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Dropped A Bridge On Him
"Bridge on the captain!"
- William Shatner, after filming his death scene in Star Trek: Generations. Allegedly.

When a character is permanently written out of a show, especially killed off, in a way that is particularly awkward, anti-climactic, mean-spirited or dictated by producer's fiat, they Dropped A Bridge On Him.

This can be a case of Writer On Board, but may also be an attempt to make the best of a difficult situation (a cast member leaving unexpectedly or being fired, or a really bad character that just has to disappear).

Not all TV deaths are bad. Compare the NYPD Blue deaths of Det. Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) and Det. Danny Sorenson (Rick Schroder). Smits dies of Soap Opera Disease but gets to put his fine acting chops on display and bring some closure to the character and his relationships with the other characters in the series. Schroder decided he really didn't want to be back on a tv series, so his character is killed off-screen, between seasons. They Dropped A Bridge On Him.

Named for the death of Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations, which should have been a key, climactic event putting an exclamation point to 30 years of adventuring. Instead, they, literally, Dropped A Bridge On Him. (And that's the improved version, mind you. Originally, and in the novelization, the plan was for the Big Bad to shoot him in the back, but for some reason test audiences didn't like it - hence the improvement. The "Kirk gets shot" ending remains in the novelization and its audio-book.) An attempt at defense is made here and here.

The polar opposite of Put On A Bus and Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence. Compare also to Stuffed Into The Fridge, where the character's meaningless death is primarily plot-driven (or rather, plot-driving). A subversion of Death Is Dramatic, but aversion of that isn't necessarily an example of this.

Sometimes a consequence of playing the No One Could Survive That card too often: you gotta go the extra mile to make it clear to the audience that it's for real this time. Some fans will still insist that He's Just Hiding.

See also Mc Leaned, Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome, and Not So Invincible After All. Not to be confused with Dropped A Bridget On Him.
Examples:

