaby before committing suicide by cutting off her own life support, by revealing that Ouroboros had nothing to do with the death of his parents ^note The only clue he had, which turned out to be fake, was their symbol. She did this simply to mess with him, believing that the news would devastate him; instead, it only serves to drive him onto the path of learning the actual truth..
• Nicole from The Rose of Versailles explains the truth of Rosalie's origins as she lays dying after being hit by a carriage. For even more irony, it turns out that the woman who was in said carriage... was Rosalie's birth mom.
• Ōoku: The Inner Chambers:
  • By technicality, Hisamichi did live a month or two after this confession, but given that this was her last conversation with Yoshimune before her death, the trope still applies in spirit. In their final conversation, Hisamichi admitted that she poisoned Yoshimune's older sisters and the closest rival to the throne to ensure that Yoshimune became shogun. It's not entirely clear how Yoshimune took the news but the parting was certainly amicable enough.
  • On his deathbed Ienari admitted to his wife that he was behind the historical record of him being a crazy spendthrift lecher, in order to hide any mention of the Redface Pox from foreigners who would take advantage of that to invade Japan.
• In Digimon Frontier, Kouichi is told by his dying grandmother that his parents divorced and he has a twin brother named Kouji, which prompts him to seek him out.
• A variation in Gunslinger Girl. Triela wants Mario Bossi to reveal the truth about why her handler Hilshire is so determined to protect her life. He refuses until she points out that her lifespan as a first-generation cyborg is running out.
• In One Piece, after being beaten by Donquixote family for betraying Doflamingo, Corazon admits that he is actually a Marine and apologizes that he lied about it because he didn't want to be hated. The confession was not for his brother Doflamingo but for the hidden Law who despised anyone associated with the World Government after they burned his home city down.

Ballads

• In the Child Ballad Sir Aldingar, Aldingar is mortally wounded by the mysterious champion and confesses his Malicious Slander before he dies.

Comic Books

• Green Lantern: During Kyle Rayner's first team-up with Connor Hawke, they go on a mission to find Kyle's missing father Aaron Rayner and run into a man claiming to be Aaron who manipulates Kyle into assisting him in a domestic terrorism plot. After the scheme is thwarted, the man ends up dying, but before drawing his last breath confesses to Kyle that he's actually his uncle Zachary pretending to be his nephew's father.
• Judge Fargo from Judge Dredd has a Deathbed Confession in which he tells Dredd that he was wrong to create the Justice System and that he felt that he had killed America.
• In the Golden Age Captain Marvel stories, Billy is called to the deathbed of his childhood nurse, Sarah Primm, who tells him that he has a twin sister who was adopted by another family after his parents died. She gives him half of a locket, explaining that his sister has the rest of it. Almost immediately he realizes a girl he just met, Mary Bromfield, was wearing the other half, and she winds up becoming Mary Marvel
• In Eight Billion Genies, Robbie's superhero friends are killed by a particularly powerful supervillain, and Robbie has a breakdown because at 12 years old, he's way too young to deal with all this. One of the teammates, King Power, tries to reassure Robbie by admitting with his dying breath that he's only 11.

Fan Works

• The Penitent Man A Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Pretender crossover, this includes a very long example as well as this line:
  "No wonder deathbed confessions get their own category on tv tropes," Willow muttered.
• one day at a time (Nyame): In the first chapter, Peggy Sue protagonist Jason Todd makes an implicit one to his adoptive son Terry McGinnis by giving him complete access to the Bat-Computer. Every single secret in the Bat-Family is now in Terry's possession — including Project Batman Beyond.
• Super Kami Guru tries making one of these when he thinks he's dying in Dragon Ball Z Abridged confessing that he had instigated the genocide of the albino Namekians to cover up the fact that he had drunk the entire water supply. Then it turns out he wasn't dying after all. The Namekians soon change that.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: In chapter 26 of the sequel, Picking Up the Pieces, Gentle Step reveals that as Captain-General, she was allowed access to the personal journal of King Blueblood the First, and learned from it about how in her dying moments, Chrysalis confessed to Blueblood about the identity of her child's father — Shining Armor.

