Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Drop A Bridge On Them "What kind of end is this?" — Yeesha, on Kadish's suicide note in Uru
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 (or worse, Running The Asylum), 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).
Sometimes, when a character is killed off, a lot of work is put into it, especially since it's supposed to be for real. They may make a Heroic Sacrifice, or at least be given their due in their last appearance. If done well enough, it might even be their Dying Moment Of Awesome. This trope, however, applies when such things do not happen.
To compare, take the NYPD Blue death of Det. Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) versus the death of 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, and have a great Tear Jerker sendoff. Schroder decided that he really didn't want to invest so much time away from his family with 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. An apology is made here
Sometimes this is an attempt to avert Hes Just Hiding, by making it as clear as possible that the character is Killed Off For Real. It doesn't always work, however, as this often results in the death being enough of a Wall Banger that it increases the fans wanting the character back.
The polar opposite of Put On A Bus and Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence. When done off-screen (like the Sorenson example above) it's known as a Bus Crash. Compare also to Stuffed Into The Fridge, where the character's meaningless death is primarily plot-driven. A subversion of Death Is Dramatic, but aversion of that isn't necessarily an example of this.
See also Mc Leaned, Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome, and Not So Invincible After All. Not to be confused with Dropped A Bridget On Him. If this is done to a character repeatedly with the aid of Negative Continuity, see They Killed Kenny.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- Mahou Sensei Negima: In the Gecko Ending of the first anime 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, and the rest of humanity. Maybe.
- 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.
- Then again, the ending confirmed that they couldn't have reached Paradise anyway because it doesn't exist — the world is trapped in an endless cycle of death and rebirth and it's the wolves' fate to initiate every rebirth.
- 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. Madlax is shown to grieve over her though, which makes it even more puzzling why in the end she runs off with the woman who killed 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.
- This troper actually figured the off-screen death as being quite natural: she was a minor character who only appeared in Zoro's flashback, and it was, well, a rather mundane death. Many people have died from blows to the head, and since Zoro was not there, it would have been rather weird if she'd died on-screen, wouldn't it?
- In the end of the first arc of Groove 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 the Code Geass manga spinoff Suzaku of the Counterattack, The Emperor is suddenly killed off-panel by Big Bad Schniezel so he can frame Lelouch for it.
- Vamdemon's deaths from Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 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.
- Way before him, Dosu was suddenly killed when he tried to take out Gaara between stages of the exam and happened to have attacked him when the Shukaku was in control.
- Also the hosts of various tailed beasts, to such an extreme degree only 3 of the 9 are actually characters in the series (Naruto, Gaara, and Killer Bee). One was introduced for the sole purpose of being beaten, one was just shown defeated, and 3 of them were killed off off-screen (it wasn't until the author drew a group picture that we even saw what the hosts for the missing ones looked like)...
- In Ashita No Nadja, also not a death but anticlimactic. 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 Creepy Child and Magnificent Bitch Rosemary would put up more of a fight in the finale before being defeated. But she doesn't, and simply goes into a calm "Oh well, I failed. Since I won't be punished anyway, bye bye Nadja! See you later when I'm a real princess through my own hard work". Considering how psychotic and 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.
- And let's not forget what happened to Sorata when trying to protect Arashi while far away from her actual current location. For that matter, Arashi at about the same time, with her battle with Fuuma. Both of them nearly bought it from the same bridge, and yet were miles away from each other when it happened. Certainly lead to one of them leaving the roster later on...
- It's established early on exactly how Sorata will die, there's a prophecy that spells it out, and he knows it. So he isn't really susceptible to this trope.
- To be fair in Seishirou's case, his death had been planned by the creators way back when they wrote the prequel, Tokyo Babylon. Considering that CLAMP had this planned for nearly a decade, this death doesn't fit the trope.
- 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. It 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.
- If you consider the fact that Seina was a nihilistic bitch who had no one left to care for her in any way, and that Mithril would have probably have her killed (or at least locked up for life)for her acts of terrorism, her trying to save Kalinin and then literally dying in the arms of the only man she half-cared for was actually the best ending she could have received under the circumstances.
- Besides, if you read the novels, you will see that in the Full Metal Panic universe karma is quite a bitch and all things happen for a reason. In this case, her rather pointless death is shown to be a perfect ending to a rather pointless life.
- The Gundam franchise is well known for subverting Death Is Dramatic by having characters die from being blown up or cut in half in a blink of an eye unlike long winded Final Speech Super Robot show deaths. One death that does possibly qualify more under this trope though is the Gundam SEED Destiny death of Yuna Roma Seiran, who had a GOUF dropped on him... literally however as the character in question was never well liked many viewers didn't mind, or even liked this.
- In the final episode of The Big O, a side-villain named Vera gets into a Megadeus bigger than any other in the series, and gives a big, dramatic speech about how she will unleash a curse upon the city. Then, a beam breaks off of the mysterious giant stage lights over the city and falls on them. It is not acknowledged by the characters who witnessed it. The show must go on.
- Harribel of Bleach gets what is perhaps the most anticlimactic and least satisfying death in the entire series, being killed by Aizen for no particular reason after the other Espada are all dead. Particularly egregious in that this cut off a fight with Hitsugaya, Hiyori, and Lisa that by all rights should have been awesome enough to make up for her lackluster initial fight.