Live Action TV
  • Also in Generations, the Enterprise-D is basically a random victim of a lucky shot. After winning a space battle, the warp core gets a coolant leak, and when Riker asks why they can't just eject the Warp Core, Gordi says they can't but doesn't explain why. They let the main section explode, causing the saucer section to crash on a nearby planet. (Compare to the way the original Enterprise is destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.) This is lampshaded in one of the books.
  • When Jon Polito's Homicide Life On The Street character Steve Crosetti was written out of the show at the behest of the network, who wanted another female character in the show, the producers promised him that they would write the character back in later in the season. Not believing them, Polito went to the newspapers and slagged off the production crew for bending to the network's wishes. As a result, his character committed suicide offscreen - the one thing he had asked the producers not to do. However, he mended his bridges and returned as an afterlife spirit in the Homicide TV movie that wrapped up the series.
  • The fates of Catherine Black and Lara Means on Millennium, who were written out as part of a Retooling of the series.
  • In a show notorious for killing off characters, all three of The X Files Lone Gunmen (Byers, Langley and Frohike) made it all the way from the first year of the show until four episodes from the last, when they were killed off trying to stop the spread of a deadly contagion. The failure of the Lone Gunmen spin-off series perhaps motivated the writers to kill off the characters for good, but the fact that they were Mulder's closest allies throughout the whole show makes this one a bit mean-spirited. (Of course, the episode was called "Jump The Shark"...)
  • Perhaps the most unpleasant example: in a season opener of Sliders, we find out that the character Wade Wells has been abducted by ugly alternate-dimension aliens... for breeding purposes.
    • Another unpleasant Sliders example was Professor Arturo; over the course of one episode he had his brains partially sucked out, was then shot dead, and was then left on an earth which was destroyed by radioactive pulsars. And all this after the character came down with a terminal disease leaving him with months left to live anyway.
    • Fans insist that the deceased Arturo was in fact his evil twin, and Wade Wells was brought Back From The Dead, to be Mercy Killed.
  • Rory Cochrane's character on CSI Miami, Tim Speedle, also died nastily after Cochrane asked to be written out of the show. The writers really did a number on him, making Speed out to be careless with cleaning his weapon, which subsequently jammed during a shootout and resulted in his untimely death. Considering his status as a much-loved character, this quite literal character assassination might drive some to accuse the writers of dropping a bridge on the fans instead of their intended target.
    • Making this all the more implausible was that in a previous episode, he had almost been killed when he gun jammed for EXACTLY THE SAME REASON - wouldn't he have learned his lesson?
  • Romano on ER. After getting his lower arm sliced off by the tail rotor of a helicopter in the previous season, the character dies when another helicopter goes out-of-control, explodes in midair, and lands on him.
  • Star Trek The Next Generation did this when they unceremoniously killed off Tasha Yar in the episode "Skin of Evil". Denise Crosby had asked to be written out. She came back as Tasha in the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", which mentioned that Tasha had died a senseless death, and gave the character a chance to exit with more dignity.
    • Though it's of note that Tasha's death was an attempt by the writers to actually subvert a trope... the one that says that it's always the nameless redshirts that are killed as an example of the evil alien's power. Unfortunately, Tasha's death came off as far too senseless (not to mention stuck in a really bad episode) and the fan outcry was such that it had to be revisited.
      • More dignity indeed... until it is revealed that Tasha did not in fact die, but was kidnapped, kept as a glorified house pet to raise a daughter, and unceremoniously executed. Poor Tasha.
  • Near miss: Doctor Who was known for changing its lead actor every few seasons by having a near-death experience trigger an alien regeneration, resulting in a new body and changed personality. In one case (the transition from Colin Baker to Sylvester McCoy), the lead actor was fired, and so without warning an episode began with the Doctor regenerating for a trivial reason, with McCoy playing the Before version (lying face-down and wearing an obvious wig) as well as the After version. Although the character didn't exactly die, a bridge was definitely dropped.
    • Also on Doctor Who: Actress Jackie Lane's contract expired partway through a multiple-episode storyline. Her character, Dodo, simply wanders off in the middle of part 2 (of 4) of the First Doctor serial War Machines and is never mentioned again, until the final episode where her disappearance is briefly - and lamely - explained by one of the other characters.
  • On Star Trek Enterprise, Trip kills himself in the series finale to rid the ship of 3 dim-witted space pirates, despite a full squad of MACOs being on board.
    • Retconned in the novels: The entire incident was staged by Section 31, and has not been declassified yet. Oh, the holodeck introduces many, many plot holes.
  • J Michael Straczynski dropped a bridge on every single cute kid and robot that appeared in Babylon 5. He seemed to have a rather anvilicious interest in them not ruining the show's "serious" tone.
  • Friends offers an in-story example: Joey brags in an interview about how he writes his own lines for his character, Dr. Drake Remoray, in the show Days of Our Lives. This irritates the writers, who have his character walk into an open elevator shaft, giving him brain damage that only his character could have repaired.
  • The end of the third season of Teachers saw the departure of the last two members of the original cast, who also happened to play fan favourites. As a rather bitter revenge, the fourth season opens on the graves of their characters being pissed on by the school's headmaster.
  • On LA Law, the character Roz steps into an elevator. The elevator isn't there and she falls down the shaft to her death. The end.
  • The writers of Lost insist that the deaths of Libby and Ana Lucia weren't motivated by the actors' run-ins with the law. Most of the fandom doubts their sincerity. The actor who plays Jin has recently had a similar problem, leading some fans, and at least one online news article, to predict that his days are numbered as well. The news article did mess up however, by attributing the death of Eko to this cause as well, even though he asked to leave the show.
    • The writers' cover story for killing them both off was that Ana-Lucia was always intended to be a one-season-only character to be killed off at the end of the season, but by that time Ana-Lucia had become such a universally despised and hated character that the writers were afraid her death wouldn't have the shocking, tragic impact intended, so they quickly added the much more sympathetic Libby to the mix. This editor finds that cover story kinda plausible, actually.
    • On the subject of Jin, though... well, see the season four finale.
    • An even better example is Michael-who dies after barely being in season four after his dramatic return. It doesn't help that the actor claimed there was a element of Unfortunate Implications to this-that they were Pandering To The Base, who-this troper excepted-apparently wanted him to get punished, and that the producers "felt a black man reuniting with his son wasn't interesting". So Yeah...
  • The characters of both police Cpt. Amanda Cohen and police detective Don Schanke in the Canadian TV series Forever Knight (1989-1996) were unceremoniously killed off off-screen in a plane crash, in the first episode of the series' last season, despite the fact that Schanke had been a long-time friend and colleague of protagonist Nicholas "Nick" Knight, the titular vampire police detective (night shift). Schanke was replaced by a new (female) partner for Nick, and the department's captain replaced with an African-American male actor. The same year, Nick's vampiric lover Janette also left Toronto without explanation, came back as a human, was shot and turned into a vampire 'again, only to leave the show forever. Actually, all but one of the main characters (the villainous LaCroix) die at the end of the series, including Nick himself.
  • Joss Whedon is arguably pretty bad about this, as some fans believe that only two characters in all three of his shows (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly) had actual meaningful deaths and stayed dead, Darla and Joyce. Compare this to the characters that died in random and meaningless ways. Okay, so maybe the point was to show how death could be random and meaningless, or perhaps used to serve a larger plot reasons. Still...
    • On Buffy Tara was shot by someone aiming for Buffy, Jonathan got stabbed for a spell that didn't end up actually working, and Anya got sliced with a sword from behind.
    • On Angel Cordelia was put into a coma by her demon baby for a half a season before finally dying, Fred inhaled cursed dust that no one could do anything about, and Wesley got stabbed by a guy who was taken out in seconds by another character right after it was too late for him.
      • Although Wesley's Dropped A Bridge On Him facilitated death is counterpinned with a fantastic and moving death scene.
      • Cordelia's demise is made even more mean-spirited by an episode that strings the audience along to an All Just A Dream resolution.
    • In Serenity, Book gets shot off camera, Wash gets impaled by a harpoon right after saving the day.
      • Joss says in the Serenity commentary that he originally didn't intend for anyone other than Book to die, but then he finished the script and realised that the stakes weren't high enough, and that it was kind of implausible for them all to get through unscathed. Therefore, he did his evil Joss trick of picking the character that would be the most heart-wrenching to kill and proceeding. This troper loves Joss and all his work, but damn, the man can be a bitch.
    • Joyce's death was slightly infuriating: after a big storyarc about her brain cancer, she recovers completely...only to die of a brain aneurysm at the end of a totally unrelated episode. Although it did lead to "The Body", one of the best Buffy episodes ever. It was a totally random death - realistic, but annoying
    • Although she was a minor character, Cassie's death was MADDENING. After going through an ENTIRE EPISODE with her forecasted to die, she avoids getting sacrificed by a cult, and also getting hit by a random crossbow trap, she dies of a brain disorder that no one knew about. Plus, to add insult to injury, she turns up again, as one of the forms of the First (the Big Bad of Season 7).
      • Could have been worse - if Amber Benson hadn't put her foot down, the Cassie!First would have been Tara.
    • Tracey was another minor character (from Firefly, this time) unfairly killed for dramatic reasons: he stupidly misinterprets what he overhears, overreacts, takes Kaylee hostage stupidly, and is shot by Mal. We then learn that the marshals after him have no authority, and he dies before Simon is able to do anything for him.
    • Even happens to a villain in the comics. He's shot by the bad guys while imprisoned, prompting him to disappear from a dream sequence he's helping Buffy with. She walks into his cell, taunting him, only to find him dead.
  • After Susan Saint James left McMillan and Wife, it was continued for one season as McMillan with the explanation that Sally had died in a plane crash, along with their infant son (who was himself mostly a plot device to explain Saint James' pregnancy a season earlier, and never seen). Aside from one or two dialogue swipes at recovering from grief and getting back into the dating game, Mac didn't seem too shook up about the whole 'lost the True Love that propelled the entire series' thing. (I mean, he is Rock Hudson in San Francisco ...)
  • Actor Ryan Cooley, who played student J.T. on 'Degrassi The Next Generation'', wanted to leave the show to attend post-secondary education, so the character was written out. He was stabbed by a student from a fellow school, at the end of an episode revolving around a drunken house party, with no buildup whatsoever. Not only that, but his best friend, Toby, makes a move on the girl he used to date.
  • In Xena Warrior Princess, when Xena, prophesied to spell the end of the Greek gods' reign, gains the power to kill gods, a group of them led by Athena attacks, and the whole group (excpet Athena herself, given a decent battle), some of whom were recurring allies or villains throughout years of the show as well as its parent series Hercules The Legendary Journeys, gets taken out more casually and anticlimactically than any Star Trek Redshirt, one after another after another.
  • On The Wire, a show that had otherwise made a point of giving every major character it killed off a satisfying (if heartbreaking) death, Omar was killed when a ten-year-old kid shot him in the head from behind in a random and anticlimactic scene. His death contrasted jarringly in its randomness and pointlessness with the respect the show gave to the other characters. Notable in that contrary to most bridge-droppings, it was done deliberately to make a thematic point, and it was planned well in advance.
    • The Bill's makers decided not to renew Jeff Stewart's contract as Reg Hollis, a move that may have resulted in his attempting suicide on set. Hollis, a highly popular character with more than 20 years in the show, gets written out off-screen with comments that he's resigned due to the death of PC Emma Keane. Not only has Hollis been around for every death in the show's history, he's been directly involved in the discovery that Des Taviner was responsible for the Sun Hill Fire and the loss of his girlfriend just as he was to propose to her. A move like that is completely out of character for him.
  • In the lonelygirl15 story "Prom: It's To Die For", Gina Hart was shot by Edward Salinas, so that he could be promoted to Elder. To make matters worse, a week later in "Hangman's Noose", Salinas was killed off. Wall Banger.
  • D.L. Hawkins from Heroes. At first we are lead to believe he died in a Heroic Sacrifice. However, in a flashback episode, it turns out he made a full recovery from the sacrifice, only to get killed by some random guy in a bar. To make matters worse, he could phase himself through bullets, so this falls under Idiot Ball as well.
    • Caitlin got it even worse, having gone to the future and not making it back. At best, she was simply wiped from existence when that future was averted. At worst, she's stuck in a future where small pockets of humanity live in quarantine from a horrible disease. And all before she got half a clue about the weirdness going on. (The writers intended to follow up on this, but the writer's strike made it an Aborted Arc).
    • In season 3, Adam is brought out of the coffin he was trapped in. The next episode, he gets a bridge dropped on him-Arthur touches him, he ages 400 years, crumbles into dust, and is just suddenly dead...all before the main titles. This death served the vital task of adding the sixth Petrelli to the cast.
  • Alexandra Borgia's death on Law And Order reeks of this trope. Her character kidnapped, beaten, and stuffed in a car trunk and abandoned in the woods, where she choked on her own vomit. Her brutal murder drives the last half of that episode, and then she hasn't been mentioned since (two seasons and counting). The trope is counts double, if one believes the rumors that her unusually brutal death was a result of Borgia's actress (Annie Parisse) spurning the romantic advances of the show's head writer.
  • Eddie Le Bec from Cheers, one of Carla's most recurring love interests then husband. Though never being a cast regular, he was permanently written off the show when he (offscreen, of course), was run over by a Zamboni trying to push a fellow cast member of the ice show he worked at out of the way. On the very same episode, it was revealed he had a mistress whom he also got pregnant and married (despite already being married to Carla obviously), leading an enraged Carla to reuse the name Tortelli. The producers of the show explained this turn of events at the time as test audiences not liking Carla being married, until almost two decades later, both Jay Thomas (who played Eddie) and one of the writers revealed this was actually the result of the former being fired due to making an insulting remark about Rhea Perlman (who played Carla) on live radio (while Rhea happened to be listening, no less), thus making this an explicit Bridge Dropping.
  • NBC's Las Vegas had a tendency to kill off the Montecito's owners at a rate of about one per season, but none quite so bizarrely as when Monica Mancuso was carried off of the roof of the casino by a strong gust of wind.
  • A literal bridge dropping happens to Shane in Degrassi Junior High - while a bridge fell on Kirk, Shane falls off of it while tripping on LSD. Shane survives but is brain-damaged, his parents pull him from the school, and the kid who gave him the drugs (and watched him fall off the bridge, doing nothing) suffers no consequences. Shane is basically ignored and forgotten by the rest of the cast, and the show implies that this is poetic justice for how he (mostly) ignored and forgot a girl who he got pregnant. In Degrassi The Next Generation, his daughter tracks him down, and it turns out that he spent the rest of his life in a wretched sanitarium for the mentally retarded, abandoned by his family, and weeping over the girlfriend and child he never did enough for and never got to see.
  • Blakes Seven devoted a single line in its Kill Em All final episode to revealing that Jenna, the only former regular character to leave the series alive, had actually been killed off screen at some point since her departure.
  • The death of Lt. Colonel Henry Blake in M.A.S.H. After getting to go home, the last line of the episode announces that his plane has been shot down, with no survivors
  • James Wistler in Prison Break, who got killed out of nowhere, just so the Post Script Season plot could be extended even further. Granted, it does give some cool impression of Anyone Can Die, but still...
  • In the opening of the second season of Law And Order, George Dzundza's character is killed off screen in the opening stinger.
  • Adam Carter's death in the 7th season premiere of [[Spooks]]. Despite being one of the country's best spies, he performs a useless handbrake turn in a bomb-rigged car which cost him precious seconds.