Films — Live-Action

• A variant happens in Almost Famous (it's only a close call), as the plane goes through a thunderstorm. The new manager committed a hit-and-run in Michigan, the former one embezzled some of the band's money, the guitarist and the singer slept with each other's wives, William confessed his love for Penny and the drummer says his only line: "Fuck it! I'm gay!"
• In August Rush, as he's dying, Lyla's father confesses that the son she'd thought had died in utero was really alive, and he'd secretly given the child up for adoption so Lyla could continue her career as an esteemed musician. WOW.
• Bicentennial Man: Many years after banishing Andrew, Sir is dying and asks Little Miss to bring him over. Sir apologizes for sending Andrew away when he asked for his freedom, saying that it was wrong of him.
• Double Indemnity's story is narrated by the mortally wounded Neff In Medias Res as he confesses to the murder of Dietrichson.
• Interstellar. As he's dying, Professor Brand admits to Murph that Plan A (find a means of controlling gravity so Mankind can be moved en masse to another planet) was a Motivational Lie, and that Plan B (send astronauts with a human seed bank to establish humanity anew) was always the intent of the mission. Murph is devastated by the news, thinking (incorrectly) that her father (the pilot of the mission) deliberately abandoned her to die on a doomed Earth.
• Judge Dredd: After Judge Fargo is mortally wounded, he confesses to the title character that both Dredd and Rico were genetically engineered and are actually brothers (of a sort).
• Old Scores: In this New Zealand/Wales-produced dramedy film, a rugby match in 1966 between Wales and New Zealand is won by Wales in a controversial manner. The rugby touch judge confesses on his deathbed that he made an error that decided the original match in favour of Wales. As a result, a rematch is agreed, using the very same players from 25 years earlier. Both hilarity and drama ensue.
• Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi: Just before he dies, Yoda tells Luke that he must confront Darth Vader before he can become a Jedi and that there is another Skywalker. Yoda also confirms to Luke what the latter was told from Vader but struggled to believe: Vader is Luke's father.
• In The Three Musketeers (1993), Milady de Winter tells Athos what she knows about the assassination plot against the King moments before her execution. While the information she shared was not about herself, it was symbolic in her bringing her soul clean and becoming the woman she was when married to Athos.
• At the end of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, a dying Blanche reveals that her sister Jane didn't cripple her. She did it to herself when she got into an accident trying to kill Jane. This ended up being a famous Twist Ending.
• Deep Impact. Jenny Lerner gives up her seat on the escape helicopter to face The End of the World as We Know It with her estranged father. She finds him standing on the beach waiting for the tsunami, and the following conversation takes place.
  Jenny Lerner: When I was 11, I stole $32 from your wallet.
  Jason Lerner: When you were a baby I once dropped you on your head.

Jokes

• A man confesses on his deathbed to his wife/business partner that he embezzled their life savings/pension fund. His wife/partner replies, "It's OK, dear/pal, I already knew that. That's why I poisoned you."

Literature

• Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg's The Positronic Man: When Sir is dying, he has his grandson fetch Andrew so that he has a chance to apologize for getting upset over Andrew's request for freedom.
• In a somewhat bitter example, in The Belgariad, Olban, dying in the series's major battle, confesses to his father Brand that he had once tried to assassinate King Belgarion. Brand disowns him on the spot and walks out.
• Played with in Black Man. Marsalis and Ertekin exchange confessions as the latter is on her deathbed, but it's played as a trust moment between the two of them rather than guilt.
• In Eragon, Brom tells Eragon on his deathbed that he's a former Dragon Rider.
• El Filibusterismo: Simoun reveals his past as Juan Crisostomo Ibarra and what happened in the 13-year Time Skip between this book and its prequel, to Padre Florentino as he dies from intentionally ingested poison.
• Inversions. Guard commander Adlain is dying of an agonising disease and begs his adopted son Oelph to Mercy Kill him, confessing that he killed his parents and adopted him out of guilt. Oelph refuses to believe his beloved protector is telling the truth, because if that were true he would have let him die in agony instead of giving him the poison he asked for.
• In Nobody's Girl (and its anime rendition, The Story of Perrine), Perrine's dying mother Marie tells her daughter that her father Edmond and her grandfather Vulfran parted ways bitterly after the grandpa's Parental Marriage Veto, so she cannot expect to be warmly received by Vulfran and his family. Perrine decides to go anyway so she can at least try meeting him and forging her own path.
• In Oliver Twist, Old Sally tells Mrs. Corney that she stole some jewelry (namely, a locket and a ring) from Oliver's mother, Agnes Fleeming, right after she fell victim to Death by Childbirth. Sally dies begging Mrs. Corney to give the jewels to Oliver; she instead gives them to his half-brother Edward aka Monks, who throws them to the Thames river.
• The entirety of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" was one of these.
• In The Secret of Platform 13, Nanny Brown writes her grandson, Ben, a letter while she's in the hospital, which the nurses give him after she dies. It reveals her part in Mrs. Trottle's kidnapping plot, and that Ben, rather than Raymond, was the kidnapped child, and thus the real Prince.
• A Song of Ice and Fire, as it does with many tropes, plays with this one. With Hoster Tully dying slowly, his maester has given him milk of the poppy to help with the pain. With relatively little to do, Catelyn has taken to spending time with him, even though he's delirious. One of the things he repeats is "tansy", and apologies. Knowing tansy is a flower smallfolk sometimes name their daughters for, Catelyn assumes he must be remembering some common girl he had an affair with but had to break the heart of. It's not until she remembers that tansy is also a key ingredient in moon tea (basically a drink to induce an abortion) that she realizes he must have forced Lysa to take moon tea so she wouldn't birth a bastard. But even she doesn't realize it was Petyr's child and it was lamenting the lost child of her beloved that would motivate Lysa to murder Jon Arryn and help Petyr start the War of Five Kings.
• "Talma Gordon": Simon Cameron confesses to the Gordon murders on his deathbed, dying a few hours later.
• At the beginning of The Twelve Chairs, a dispossessed Russian noblewoman on her deathbed tells her son-in-law that she had hidden many of the family jewels inside one of their dining room chairs shortly before the revolution, setting said son-in-law on a quest crisscrossing across the entire Soviet Union to track down the now-scattered chairs in hopes of finding them.