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.
- However, he gets better, if the story arc Captain America Reborn is any indication.
- 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 literally Put On A Bus... then the bus was hit by a missile. Every one of them died.
- 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.
- Jean Grey's recent death fits this to a "T". Her marriage to Scott had a bridge dropped on it in more ways than one at the same time.
- Not even including how many 'show, don't tell' rules it broke, Janet "The Wasp" van Dyne's death at the end of the Secret Invasion likely counts. An alien agent impersonating her husband gives her the serum to make herself grow as well as shrink, only for her to realize too late that it can also turn her into a giant biological bomb. She ends up having to be killed by a blow from Mjolnir, to put her out of her misery and keep her from killing off all the Avengers' allies. The fact that this was done to have another "shocking" death of an Avengers founding member, and because Quesada and Bendis thought her presence was useless and redundant (after they'd been the ones to strip her of recent character development and make her that way) doesn't help.
- Guess what was used to justify killing both Janet and Jean? Their husbands would be "more interesting" without them. What a
coincidence total BS excuse Wall Banger.
- This happened in the Ultimate Universe too. She was eaten by the Blob in Ultimatum. She didn't even get killed on-panel; Blob was already halfway done when the other Ultimates found them.
- On that note, the Ultimatum story arc for Ultimate Marvel pretty much drops a bridge on the entire cast. By the end of the series, there are only a handful of named characters left standing. YMMV on whether the ones who died off-panel with no explanation (Nightcrawler can teleport, and yet somehow gets killed by a tidal wave) or the ones who got one-panel cheap shot Gorn deaths (Doctor Strange) are the unlucky ones.
- Crisis Crossover series, especially at DC, are notorious for killing off characters who've been around a long time in awkward, Red Shirt like ways, just to show how bad the Big Bad is. These characters are lucky if they get more than one or two lines of dialogue. Some examples include the Losers, Dove of Hawk and Dove, and the original Mirror Master in Crisis On Infinite Earths, Justice Society members Atom (Al Pratt) and Dr. Mid-Nite in Zero Hour (Hourman also died, but I think he got better), and most of the Freedom Fighters (Phantom Lady, Human Bomb, Doll Man) in Infinite Crisis.
- And in Final Crisis, Batman and Darkseid pull one on each other at the same time with a gun and eye beams respectively. Yes, a double bridge drop in a single scene. And while Darkseid is killed in that scene, Bats is now lost in time and cursed with multiple lives.
- Not to mention Teen Titans characters like Pantha and Wildebeest, who died just to give Superboy-Prime, who'd already had a Face Heel Turn, a moment where he crosses the Moral Event Horizon. Neither of these characters are given many lines, or a chance for those not familiar with them already to get to know them, before they die.
- And then there's the Psycho Pirate, who, though portrayed sort of sympathetically in Grant Morrison's Animal Man, shows up in Infinite Crisis as a cardboard villain who is suddenly and abruptly killed off when he gets his head gruesomely smashed into a gory mess on-panel by Black Adam.
- In the ninth chapter of Crisis On Infinite Earths, Brainiac and the Silver-Age Luthor lead an army of villains. Golden-Age Luthor (who'd been around since at least the early 1940s) appears just long enough to say that he, not Silver-Age Luthor, should be their leader. Brainiac says "You are right. We do not need two Luthors.", and disintegrates Golden-Age Luthor. No final battles with Superman for that Luthor. Instead, he goes out like your usual faceless henchman.
- Countdown To Final Crisis has several, though the most egregious examples of victims to this fate are Duela Dent, the Jokester, Trickster, and three entire Earths. Countdown is very mean spirited overall.
- Due to Executive Meddling, this was the fate of all of the Dead Universe Transformers in Simon Furman's Transformers comics for IDW. Grindcore, Straxus, Cyclonus, Bludgeon, Thunderwing, and Monstructor were all destroyed (or presumed to be destroyed/deactivated) offscreen after the Autobots managed to deactivate the machines keeping them from disintegrating in the Live Universe. While this was probably going to be the case anyway, it felt like a Bridge Dropping because these characters had all of four issues to terrorize the Autobots, and it was left unclear whether the mind-controlled Decepticons died or were defeated offscreen.
- The WildCATs/Aliens crossover from 1998 had most of the members of the WildStorm team Stormwatch killed off this way. Word Of God from writer Warren Ellis is that he only took the job so he could get rid of the artifact characters to pave the way for a new title with the characters he created during his Stormwatch run (The Authority).
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.
- And NOT by Anton Chigurh, the guy chasing him almost the entire movie.
- This is in keeping with the movie's habit raising a middle finger to audience expectations.
- 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.
- Although he was originally intended to be in the film, and was replaced with Frank Pentangeli due to the actor's demands (writing his own lines) being unacceptable to the filmmakers.
- In 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.
- In the DVD release, this is explained: Simply put, he goes into a building, which promptly blows up. To emphasise the deadness, two things come flying out of the wreckage - his charred torso and the portion of his neck with the 'xXx' tattoo on it, complete with ears.
- They must have forgotten their own script, because in the movie, Agent Shavers tells Darius Stone that the last xXx died in some sort of freak snowboarding accident.