Anime/Manga
  • Mahou Sensei Negima: In the Gecko Ending of the first series, Negi's father Nagi, the legendary "Thousand Master", for whom Negi has been searching the entire series (and most of his life), is casually disposed of by shoving him through a dimensional portal so that Negi can get to the real business of the show's Grand Finale.
  • End of Evangelion did this to the entire cast.
  • Wolf's Rain did something similar in the four OVA episodes that conclude the series. Remember, the wolves were trying to get to Paradise, and the series up to that point had suggested they had a chance of making it - so the first time one of the wolves died it was especially shocking.
  • Rurouni Kenshin: The Gecko Ending for the anime does this to the two lead characters just so that the writer and director can easily write a dramatic Wangst-filled ending.
  • Vanessa Rene in Madlax is killed off in such an anti-climactic way that some viewers haven't even realized she is dead until another character starts burying her.
  • Early on in One Piece, Zoro recalls his childhood friend Kuina, who had a random and off-screen death by falling down a staircase. This is arguably a case of being Stuffed Into The Fridge as well, as it's a vehicle for Zoro's motivation to become the best swordsman.
  • In the end of the first arc of Groovy Adventure RAVE/Rave Master, the protagonist's father dies shielding him with his own body from falling rocks. That would be heart-warming, if not for the fact that said father and son have always exhibited superhuman levels of strength and endurance, and also the traditional feats seen in Anime. A bridge was definitely dropped here.
  • Subverted in the Inu Yasha manga when after a huge buildup of every villain trying to steal Kohaku's Shikon shard (thus killing him) and failing, an extension of Byakuya flies out of nowhere and snatches the shard right out of his neck causing him to fall to the ground. Luckily, the light Kikyo left in him was able to keep him alive (or resurrect him depending on how you look at the scene).
  • In the AIR TV series, Yukito turns into a crow, reducing his role to croaking, hopping and trying to remember stuff. The makers obviously wanted to intensify the interaction between Misuzu and Haruko by making sure nobody gets in the way. They by and far succeed, but the sudden disappearance of one of the most interesting characters still feels very forced.
  • In Code Geass, Lelouch's friend Shirley is shot to death by his "brother" Rolo. Her death can be seen as quite anticlimatic, having been used to push Lelouch and Suzaku even more towards their common edge of insanity.
    • According to Emperor Charles, when he and V.V. were kids they saw their mom get a carriage dropped on her, apparently as revenge from other nobles because her children were chosen as heirs to The Empire. Very scarring for two kids no older than 12, and their Start Of Darkness as well.
  • Vamdemon's deaths from Digimon Adventure and Digimon 02. To quote one Digimon forumer, each of his forms was increasingly easier to beat. First form? All the Perfects had to combine their powers to allow Angewomon to strike him down. Second form? Hit him in the crotch with a chunk of building. Third form? "I wanna be a teacher!" POOF! The next time he'll be planet sized and bristling with firepower, and Neemon will kill him by sneezing on him.
  • Orochimaru from Naruto gets the shaft so badly that a bridge is dropped on him twice. First he is killed in a relatively brief fight with Sasuke, and his own mind-control power meant to aid him in taking over Sasuke's body gets turned on him and he ends up being absorbed into Sasuke's mind. Later on, when Sasuke is fighting Itachi, he gets his chakra drained which "frees" Orochimaru...only for Itachi to seal him in a permanent, inescapable genjutsu before he can do anything... So Yeah
    • Also, following the latest manga episode (as of 21th November 2008), apparently Kakashi, of all people, got a bridge dropped on him.
  • In Ashita no Nadja, also not a death but anticlimatic. After feeling betrayed due to Poor Communication Kills, scamming against Nadja for some twenty episodes, humilliating her in public, stealing her fortune, her name and her mother, one would expect that the Yandere and Magnificent Bitch Rosemary would resist more in the finale before being defeated. But she doesn't, and simply goes into a calm "Oh well, I failed. Since I won't pay for my crimes and won't be punished, bye bye Nadja! See you later when I'm a real princess through my own hard work". Consdiering how psychotic and borderline creepy Rosemary acted after her Start Of Darkness, it feels very out of character.
  • In Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, the character referred to as "Ojisan" simply disappears from the cast and is never mentioned anymore. He likely died due to old age, but not even that gets any attention - which is fairly egregious, considering his importance in the earlier stages of the series.
  • X/1999's Seishirou. Quite literally, actually, with an honest-to-God bridge
  • In the Hellsing manga, Alucard is erased from existence right before the climax of his confrontation with Walter. Schrodinger committed suicide and blended his life essence with the blood of millions that Alucard was absorbing, causing himself and Alucard to become a set of imaginary numbers due to a quantum irregularity in which Schroedinger ceases to exist if he can no longer recognize his existence. Yes, math and technobabble killed Dracula.
    • Took him thirty years, but he got better.
  • In Part 2 of Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure, Caesar Zeppeli is crushed by a giant slab of concrete dropped on him by Wham's wind mode during their fight. It is even worse in that the fight was a brutal Curbstomp Battle from the beginning that only went for about 5 pages before he gets killed and that his death was unnecessary to the plot.
  • Zoids features a number of these, possibly the most infamous in episode 13 of Zoids: Fuzors. The climactic, three-way battle between the Liger Zero Phoenix, the Buster Fury and the Matrix Dragon (the latter which had been hyped as one of the most powerful Zoids ever just an episode prior) ends with the Buster Fury and the Matrix Dragon getting shot in the back by the Energy Liger. As a final indignity, the Berserk Fury and the Buster Eagle are seen in the following episode looking *better* than they did after they'd been shot, but being declared as "damaged beyond repair, no good even for scrap." What?
  • Although a major side-villain and somewhat expected to die at some time during the series run, Full Metal Panic's Seina quite literally does have one dropped on her. By her own brother. The Behemoth's activation causes the structural supports for the warehouse to collapse around the main cast during their escape, including the water-filled room Seina is hanging onto a rail in. But we don't get to see that right then. Instead we see her about to shoot Andrey Kalinin despite the fact he came back for her. We see the gun go off as a cliffhanger to episode 11. In episode 12, we see Kalinin alive and Seina mortally wounded. In a flashback we then see her hit by a large girder which caused the gun to go off. That was pretty darned random.
  • Blood+. Riku. Apparently that episode was conceived by one of JMS' alternate continuity selves.