Live-Action TV

• In the Doctor Who episode "Gridlock", The Face of Boe tells the Doctor "You Are Not Alone" in reference to The Master still existing trillions of years into the future as Professor Yana.
• In HBO's Rome Gaia confesses to Pullo on her deathbed that she killed Pullo's wife Eirene to be with him. Pullo is not amused, strangling her to death and dumping her body in the river. To the Ancient Romans, this was a way of damning someone. Without proper funeral rites, their soul would be unable to enter the underworld and they would be stuck in limbo for all eternity.
• Mocked on Frasier when Martin pretends to give one regarding some stolen money he recovered on a bust, but "dies" mid-sentence — Niles was recording a video for future generations.
• An old woman attempts this in Desperate Housewives, trying to reveal some dark secret to her grand-niece. But she gets interrupted by the girl's mother and the woman dies before ever getting to tell the truth.
• Get Smart. An Invoked Trope in "The Secret of Sam Vittorio" where a former bank robber announces he'll reveal the eponymous secret on his deathbed, which everyone assumes is the location of his loot. Hilarity Ensues as Max and 99 try to convince him he's on the verge of death. The secret turns out to be, "Crime doesn't pay!"
• I, Claudius. On her deathbed Livia worries that she'll suffer an eternity of torment in the afterlife. However she knows it's been foretold that Claudius will one day be emperor, so she makes a deal with him to have herself deified if this happened so she can't be held accountable. In exchange Claudius, who's frustrated by the lies and propaganda obscuring historical events, asks Livia to tell him the truth about the various deaths she arranged to further her schemes.
• Law & Order:
  • One episode begins with a mugging that leads to a shootout that ends with a deathbed confession to a murder. Fontana, who convicted someone of the crime, doesn't take it well.
  • Another episode has an interesting take on this. The one confessing (to murdering his wife) does so via a service where people who expect to be assumed into Heaven during the Rapture can leave emails for the loved ones left behind. The way the service works is that the emails launch when two of the three administrators fail to check in on the same day. One of the administrators is murdered himself while a second is on vacation, resulting in the emails launching prematurely. (The rest of the episode focuses on the investigation of the administrator's murder.)
• An episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit centered on a terminally ill man giving the detectives clues to crimes he committed before he became a Reformed Criminal. It's actually a ploy to get his estranged daughter to visit him one last time. The man killed his old partner because the partner murdered a woman and was about to kill a baby. Afterwards, he and his wife adopted the baby girl but never told her the truth. The dying man does not really feel sorry for any of this until he discovers that an innocent man was convicted for the murder the partner committed and spent more than twenty years in jail as a result. He then makes a full confession to everything so the detectives can use it to free the innocent man from jail.
• Happens in Logan's final episode on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. A priest takes a deathbed confession from a man who admits he committed a murder for which another man was convicted. Unfortunately for the investigation, the priest can't tell Logan any of the details, which makes it considerably more difficult to piece it together.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In his last moment of life, Tar-Palantir mistakes Eärien for a young Miriel and warns her that Numenor should return to its old days before is too late. He leads her to his secret chamber where Eärien discovers the palantir.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: As you would expect given their tendencies for deceit and paranoia, the Cardassian people have an entire ritual devoted to this known as the Shri-tal. A Cardassian near death will tell all of their closely-held secrets to a family member, so that those secrets may be used against their enemies. It was also used by Enabran Tain and Garak to openly acknowledge their secret father/son relationship for the first time in Garak's life — Tain's confession? He was proud of Garak, after all. Prior to this, Tain tells Garak he has none of the usual secrets to share, because he'd already killed all of his enemies on Cardassia and lacks any useful secrets about the Dominion due to being captured by them before the war began.