- Since Diesel is starring in the third film, subtitled "The Return of Xander Cage" and due out in 2010, I'd say xXx has about a year to grow all that shit back.
- 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-climactic 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 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 underground 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, MacReady, 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 MacReady 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.
- The character of Son Gohan (the grandfather, not the half-saiyan kid) in Dragonball Evolution is killed by having a...house dropped on him. In the manga that this was (very, VERY loosely) based upon, he got stepped on by Oozaru-mode Goku.
- In Burn After Reading, while sneaking around in the CIA agent's house, Brad Pitt scares the guy who's sleeping with his wife, who quickly shoots him in the head. Of course, this all fits with the Farcial Black Comedy of the movie.
- Alice Hardy, the heroine of Friday the 13th, is quickly killed off in the opening scene of Friday the 13th Part II.
- Paxton, hero of Hostel, is quickly dispatched in Hostel: Part II's opening.
Literature
- Originally showcased in Edmund Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, although there it was a log, not a bridge. It may also have been intentionally ironic, to contrast with the protagonist's life as a fearless swashbuckler.
- Rostand's hands may have been tied by the fact that the actual Cyrano de Bergerac was killed in that very manner.
- 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 Remus Lupin to balance the scales after she had Arthur Weasley survive Nagini's attack in OOTP doesn't help much in the credibility department.
- J.K. Rowling is pretty much the goddess of this trope anyway, although this might be intentional on her part, as trying to show the audience that war is neither heroic nor glamorous.
- 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.
- Johnny Truant, however, is an Unreliable Narrator transcribing the work of an Unreliable Narrator- and one of them, probably Truant, considered making that particular scene even worse: by spearing the children on one of the house's non-euclidean corners beforehand. The choice not to do this, it must be pointed out, seems to have been utterly arbitrary.
- 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.
- Hey now, this troper hasn't read the books in YEARS, but quite clearly remembers Flint's death. It devastated her. Never actually doing anything to contribute to the adventure?! If he wasn't being the Team Mom or The Mentor, Flint was busy balancing out Tasslehoff's ... kender-ness.
- It's also foreshadowed heavily, not unfitting (People do get old. Even dwarves.), and treated with great seriousness by the other characters, who freak out about it, mourn, and fondly remember him long afterwards. Heck, he got taken bodily into heaven; if that's not a heroic death, what is?
- 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.
- The sheer number of dropped bridges in the Timeline 191 series becomes so numbing that it's a shock when a main character dies of old age.
- I think the death Ludmilla in Colonization: Down To Earth is worth mentioning, as it was less of a bridge and more of a nuke.
- 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.
- To say nothing of the Empire Trilogy. Ayaki, right at the beginning of the third book, anyone?
- Not to mention Miranda in Rides a Dread Legion, who's throat was ripped out by a random demon that jumped on her back after the big bad was dealt with.
- 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.
- A Song Of Ice And Fire. As an Anyone Can Die series that is a Deconstruction of the fantasy genre, this happens quite a lot. Unlike with most other examples, however, off-screen deaths relayed by word of mouth are rightfully taken with a grain of salt by the characters; for instance, when Daenerys first hears that Robert Baratheon has died she doesn't immediately believe it until she meets a man the new king, Joffrey, exiled from Westeros. As another example, when the Hound is reported as dead, the opinions of the characters is divided as to whether this is true or not. It isn't.
- The death of Annalina Aldurren in the last book of the Sword Of Truth series seems particularly mean spirited. After trying (in vain) to convince another character to do something that everyone else in the book had just finished deciding was a bad idea, she gets a hole blasted through her chest, and the killers go so far as to destroy her body so nobody would know what happened. Later on, the man who had in previous books admitted he loved her, after briefly mourning, is seen with a couple of young women in his arms.
- In the final book of The Dark Tower series, several main characters die suddenly and anticlimactically, but the one that angered fans the most was actually a villain: The Man in Black. After being built up as a character of incredible intelligence, cunning and mysterious power for seven books straight (not to mention being Roland's nemesis), he makes a random appearance in the last book and is killed off quickly and suddenly by Mordred.
- Who then dies of food poisoning, just to make things worse.
- Not directly, he's severely weakened by it but is still killed by Oy and Roland.
- Glaedr dies quite abruptly in Brisingr of the Inheritance Cycle. He flies into a rage and tries to attack Thorn and Murtagh after Oromis' death, but is outmaneuvered by Thorn, who severs his spine with a well-placed bite to the back of the neck. Really leaves this troper to wonder how he made it that far in the fight. To be fair, he was probably in a blind rage, but the ancient Dragon should have known better...
- Actually, I'd count the the death of Oromis seconds earlier as this trope as well. Then again, anyone who didn't see both things coming the instant Glaedr gives his Eldunari to Eragon and Saphira wasn't paying any attention.
- In Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon, Robby Jackson has become Jack Ryan's Vice President, and therefore the first black VP of the United States. Either this was too controversial or Clancy needed an excuse to bring Strawman Liberal Ed Kealty back, because in Teeth of the Tiger, Jackson has been assassinated by white supremacists completely offscreen and with no more than a passing mention in the novel itself.
- Inverted in ''The Last Battle''. The (previously major) character of Susan does not appear, and is abruptly dismissed within a couple of paragraphs as having had an offscreen change of character, causing a lot of fan resentment over the years. Ironically, her absence is directly attributable to being the only major character who isn't dead.