Film
  • In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, many Jedi die quite abruptly, but Canon Immigrant Aayla Secura is executed particularly brutally, being shot over and over as if to assure us that she's really dead. Amazingly, some people still insisted that she wasn't.
  • The character of Fox in The Warriors was originally meant to be a more substantial presence in the film, particularly in that Mercy, the girl the gang picks up during their escape back to Coney Island, was originally meant to be his love interest. Since the two actors playing Fox and Mercy had no chemistry together, the script was rewritten so that Mercy hooked up with gang leader Swan instead. The actor who played Fox actually left the film over this, so he was written out of the script by being run over by a subway train during a scuffle with a cop.
  • No Country For Old Men's Llewellyn Moss is killed offscreen.
  • In The Godfather Part Two, we learn that Clemenza died of a heart attack. This one, however, didn't surprise anyone, as Part One introduced him as essentially the Anthropomorphic Personification of heart attacks.
  • In the film xXx, Vin Diesel plays an extreme sports master named Xander Cage who is recruited for his unconventional specialties and skills by a secret government organization. When Vin Diesel dropped out of the sequel, xXx: State of the Union, and was apparently somewhat unprofessional about it, it is announced early in the film that his character has been killed offscreen, and a new character, Darius Stone, replaces him. On top of that, Stone is said to be "tougher and nastier" then Cage when xXx's superior is considering his replacement.
  • Notoriously, ''X-Men 3: The Last Stand eliminated several franchise regulars, with arguably the most controversial example being that of Scott Summers, aka Cyclops. Despite acting as the team's field leader and, within the regular comic series, their linchpin since inception, he's quickly killed off-screen within the first 30 minutes of the film by his newly resurrected fiancee, Jean Grey. As though that wasn't bad enough, his death barely registers with the rest of the cast later on in the film, with only a brief mention by Professor X who doesn't seem overly perturbed by the loss of his surrogate son.
    • To some of the general public, Cyclops' anti-climatic death might not have been that big of an issue as his screentime got shafted in the previous 2 films in favor of Wolverine, who acted as the series' cinematic alpha hero. However, for fans of the comics, the death was also a slap in the face of sorts since the film's plot was heavily influenced by the comics' extremely well-regarded "Dark Phoenix" storyline that focuses on Jean and Scott. Within the context of the "X-Men 3", that story became a secondary plot thread, and Wolverine was substituted in as the romantic/heroic lead in light of Scott's less than stellar death.
    • The film's screenwriters later admitted to irate fans that Cyclops' death was one of several plot points mandated by higher powers involved with the film's production. This led some to infer that his nonchalant offing was Fox Studio's retribution against Cyclops actor James Marsden for taking a lead role in Warner Brothers' Superman Returns, which was set to open the same summer. "Superman Returns" also happened to be directed by Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men films for Fox, before reportedly having a falling out with the studio when opting to do a Superman movie over the X-Men sequel that year, and taking most of the original creative team with him. Singer himself had insisted that his plans for a third X-Men movie would have conversely allowed Cyclops to play a major role and been different from the finished product.
  • John Carpenter's The Thing had a bridge dropping so egregious we didn't even get to see it! In the original script towards the ending, one character, Nauls, was supposed to hear The Thing making noises in an undergrond basement area and wander off until he saw the legs of a dead character...and then get attacked by the title monster. We would then see him partially assimilated begging Kurt Russell's character, Mac Ready, for help before being split in half. The scene started with Nauls wandering down the hallway and then...that's it, he's gone. It immediately cuts to Mac Ready asking how things are coming along and notices the alien noises, and after the alien appears, Nauls is nowhere to be found... No gruesome horrible death for Nauls, he just drops off the face of the Earth.
  • The character of Tank was killed between the first and second Matrix films after the actor, Marcus Chong, was involved in an especially messy contract dispute.