  • In the case of Legate Tekeny Ghemor, he performed the Shri-tal with Kira Nerys. The Obsidian Order had previously tried to convince him that she was really his missing daughter Iliana in an attempt to reveal his privately-held dissent with Central Command. Despite Kira really being Bajoran, the two had bonded to the point where he considered her the next best thing to his actual daughter, and as he opposed the Dominion alliance, she was the only person he could trust with his secrets. Naturally, Gul Dukat tried to stop it.
• Merlin: Inverted in the finale when Arthur is dying and Merlin confesses to him that he is a sorcerer.
• The Professionals. The episode "Everest Was Also Conquered" starts with the former head of MI6 saying "I killed Suzie Carter" on his deathbed. Suzie Carter was a witness at a 1953 corruption inquiry who supposedly committed suicide. This causes a series of murders as the other conspirators race to cover up their involvement.
• Oz:
  • After a criminal on Death Row has his final appeal rejected, he calmly confesses to a bunch of other murders, revealing that he is, in fact, a Serial Killer.
  • Played for Black Comedy when Shirley Bellinger tells Warden Glynn that the guard leading her off to be executed has been "coming into my cell every night and fucking me."
• Taggart. In "Forbidden Fruit" a doctor decides to drown himself after being exposed as a fraud. His wife sees the overturned boat and rushes into the house to call for help, only to find him inside dripping wet. Things probably would have worked out if he hadn't forgotten about the written confession he left behind, in which he confessed to murdering the Victim of the Week.
• In the TV adaptation of Nostromo, the title character after being fatally shot is about to confess that he'd stolen a boatload of silver but Lady Gould hushes him, as Nostromo has always taken pride in his incorruptible reputation.
  Lady Gould: It was lost at sea.
• Played for laughs on Quark. Before beaming down to a planet on an apparent suicide mission, Captain Quark asks his identical Bridge Bunnies to finally tell him which one is really the clone. As usual they each point at the other. "She is!"
• Referenced for humor on Friends. Ross tells Joey and Chandler about his guilt of cheating on Rachel, and wonders if he should tell her.
  Chandler: If you absolutely have to tell her, you have to at least wait until the timing is right. And that's what deathbeds are for.
• In Game of Thrones, right after Olenna Tyrell poisoned herself on Jaime's orders after the Tyrell forces are defeated and Highgarden is captured, she confesses to Jaime that she was the one to poison Joffrey, Cersei and Jaime's son/nephew, and demands that Jaime tells Cersei she confessed. Fans quickly declared this a Dying Moment of Awesome.
  • In House of the Dragon, Alicent Hightower, not knowing the prophecy of the "Song of Ice and Fire", misinterprets a dying King Viserys' final words about said prophecy as him wishing for his son Aegon (who has the same name as the prophecy's Aegon the Conqueror) to be put on the Iron Throne.
• One episode of Murphy's Law had the plot kicked off by an unusual variant. An old man serving a life sentence collapsed of a heart attack, and before he died he was able to whisper to the prison chaplain that he hadn't committed one of the murders he was sent to prison for. Since it was literally the last words the man spoke before he died there was no reason to believe he was lying, so Murphy gets the unenviable task of finding the real killer.
• In Daredevil (2015), FBI agent Ray Nadeem betrays Fisk and knows he's going to be murdered for it, so he records a video message on his phone confessing all the ways the FBI was in Fisk's back pocket, then hides the phone and waits for Bullseye to show up and kill him. When the heroes find the phone and the message on it, Karen thinks a dead man can't help their case against Fisk, but Foggy reveals that a recorded deathbed confessional is admissible in court; someone who spills out their sins because they truly believe they're about to die is extremely unlikely to lie about anything.
• Cold Case: Right before Felix Spyczyk died, he confessed to a murder he committed in 1929. His grandson recorded the confession, but didn't tell anyone until years later, when the murder victim's great-granddaughter tried to find out what happened.