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, Geordi 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.
- This doesn't get as much attention or complaints because it involves two characters who appeared in only one episode, but the offscreen deaths in a fire of Picard's brother and nephew definitly qualifies. The sheer randomness of it, the complete lack of concern over how this would affect their surviving widow and mother Marie, and especially the way it ruined the final scene of that one episode they were all in, all just to make Picard properly sad at the start of the film actually pisses this troper off even worse than Kirk's death. (And this troper is even barely old enough to think of it as Star Trek and that new show.)
- 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 due to the Ambiguous Clone Ending of a previous season's episode in which two versions of Arturo fight and we don't know which one was left stranded and which one ended up travelling with the group. Wade Wells, meanwhile, was written out by being abducted by the evil alien Kromaggs, and eventually returned long enough 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.
- Thus in "Yesterday's Enterprise", the Enterprise-C is drawn into the TNG era, creating a parallel timeline in which Tasha Yar survived. Upon realising their importance in the original timeline, the Enterprise-C returned to the past, and Yar, knowing she would die when the original timeline was reasserted, went with them. It transpired that she was captured with the rest of the crew by the Romulans in the battle that ensued, and became "consort" to a Romulan general in exchange for the others' survival. She had a child, Sela, and was able to free her at the cost of her own life. Naturally Denise Crosby recounted this tale as Sela in a later TNG episode. So, not a senseless death, then, but not exactly a great experience for the character.
- Near miss: Doctor Who is known for changing its lead actor every few seasons by having a near-death experience trigger a 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.
- Colin Baker was offered the chance to return to do the scene himself, but he refused. So McCoy had to do it. Much less egregious.
- Not really, considering that he had already been sacked when the call came to return for four episodes. As Baker put it 'It's like your girlfriend giving you the push, then saying, " but you can spend a night with me next year" - it's just not on.'
- 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 The 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.
- Likewise when Louise Jameson elected to leave the series Leela had to be hastily married off to a wimpy guardsman on Gallifrey, a planet so boring even the civilized Doctor fled from it at the first opportunity, let alone an unrepentent savage like Leela.
- And, of course, there was Romana, who spontaneously regenerated off-screen (Mary Tamm, the departing Romana, being very obviously pregnant by the time the scene was due to be filmed - rather too pregnant to avoid some rather worrying implications). Done out of necessity, but done with a disregard for the way regenerations had hitherto been shown which still has some fans' knickers in a twist thirty-odd years later.
- Similar to Dodo, another character had a bridge dropped upon them in the 1980s. Kamelion was supposed to be a companion for the 5th Doctor who could change his shape into other humanoids. For some reason, the robotic form of Kamelion was portrayed by... a real robot. Problems arose when the only person on the planet who knew how to operate the blasted thing died without telling anyone else how to work it. This bridge was more out of necessity than anything else, much like Dodo's bridge... but the fact that he barely shows up for two episodes and was cut out of another makes him a victim of a forgotten bridge at that.
- And then there was the galaxy-scale bridge dropped on the Time Lords before the new series.
- Or how about "Earthshock"? Adric may not have been a popular character, but that was just brutal.
- 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.
- That's because J Michael Straczynski hates cute in general. To give you an idea, one episode of Babylon 5 had a teddy bear with the initials "JS" on its shirt that got a bridge dropped on it. That bear was given to him as a prank. His putting it into the episode like that was his counter prank. So you can imagine that he really hates the Cute Kids And Robots trope.
- 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.
- Widely noted by the press at the time as Diana Muldaur, the actress playing Roz, "getting the shaft". Perhaps a Lampshading?
- 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... he's still around. But seeing as Lost is a show where Anyone Can Die, it's difficult to say for how long.
- 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...
- And now there's Daniel Faraday, one of the most interesting and plot-relevant of the new-er characters, unceremoniously shot by his own mother. It Makes Sense In Context, but still sucks.
- 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.
- The pipe organ Buffy dropped on Spike in the burning church in What's My Line was originally planned to be fatal, but the fans liked him so much, Joss had Dru pull him from the wreckage.
- The Anointed One's death at the hands of Spike (as a Starscream), was a pretty anti-climactic end for someone touted as a Chosen One.
- 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 a Dead All Along twist.
- An intentional example was Lindsay in the fifth season, who is fatally shot by Lorne and dies complaining about how he was offed by "some flunky", and not his nemesis Angel.
- In Serenity, Wash gets dramatically 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.
- Let's not forget the bridge dropped on the whole Firefly series by Fox, cancelling it mid series with about a million loose threads.
- Even happens to Ethan Rayne 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.
- 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 (except 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.
- And who could forget the episode "Endgame," which killed off the (much beloved) Amazon regent Ephiny two minutes into the opening teaser. Still at least Ephiny died on screen; the following season Amarice, who had been Xena and Gabrielle's companion for a good run of episodes earlier that season, was unceremoniously killed offscreen during the teaser for the episode "Lifeblood" (by then the actress, Jennifer Sky, was starring in Cleopatra 2525, but Amarice's character arc ended with her being happily left with a tribe of Amazons, so mentioning her again just to say she was dead seemed, well, kind of mean and pointless).
- 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.