Literature
  • In Harry Potter book 4, Cedric is killed by Voldemort with no fanfare as he and Harry recover from a kidnapping. This might be an ironic death, as he'd just patched up a rivalry with Harry beforehand. Book 7 is by far a worse offender as it bumped off characters left and right, including Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin and Tonks, the last two dying offscreen. JKR has stated that the ones in book seven were intentional, to show how chaotic a battle is, and indeed in real life, people don't hold off their death until a point of view character can see them die.
    • Of course, JKR's later admission that she killed off Lupin to balance the scales after she had Arthur Weasley survive Nagini's attack in OOTP doesn't help much in the credibility department.
  • Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space series is frequently accused of this. In one case, a minor arc of one novel involved one of the protagonists falling in love with another character, who was subsequently killed off between novels in an apparently random accident.
  • Something similar also happened in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series between So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless. The author later apologized for this and blamed it on the fact that he'd been having "a thoroughly miserable year" when he wrote the latter book.
    • And then died of a heart attack. The irony would be thick, if we weren't talking about a real person.
  • Donald Gennaro, of Jurassic Park. In the first one (but not the movie), he's a dislikable creep who nevertheless manages to beat up a velociraptor and escapes the island with his life. In the second book... he got dysentery and died.
  • Tom Navidson's death in House Of Leaves is very mean-spirited. Three words: OM NOM NOM.
  • Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman do this to Flint Fireforge in the Dragonlance novels. After spending three novels as the story's Butt Monkey, never actually doing anything to contribute to the adventure, Weis and Hickman have him die an ignoble death of a heart attack, of all things.
  • Deliberately done in almost all of Harry Turtledove's work, as his way of adding some realism and keeping the audience off guard. The more egregious ones include Bobby Fiore in Worldwar and Leofsig in Darkness.
  • At the end of Anthony Trollope's The Warden, major character John Bold has just married into an influential Barsetshire family and can be expected to play a major role in future novels. By the beginning of the next book, Barchester Towers, he's dead of causes never mentioned in the book, leaving behind a plot-convenient widow and young child.
  • In the Eisenhorn trilogy, Midas Bentancore gets killed between Xenos and Malleus. However, this gets used effectively, as it provides a lot of development and motivation for his daugther, Medea.
  • The death of Locklear in The Riftwar Cycle was done to get him out of the way so William could become Knight-Marshal of Krondor for the Serpentwar.
    • And then in the Serpentwar Greylock was SHOT THROUGH THE HEART by a crossbow bolt fired by one of his own troops, after the day is won, because the trooper just shouldered his crossbow rather than unload it. Somehow a bolt fired blind, backwards, from an *upside down* crossbow, by a foot soldier, went straight through the chest of his (mounted) commanding officer.
  • Mal Considine in James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere stupidly charges at the utterly insane serial killer he's tracked down while said killer is in full insane animal mode, and gets gunned down for his trouble. Notable in that both of the other main characters of the novel also die, but far more fittingly: one is very movingly Driven to Suicide by the threat of his homosexuality becoming public knowledge, and the other gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome Bolivian Army Ending in the prologue of the next book, LA Confidential. Jack Vincennes' death in that book could also count.