Myths & Religion

• The Book of Mormon: Both Sherem and Korihor, after being smitten by God, confess that they knew all along that their teachings were false and that God existed.
  • Sherem is literally on his deathbed, and passes away immediately afterward, fearing what will happen when he meets God.
  • Korihor lives a short time, but being cursed with muteness and apparently lacking the skills to support himself, he's reduced to begging, and is then trampled to death when he tries the wrong neighbourhood. Alma asserts that if the curse were lifted, then Korihor would go straight back to his old ways, implying that his confession didn't indicate a real change of heart.
• In Catholicism, the faithful are instructed to confess their sins to a Priest while genuinely regretting them so that they can be granted absolution and so their soul can be unburdened by sin ^note While confession is the only way to be sure, someone who is unable to undergo this rite before death can still get into Heaven by praying to God for forgiveness and by being sincerely repentant for their wrong-doings and NOT only out for fear for their immortal souls. Catholics who are in very poor health or who are dying are thus highly encouraged to make a confession and feel the weight of what they have committed so they can go to Heaven when they die. If someone has a serious sin on his conscience then a heart-felt deathbed confession can be a Last-Second Chance to save his soul.

Radio

• Dimension X's "Dwellers in Silence": When Captain Parsons confronts Dr Hathaway, he admits that he is the only human who survived, implying that the "family" living with him are all robot copies. Implied in his confession is the request that his family not be told about the truth of their construction.

Video Games

• Saul Karath in Knights of the Old Republic uses his last words to undermine Carth's fragile trust in his companions by whispering to him that his Heterosexual Life-Partner (if you're playing male) or Love Interest (if playing female) is Revan; Carth hears this confession but Bastila and the Player Character do not. Nastier because Saul was the one who broke Carth's ability to trust in the first place...
• Soap in Modern Warfare 3 reveals to Price that Makarov knows Yuri before he dies.
• In NEO: The World Ends with You, as Shoka is about to be erased, she laments to Rindo that they won't be able to play FanGO together, revealing her identity as Rindo's online friend Swallow. Rindo is able to turn back time with some outside assistance and save Shoka's life and Shibuya, but learns that Shoka will be erased at the end of the Reaper's Game unless she returns to the Reapers, something she is unwilling to do. Rindo, who doesn't want Shoka to die, brings up her being Swallow, which prompts her to remark, "Me and my big mouth." Luckily, in the end, Shoka is allowed a second chance at life and she and Rindo truly become friends.

Western Animation

• One of the only genuinely serious moments in Archer is through one of these. Archer's old friend, who he trusted and thought of as a brother, lays dying after a tree's fallen and crushed him, this being after Luke confessed to Archer that he's in love with him and wants him to leave the agency so they can run away together. Luke begs Archer to hear his dying confession, to which Archer reluctantly agrees, already feeling betrayed by Luke's scheme to abscond with him to the mountains. Luke tells him that one night, after they had been partying, Archer passed out on the hotel bed, and Luke raped him while he was unconscious. Archer screams in anguish, and the final scene is him, Lana, and Cyril in the car driving home; it's completely, unnervingly silent, Lana and Cyril look horrified, and Archer just looks like he's miles away mentally before asking Lana to turn on the radio. It's one of the rare moments in the show that you're absolutely sure contains nothing to laugh at.
• Batman obtains one from a dying criminal that relates to his parents' murder near the beginning of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Chill of the Night". He does by posing as a priest performing the last rites, and the episode makes no effort to hide the questionable morality of such an act ^*Impersonating a priest is a sin that incurs automatic excommunication in the Catholic Church. (it's an early clue that Batman's quest for vengeance is leading him toward a slippery slope).
• In The Simpsons "Forgive and Regret", Abe Simpson suffers an accident and thinks he's going to die. He confesses to Homer that he threw the pie recipes and advice to Homer that his mother Mona left for him over a cliff. Abe, however, recovers, meaning he gets to live to face the anger Homer and the rest of the family feel over this revelation. Abe eventually comes to the conclusion that deathbed confessions don't actually help much since they don't actually undo the bad deed. So he risks his life to try and recover the recipes he threw over that cliff years ago.
• Parodied on Family Guy. The Griffins are trapped in a sealed room filling with water, and Peter takes the opportunity to confess his darkest secret to the rest of the family before they all drown: He didn't like The Godfather, and in fact has never even managed to watch the movie all the way through because he always loses interest. The rest of the family all spend the next several minutes jumping down his throat for daring to not like the Sacred Cow.

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