- 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).
- By leaving Caitlin's fate hanging and unresolved and unexplained (and Wordof God has rather petulantly indicated that she will never be mentioned again), Peter Petrelli as the ultimate empathetic hero takes a considerable hit. Despite considerable fan outrage, interpreted (falsely) by the writers as misplaced devotion to a minor character (in actuality, it's concern about the implications for the morality of a very major character who never mentions her again after she was his whole motivation for averting the virus), we'll never know her fate.
- 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 fifth Petrelli to the cast.
- Just to add insult to injury, it turned out killing was completely unnecessary. All he needed was Adam's blood to heal himself, plus he got the regeneration power again from Peter at the end of the very same episode. Of course, it's not like he ever needed healing except for that one time, since the only other injury he got was something not even a regenerator can heal from; a bullet to the brain.
- While the blood would have cured the disease, he would still be a frail old man. He doesn't seem the type to let himself die when there is a perfectly good way to become immortal right in front of him.
- Not to mention his death made no sense, he shouldn't have died from losing his regeneration powers, he should have merely become a normal human, aging at a normal pace from someone physically in their mid twenties.
- When you think about it, Heroes seems unable to kill off characters in any way OTHER than this trope. With the notable exception of Isaac, virtually every character death has been some sort of "bridge drop".
- In Dual, the level 5 villains. They all get offed by Sylar off-screen (except for Doyle, who may not have even died). The most notable example is Echo De Mille, who got his own set of webisodes dedicated to him prior to the start of the season, disappeared until Dual, and was killed off before he ever said a word. Also worthy of note is Scott, the Super Soldier Marine all set up to be an Ascended Extra. Instead, he gets his neck snapped by Knox, who incidently, is killed later that same episode as well, also in an anti-climactic way.
- Volume 4 finale, An Invisible Thread. After saving the world repeatedly, and during a phase where he's trying his hardest to atone for the dickery of the entire season, Nathan Petrelli gets killed. As he does. But instead of the dramatic, epic deaths that were given to him previously, he dies alone, frightened and bleeding out in an armchair in an empty room after getting his throat cut by Sylar. Fridge Logic sets in on just HOW horrible the death is after the credits roll. And let's not even start on the plan of mind-wiping Sylar and using him to replace Nathan. Yes, we like Adrian Pasdar, but this is just EMBARRASSING for all concerned, and has led to cries of Ruined FOREVER by a large number of fans.
- Alexandra Borgia's death on Law And Order reeks of this trope. Her character was 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.
- Annie Parisse left to pursue a movie career. Dick Wolf told her, ‘Oh, thank you for coming in early. You don’t mind if we kill you, do you?"
- There's also Max Greevey, who died offscreen in the cold opening for the 2nd season premiere after George Dzundza left the show.
- Total inversion with Claire Kincaid, in an episode without any investigation, but following the actions of the four leads after having witnessed an execution, Kincaid offers a ride home to a very drunk Detective Brisco (Jerry Orbach). On the way there, her car is struck by a drunk driver and she's killed. Brisco survives, and the shock of the event is enough to get him sober and in AA.
- Law and Order: SVU has ADA Kim Greylick, who went on a business trip to Washington and never came back.
- 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.
- Blake's 7 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.
- Adding insult to injury, it wasn't even Dzundza we see fall - it was a body double.
- 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.
- Earlier, Zafar was initially thought to have been killed by being shot, then set on fire, only later for the team to find out he'd actually been sold off to a foreign power, tortured for information, then killed. On the one hand this does show how dangerous the life of a spy can be, but offing likable characters in such a manner still comes across as needlessly cruel. Maybe that's the point.
- Jadzia Dax, one of the most universally beloved characters on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, is randomly killed by Gul Dukat in mid-prayer without getting a shot at self-defense.
- What kind of self-defense could she put up when she's taken by surprise by a sociopath with energy-projection powers?
- In the final episode of ChojinSentaiJetman, while on his way to the red & white rangers' wedding, the black ranger is shot dead by a mugger in a back alley before he has a chance to henshin.
- Bart Bass on Gossip Girl is hit by a car offscreen. To add insult to injury, he was on his way to try and reconcile with his wife, Lily.
- Stargate Atlantis: If Carson Beckett's untimely demise doesn't count then nothing does. Some random Alien device that causes anyone affected by it to grow a rather malignant exploding tumor was found and activated by two unfortunate no-names. He died _after_ removing and passing it to someone else, mostly because he couldn't walk away fast enough.
- In Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps, Jonny is killed off-screen by being eaten by a shark in Hawaii, after trying to jump it (in an entire episode that parodies the concept of "jumping the shark"). This was due to Ralf Little wanting to leave the show to concentrate on his movie career.
- A similar stunt was pulled in an earlier season, when Flo is killed off-screen when she gets hit by a truck. Again, this was due to Beverley Callard having to leave the show to return to her role in Coronation Street.
- When Bret Harrison, who was intended to appear in the last season of That70s Show resigned due to his commitment to Reaper, his character Charlie fell off the Point Place water tower and, unlikely every other character who ever did that on the show, died. He obviously was quickly forgotten: in the finale, twenty-one episode after seeing the death of a new friend, Kelso doesn't hesitate to jump from the water tower again.