Western Animation
  • South Park: Isaac Hayes, the voice of Chef and a member of the Church of Scientology, quit (with significant media attention) after the show had an episode making fun of said church. The show's creators responded in the first episode of the tenth season, in which Chef, speaking solely in clips from previous episodes, is revealed to have been brainwashed by the "Super Adventure Club," a pastiche of Scientology mostly focused on child molestation. The kids confront the club at their headquarters, where (to quote Newsweek): "Chef falls off a bridge into a ravine, bounces off jagged rocks, gets impaled, catches fire, gets devoured by mountain lions, then is shot multiple times by friends trying to save him." Then, to erase any thoughts of hope, craps on himself. Oh, and then the club turns him into Darth Vader. No, really. Though at least Parker and Stone wrote a legitimately heartfelt speech for Kyle, reiterating their underlying love of Chef (and, obviously, Hayes). This is this trope in its ultimate, purest form.
    • Let's not forget that Kyle's heartfelt speech could pretty much be boiled down to "Isaac Hayes was awesome, but the only way we can avoid hating his guts is to pretend he wasn't really a scientologist."
    • Some, possibly rabid, fans insist that it was a parody of drop-a-bridge-on-him deaths.
    • With the death of Isaac Hayes in August 2008, two years after the episode was aired, this bridge-dropping now feels even more disconcerting.
  • The Simpsons parodies this with Poochie, a short-term addition to the in-universe Itchy & Scratchy show, who is so intensely disliked by the audience that his character is literally pulled out-of-frame in his final apperance, saying "I have to go, my planet needs me", followed by a still frame that states "Note: Poochie died on the way to his home planet".
  • Winx Club: Not a death, but still anti-climactic. One S3 episode sees the Winx breaking a Brainwash spell on Sky to take him back from his original fiancée Diaspro (who had done this for revenge). Several episodes pass without either of them, before Sky finally shows up at the end of one episode to mention that Diaspro was banished. This was anti-climactic because the last shot of Diaspro looked more like she was thinking of getting back at the Winx for that. (And she actually did say, "This isn't over! Sky will be mine!" in the original.)
  • In Transformers The Movie, Optimus Prime, the great leader of the Autobots, dies from wounds suffered during a duel with Megatron, most notably being shot at point blank range by an energy pistol. This would make sense, except for the fact that Optimus and all other transformers had shrugged off much more potent attacks before without even a scratch (such as Starscream repeatedly taking a fusion cannon to the face). They later brought him back as a zombie, a ghost, a lifeless body driven by a Japanese trucker (I Am Not Making This Up), and it's now customary for Optimus to die over and over again, and bring him back through some mystical means, making this more of a Put On A Bus in recent memory.
    • Actually, if you look at the fight again, nearly every wound Prime gets is in the same location in his side. He's impaled with a piece of debris, slashed with an energon sword, punched there a few times, and finally shoot several times both in his side and his chest.
    • At least Prime got a decent death scene. In the 2007 movie, Jazz is ripped in two by Megatron and summarily ignored until after the battle, when there's literally less than half a minute of Ratchet carrying over the two pieces of his corpse and Prime being sad before going on to soliloquize about the new friends they've made on Earth. A repaint of his toy model features the blurb that he was brought back to life by the remaining fragment of the Allspark, but Bay says he will not be appearing in the next movie and this troper's left wondering what the point was.
    • Well, his was still better that the deaths of Ratchet, Brawn, Prowl, and Ironhide in the animated movie who were mowed down by Megatron and Starscream in less than ten seconds. And there are plenty more deaths that aren't even shown.
    • In order to facilitate the Merchandise Driven nature of the show, this happen often. The deaths of Terrosaur and Scorponok (originally Waspinator as well, before the writers realized that his lovable if illfated nature made him a fan favorite) in Beast Wars are especially obvious: Megatron's Transmetal transformation made them slip up with the hover-carts they normally used and fell into the lava pit they normally go over, killing them instantly to never be spoken of again.
      • This was also done in the series finale, in which Megatron shoots Quickstrike and Inferno (who are suffering from an extreme last minute injection of stupid that lead to Character Derailment) with the Nemesis' guns while attempting to kill the protohumans, who survive mysteriously unharmed. To add insult to injury, the very last scene shows the protohumans cooking and playing with the pieces of their corpses.
    • In defense of Starscream's constant survival, it was stated in the Beast Wars show that Starscream's spark was mutated in such a way as to be indestructible. However, weather or not this matters in regards to his body is up for debate. plus it doesn;t negate any other death defying character survivals.
  • This interesting interview with series writer Lance Falk sheds some light on this trope's usage in The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. Among the subtle jabs in his scripts he describes, motivated by his attachment to the original show, he pointedly removed new-series villain Jeremaiah Surd from the picture, claiming it was "[his] pleasure" to do so. He also expresses jealousy toward a fellow writer for getting to kill off Ezekiel Rage. Even the Maine-situated Quest Compound gets a bridge dropped on it in the last episode, hinting that they plan to move over to the (original) one in Florida. To the show's credit, despite being motivated by little more than spite, these bridges were dropped with the dignity due their targets - just to name one, among this troper's fond memories, Rage went out with a bang.