- Parodied a couple of episodes into the latest series of The IT Crowd, on a non-returning character: "Whatever happened to Richmond?" "He... got... scurvy."
- Derek Reese in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, randomly killed by a newly arrived Terminator early in an episode, with the show's return for a third season questionable. We even get a couple nice closeups of the bullet hole right in the middle of his forehead to make it clear he's Killed Off For Real.
- Making this even more notable is that it was just one episode after minor recurring character Charlie Dixon got to go out as a hero, sacrificing himself to buy John time to escape some assassins. In contrast, Derek is just hit rounding a corner, in a moment shot exactly the same way as the Red Shirt death a couple minutes earlier. Quite a few fans have compared it to Omar's death in The Wire mentioned above, as it's clearly meant to give the same message: sometimes even heroes die due to random quirks of fate.
- Possibly a false alarm, however, since Derek is back in the season finale in an apparently altered timeline.
- But then the whole series got a bridge dropped on it.
- On House Kutner was found Killed Off For Real because Kal Penn joined the White House staff recently and asked to quit the show. While the characters death is presumed to be suicide, House has his doubts and the producers are planning to craft a Story Arc out of this until the end of season 5.
- Later in the season, House starts having hallucinations of Amber. In the season finale, he hallucinates Kutner as well.
- Somewhat averted (or at least not as bad as it could have been). Executive Producer David Shore said, "this was the story that allowed us to really have the greatest impact on House in particular.... If Penn had come to us and said, "I've been offered this great part on 'CSI' ... then it would have been autoerotic asphyxiation or something like that."
- Similarly, Tippi was Killed Off For Real in Satisfaction as the actor was going overseas to pursue other opportunities. This is not the first time this character had faced death; she was nearly killed by a tranquilizer administered by a mortician with a fetish for dead people.
- On Reno 911!, they play this for laughs. The deputies are riding on the side of a police car that has been converted into a float, but they are late and speeding so they crash into a building. On the next season opener, Deputies Johnson, Garcia, and Kimball apparently died as a result from "burning up in the fire," but none of the other characters have a scratch on them and Dangle can't even remember their names.
- On Red Dwarf, this was recently pulled on a pair of characters for the new "Back to Earth" mini-series. Characters Kochanski and Holly were both killed off in the 9-year-gap between series 8 and the special. The latter gets a mention in how they died, but ultimately lasts for no longer than a single scene and a joke about it, while the former at least gets a touching scene involving how their death impacts one of the crew... before it's interrupted by another joke and is completely forgotten about with no mention on how they died.
- Though it later turns out that Kryton had lied to the crew about Kochanski's death, and she's still alive out there some place. This was a big part of the mini series' ending and so it wasn't actually forgotten.
- Greys Anatomy: Guess it seemed like having George Put On A Bus wasn't enough for the showrunners, so they decided to throw him under it as well. Literally. Didn't see that one coming.
- In the words of viewers across the nation: "WHAT THE FUCK?"
- The death of Galactica mechanic Jammer in Battlestar Galactica. After several episodes of development, Jammer becomes a Cylon sympathizer during their occupation of New Caprica. He is one of the few people to survive a suicide bomber's explosion in the third season premiere, and later tells Cally to escape when a number of civilians are sent to be executed by firing squad. Despite this, he is cruelly airlocked by Starbuck several other Galactica crew members while begging for his life in the teaser for the episode "Collaborators", and never mentioned again. Worst of all, Cally (who should have known it was Jammer who saved her life, seeing as how he worked with her for a long time and she knew his voice) conveniently forgets about the person who saved her life. Great job, writers.
- Also the death of gunnery sargeant Erin Matthias due to an accidental ignition in a Heavy Raider's fuel system. Starbuck gives a speech afterwards about how death is meaningless, stupid, and random.
- Zev from the cult sci-fi series Lexx. In the second episode of the second season, the lone female on the Lexx spacecraft is caught on a medical station when her friend and captain, Stanley, has to go for an operation. She is tortured for the majority of the episode by a doctor who is trying to steal the Lexx's activation key from her, but she escapes and sacrifices herself seconds later to save the life of the undead assassin, Kai. She ends up as a pile of goo, and eventually reforms into another actress. Eva Habermann (who played Zev) wanted out of the show, but her death scene was a particularly mean-spirited way to go.
- On Torchwood, During Children of Earth Day 4, fan favourite Ianto Jones dies from an alien virus just when his character was starting to come into his own. To make things worse, it came just four episodes after Tosh and Owen's much less bridge-droppy deaths. The events leading to his death were full of inconsistencies in characterisation, and the reasons for him being where he was at the time were flimsy and contrived. Nothing was achieved but getting himself and the rest of the building killed, and pissing the aliens off. The cause of a broken base and may become a Jumping the shark moment. Also Writer on board Character derailment Out of Character Moment
- On the Law And Order Criminal Intent Season 7 finale, Det. Robert Goren's mentor Declan Gage collaborates with Arch Enemy Nicole Wallace to kill Det. Goren's brother Frank. Both deaths occur offscreen, and Nicole's identity is confirmed through DNA testing.