Video Games
  • The two creators of Fallout split up, with the remaining one saying that all of the non-human characters all died due to a gigantic explosion following Fallout 2, apparently sharing J Michael Straczynski's overzealous frothing hatred for Cute Kids And Robots.
  • When Eric Chahi created Another World, he had no intention of making a sequel, preferring to let the ambiguous ending (Buddy loading Lester's broken body into a pterodactyl and flying it to safety) stand alone. Interplay wasn't about to have any of that. So when Heart of the Alien was made, it became clear there was no feasible way of sending Lester back to his home world. Thus, Lester dies saving Buddy and the game ends with his cremation.
  • Axel's position in the Kingdom Hearts series as the Magnificent Bastard of Chain of Memories and best friend of Roxas in Kingdom Hearts II promised great things for him. However his role is greatly reduced after the Longest Prologue Ever, and his death- he shows up out of nowhere, does a sudden Heel Face Turn Heroic Sacrifice and finishes with a Final Speech- comes off as quite anti-climactic. One gets the impression that the writers were facing a deadline to kill off Organization XIII, for not long after this you encounter a locked door and convenient portals leading to the rest of the surviving members. That's right, in the end the members of the Big Bad Organization are reduced to mere sub-bosses.
    • Nomura states in the Japanese Character Report book that Axel was originally supposed to die in the Prologue final battle. This probably accounts for his expanded role feeling reduced and tacked-on.
    • Roxas. Just...Roxas.
  • This trope is played for laughs somewhat in Drakengard's fifth ending, in which Caim and the dragon, having defeated the Ultimate Evil after following it through a rift in the space time continuum, are shot down by Japanese Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets. It's unbelievably anticlimactic to the point where after everything that has preceded it, you have to laugh.
  • A version of this is in the pseudo-ASCII game Dwarf Fortress, where one has the ability to construct drawbridges. If you lift the drawbridge and then send it back down over anything, it will be vaporized - and I mean anything, from small inanimate objects to dragons and colossi. (Lovingly referred to as the "dwarven atom smasher".)
    • Though in later versions, certain enemies, like demons, are actually immune to the drawbridge effect, causing the bridges to break.
  • In Starcraft, the Zerg cerebrates were stated to have died out in between Brood Wars and Starcraft II by Chris Metzen due to the death of the Overmind. A bit disappointing considering that Daggoth was a character with that could have played a part in Starcraft II and that a Cerebrate was responsible for most of Kerrigan's victories in Brood Wars.
  • Played for laughs and drama in obscure adventure game Shadow of Destiny, in which the entire goal of the game is to travel back in time and prevent your own murder; some deaths are dramatic, some are just plain funny. In the C ending in which the player does the bare minimum to win, Eike finally prevents his own murder, lies down on the road to contemplate his own existence, and, after a soulful monologue, gets run over by a drunk driver. This troper has never met anyone who kept a straight face upon seeing it.
  • The backstory to Chrono Cross basically does this to practically the entire cast of its predecessor, Chrono Trigger.
  • In Final Fantasy IV, a lot of characters make a Heroic Sacrifice to... allow other characters to enter the hero's limited party. This wouldn't be bad if EVERY SINGLE 'DEATH' SCENE (with one exception) weren't being so blatant on "Hey, I'm getting rid of the character!". A particularly annoying instance is when Palom and Porom sacrifice their lives to save the party from a classic "wall-smashing" trap. It would be okay if there weren't two doors in the room. Both made of plain wood (and possibly any character of the party would be able to destroy a insignificant wooden door).
    • Except that for the most part none of those characters die. Hell, Palom and Porom's "death" wasn't even actually life threatening. They just cast a Break spell to turn themselves to stone. The game even makes a point of the fact that because they cast it on themselves no one else can undo it, but they can undo it themselves whenever they feel like it. Which they do at the end of the game, after the trap has been deactivated. By the end of the game the only dead characters who are actually dead are Golbez, Tellah, and Fu So Ya.
    • Golbez didn't die. He's present in the sequel for cell phones
    • Given the trap was arranged as a Taking You With Me by the Fiend of Water Cagnazzo, breaking the doors would probably not be a possibility.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4, After coming Back from the Dead, Liquid Snake is not defeated and killed in a fistfight with Solid Snake but actually by having his arm surgically removed from Ocelot's body and getting replaced with a mechanical prosthetic before the game even started. Ocelot simply uses a combination of nanomachines and hypnotherapy to make himself think he was Liquid all along.
  • Resident Evil fans are going to be furious after seeing one of the latest trailers for RE 5. At the end, a tombstone for Jill Valentine is seen, with absolutely no explanation for her death.
    • Judging from what this troper has seen on several sites, said fans seem to be more in denial, actually.
      • And judging from Resident Evil's poor track record of having characters actually stay dead, this other troper isn't entirely sure that the fans are deluding themselves.