- The death of Marian on the BBC's Robin Hood not only lead to so many complaints that the BBC had to resort to automated emails of apology, but also the show's imminent cancellation (despite in-show attempts to set up for a fourth season). In the climax of the second season Marian runs up to Guy of Gisborne and for no reason whatsoever begins to shout "I love Robin Hood! I'm going to marry Robin Hood!" Guy, who has been going through significant Character Development for love of her, responds by impaling her on his sword. To make matters worse, to get Marian to this point, the writers first make her act wildly Out Of Character by having her attempt to assassinate the sheriff, deprive her of a weapon to defend herself with, and conveniently remove Robin from the scene despite the fact he was right on her tail only a few seconds ago. This Plot Twist did nothing but derail all the prevalent characters, abort several interesting storylines and infuriate its fanbase. And why did this happen? According to creators Foz Allen and Dominic Mingella: shock value. Yes, Maid freaking Marian herself was killed off for nothing more than cheap shock value.
- Charlie Francis was killed off in the season 2 premiere of Fringe in a rather insultingly anti-climactic fashion - especially when one considers an entire season 1 episode was devoted to saving his life. As usual, Executive Meddling is to blame.
- Bioterrorist mastermind David Robert Jones is killed off in an absurdly anti-climatic Portal Cut in the last episode of the first series (There's More Than One of Everything). It's even worse that he was physically displaying his immunity to bullets in his showdown with Olivia at the portal only a few seconds ago.
- The remake of The Prisoner had a little girl and Number Six's love interest fall down bottomless pits.
Myth and Legend
- Jason of the Argonaunts survived a voyage to the end of the world; some time long after his travels are done, after the whole tragic mess with Medea, he dies when a piece of the Argo's prow breaks off and hits him on the head, making this Older Than Dirt.
Newspaper Comics
- Stephan Pastis kills off characters all the time in Pearls Before Swine (and then inexplicably brings them back months later). The most humiliating might be Leonard, who was brought in as a new roommate to Rat and Pig, but whom Pastis quickly decided didn't fit in. So Leonard got his head stuck in the toilet and drowned.
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.
- 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).
- Ironically, they were going to resolve the "who killed Vince McMahon" storyline on the RAW after the Vengeance: Night of Champions pay-per-view, if I recall correctly, but then Chris Benoit died in real life. The storyline was quietly dropped, with Vince admitting the whole thing was faked.
- Some time after that, they dropped a stage on him to resolve the Million Dollar Mania storyline. Of course, he got better.
Close Professional Wrestling
Tabletop Games
- Every time there's an Edition change in Forgotten Realms, they take the pruning shears to the various established characters and the deities. Some get awesome deaths. Azuth the god of mages, an ascended mortal that got his position by kicking the ass of the previous god of mages, pretty much gets eaten by Asmodeus to fuel his ascension to godhood.
- Rumour has it that Mystra, greater deity of magic, got killed by getting hit on the back of the head.
- Also pulled on a vast array of characters. See also Rocks Fall Everyone Dies.
- The Squats of Warhammer 40000 got a hive-fleet dropped on them. In hindsight, this may have been for the best...
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.
- Also, Chris Avellone and the Black Isle dropped a bridge on the Wannamigos in the Fallout Bible.
- 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 boss battles.
- 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.
- 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.
- Literally, if the player wants to get rid of a dwarf.
- Nethack allows dropping a drawbridge on yourself.
- Aldo Trapani, the protagonist of the EA adaptation of The Godfather, gets abruptly sniped dead in the opening level to allow for new player character Dominic to take his place.
- 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 character who is actually dead is Tellah.
- 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.
- Now, if you want a real example of this Trope in action in the Final Fantasy, take a look at Final Fantasy II which can and will drop bridges on characters in the fourth slot and whole cyclones on a number of towns, usually with as little warning as possible.
- 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.
- Well, looks like we can call this one a subversion: Jill lives! And as a bonus: Becomes a blonde!
- Echo in Red Faction II has a bridge dropped on him in the "Hangin' in the Hood" mission via the Face Heel Turned Quill's railgun.
- And not to forget the original Red Faction, where the room Hendrix is in
randomly explodes and he catches on fire is attacked, since the Big Bad lured him there to kill him.
- Super Robot Wars OG Gaiden appeared to have bridge-dropped Lamia while after just addressing how glad she was that she had friends... she was unceremoniously shot down and all signs show that she's Killed Off For Real. Then, several chapters later, it's revealed that the bridge didn't really completely splatter her, and Duminuss lifted that bridge up, ensuring her survival.
- Brad Vickers in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Brain-impaled by the titular Big Bad.
- Hell, everyone who wasn't a playable character had a bridge drop happen when Raccoon City gets nuked at the end.
- Of course, pretty much all the named NP Cs in this game (not counting zombies) were dead well before the end. Mikhail blows himself up in a Heroic Sacrifice, Dario is discovered and eaten by zombies, Nikolai is either bridge-dropped by Nemesis, escapes in the chopper, or you shoot him down.
- Brad is also somewhat of a Back For The Dead.
- Yoshimo in Baldurs Gate II. If he was in your party, he'd sell you out to the Big Bad - but he's unable to refuse due to a geas spell. The frustrating part was if you knew this was coming, and left him back at the inn (say, if you were trying to do it again with a different class and/or party), then to prevent you from being able to pick him up again later, he'd be stabbed in the back the second you walked in the door. Wallop.