Web Comics
  • In what was originally the final storyline of Fans!(they've started making them again) begins as a quest to save the relationship of two recurring TV reporters, which ends when the two of them, as well as Loveable Traitor Desmond Jones attempt to Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence. They find out too late that they're actually being used to power an Artifact Of Doom, which proceeds to wreak havoc, and then the three are never mentioned again. Granted, the main characters have other things to worry about in the short term, but come on, even Kana gets more of a send-off...
  • Roman Wunderlich just dropped a bridge on Snuka and his Old Master.
  • Order Of The Stick character Roy Greenhilt. The comic's Big Bad, Xykon, warns Roy that he's severely outclassed, and advises him to come back after he's gained a few levels. Roy refuses, so Xykon unceremoniously blasts him with a spell and flies off, only slightly irritated at the loss of his zombie dragon, and leaving Roy to plummet to his death. Has remained a significant character as a ghost, however. Will possibly be revived...someday.
  • Angels 2200 recently did this to All of Corona Squadron, minus one, with debris from their own ship
  • Right before the final boss in RPG World, the comic cuts to a sideplot sequence, then back to an unrelated sequence in which the hero is eaten by a random monster. It ends with a closeup of two character gravestones, and the caption "Game Over Forever"
  • The Last Days Of Foxhound, a Metal Gear Solid parody webcomic. It takes place immediately before the events of the first MGS game, and the last handful of comics show the lead-up to Shadow Moses. Comic #498 has Liquid Snake grinning like a kid in a candy store, exclaiming "It's happening. it's happening.... it's finally happening" just as Solid Snake is about to get his Tactical Espionage Action on. Comic #499: Dead Decoy Octopus disguised as Anderson, dead Baker, dead Psycho Mantis, dead Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven eaten by his ravens, broken Metal Gear on top of dead Grey Fox, dead Liquid Snake. It's not called "The Last Days of Foxhound" for nothing, after all. Of course, Liquid got better...

Comic Books
  • Arguably the fate of Steve Rogers, the original Captain America, who, over the course of the Civil War arc, was stripped of his title by the government, became a fugitive from justice, was put on trial for treason, and ultimately was shot while walking to his trial by both the Red Skull's henchman, Crossbones, and a mind-controlled Sharon Carter. And his body anti-miraculously aged to his true age when he died.
  • After the House Of M event in the Marvel Comics universe, many mutants lost their powers. The ones who got it the worse were probably a set of young student X-Men, mostly minor characters in the series, who were Put On A Bus... then the bus was hit by a missile. Every one of them died.
  • Jean Grey's recent death fits this to a "T". Her marriage to Scott had a bridge dropped on it at the same time.
  • Exiles member Sunfire was killed off by dropping a literal bridge on her. Or maybe it was a building. I can't remember because it happened off-panel.

Professional Wrestling
  • WWE wrestler Muhammad Hassan may be the only wrestler to ever have his character killed off without the wrestler himself dying (at least before 2007 - see below), due to Executive Meddling on the part of the UPN network. After UPN demanded he be removed, his next Pay-Per-View match saw him thrown through a metal stage by The Undertaker; our last sight of him is him laying in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by twisted wreckage.
    • A more infamous instance of this in Professional Wrestling would be 1997's Montreal Screwjob. Wrestler Bret Hart had a disagreement with WWF owner Vince McMahon as to whether Hart should have to lose his final match before departing WWF for WCW. Wrestlers switching promotions are usually expected to "job" in their final match with their old promotion, so as to "give back" to the promotion before leaving. Moreover, Hart was the WWF champion at the time. Previous WWF Women's Champion Alundra Blayze had left for WCW still holding the belt, and on her first appearance on WCW, dropped the title belt in a garbage can on live TV. Vince McMahon had no desire to see a repeat of that with the WWF championship belt, and it was thus of utmost importance for Hart to lose the championship before leaving for WCW. Hart, however, was unwilling to lose in his native Canada, and did not want to give the belt to Michaels, whom he disliked. Hart and McMahon agreed on a disqualification ending for the match with Hart surrendering the title on the next night's RAW, but that's not what happened. When Michaels put Hart in a submission hold from which Hart was scripted to escape, McMahon ordered the bell rung and the match awarded to Hart's opponent Shawn Michaels as though Hart had surrendered, in order to make sure Hart lost the match and his WWF Championship before leaving. The effects of this bridge-dropping are still being felt almost 10 years later, and it also led to a Real Life Writes The Plot situation, as McMahon's Kayfabe character went from nice-guy announcer to scheming politician.
      • Vince McMahon himself would later fall victim to this trope, as the 6-11-2007 episode of Monday Night Raw, which the chairman had dubbed "Mr. McMahon Appreciation Night", ended with a stricken, dejected Vince entering a limousine, which promptly exploded. (Perhaps, in a medium known for phony "firings" and "retirements", Vince felt he needed a more dramatic method of writing himself off of television).
      • However, this death scene launched a huge murder mystery storyline which was promptly dropped in the wake of a WWE-employed wrestler's real-life murder-suicide. Mc Mahon just started appearing again like nothing had ever happened.

Newspaper Comics
  • After Max Allan Collins took over Dick Tracy from creator Chester Gould, one of his first acts to repair the damage of Gould's truly stupid moon period is to have Moon Maid, The Wesley of the strip, carbombed. Afterward, the Moon People cut off all contact with Earth and are are never mentioned again as the strip returned to a straight Police Drama with tightly controlled dabs of fantasy and science fiction.

Tabletop Games
  • Every time there's an Edition change in Forgotten Realms, they take the pruning shears t