- In Winback, nearly all of Jean-Luc's teammates unceremoniously have bridges dropped on them over the course of the game. Jake's death was the biggest Player Punch for this troper, since he survives until near the end of the game, to get you attached to him, then Bang Bang he's dead.
- Subversion: Syphon Filter 2: Teresa appears to be Killed Off For Real by The Mole Chance at the end, and there's even a funeral. However, in the third game, she is back from Faking The Dead, via Ret Con.
- Bridges are dropped all over in the last route of Fate Stay Night, Heaven's Feel. Caster, Assassin, Lancer, Berserker, Archer, Gilgamesh and Saber, but that's actually a subversion. In a bad way. It's quite necessary and not even very spoileriffic considering they've set up a new cast with Ilya, Kotomine, Zouken and Sakura taking lead positions while retaining the other leads. But cases like Lancer are still rather jarring, especially considering the end of UBW.
- Call Of Duty 4: All the SAS members except Soap and Captain Price are unceremoniously executed at the end of the game. The latter of which has been confirmed to return in Modern Warfare 2.
- Soldier Of Fortune II: Madeline Taylor. By a faceless Mook, to boot.
- Star Ocean: The Second Story had one where Ronyx, a character in the last Star Ocean game who had survived many confrontations in the first game is killed off suddenly in the second by a laser beam meant as a demonstration of power by the Big Bads.
- Silent Hill 3 killed off the main character from the very first Silent Hill game, Harry, by having his beloved daughter, your character, Heather, arrive at their house to find him dead. For those who played the first Silent Hill and may have had some sympathetic attachment to Harry, this was an extremely abrupt off-screen affair. A bit of time is spent mourning him, but not much. It's odd when you think that the things Harry knew could probably have prevented most of the game, if he'd been alive to tell Heather.
- More like Stuffed In The Fridge, since it's done to fill Heather with hatred and give her a motive for revenge.
- Some may consider Johnson's death near the end of Halo 3 this.
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.
- Angels 2200 recently did this to All of Corona Squadron, minus one, with debris from their own ship
- In the same battle, Loser suffered the same fate.
- 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...
- The Other Warriors in 8-Bit Theater were cruelly killed off, likely to resolve their fate(s).
- From Sluggy Freelance:
- Alt-Zoe's death, Feng's death, Monica's death, and Bert's death, as well as that of several others
- And now we have Riff's robot walker set ablaze and destroyed by Oasis...with Riff and Zoe inside it. While its possibile Riff survived (he's seen reaching for the eject button just before the explosion), the fact that Zoe's death has been foretold well in advance puts the odds against her. Time will tell.
- Most of those, especially the last, were well-planned, climactic and emotional. Abrubt, yes, although often with huge buildup so not really. But not this trope.
- I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space has recently introduced a ship crewed by actual Red Shirts. After playing to the joke for some time, it was indicated that things would be more serious as one of the redshirts became a love interest to a major character, had skill and brains and later escaped from bonds to kill a group of evil cannibals and outright save the day. Returning to her lover she is a few meters from the spaceship when a meteor strikes out of nowhere.
Web Original
- In the Battle Royale based RP Survival Of The Fittest, characters are often killed off in this manner, particularly inactive ones. A good example would be the death of Joe Cande, who passed out shortly before his handler became inactive; He was killed by a bullet that hit him in the neck when it ricocheted off of a weapon being held by someone else. However, it's arguable how awkward many of these deaths are, and they are often quite humorous.
- Of course, the biggest example may be Adam Dodd. You'd expect that after he gets thrown into the program again after winning V1, he'd get one hell of a death scene. But that doesn't happen, and instead his death just gets a mention in the announcements. Of course, now that Andrea Vanlandingham, a student who got into a similar situation, has popped up again, very much alive and collarless...
- 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. Then, a week later in "Hangman's Noose", Salinas was killed off.
- In Red Vs Blue, as of the miniseries Relocated, This would seem to be Sister's fate. Lopez casually mentions that he killed her. Grif, having once seen her spend three hours in freezing water and come out not only alive but ''pregnant'', doesn't believe it.
- In Bunny Kill, Snowball's partners have a tendency to get cheaply killed by the Big Bad. The most recent instance of this was argueably justified due to that particular episode being an intentional Cliche Storm. Then again, death doesn't seem to slow down the characters of this series much.
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. They later brought him back as a zombie, a ghost, a lifeless body driven by a Japanese trucker, 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.
- 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.
- Most of the deaths in the movie are pretty ridiculous, honestly. Not least because they're killed by wounds they'd normally survive (iirc, at least one character dies from being shot in the shoulder!)
- At least Ironhide gets plenty of lines, and gives us a chance to get to know him if we're not already familiar with him before he dies. Ratchet and Prowl, both featured characters in the cartoons, don't get any lines before they're brutally dispatched. And then there's Wheeljack, an important supporting character on the show (the Autobots' 'go-to' guy for inventions), who dies off-screen and is only shown in the movie as a lifeless burnt wreck.
- Ultra Magnus in Headmasters, at the hands of Sixshot. Also, near the beginning of the season/series, Optimus sacrifices himself to stabilize Vector Sigma.
- And then there's Galvatron, who survives being at the center of the destruction of Cybertron, only to apparently be Killed Off For Real by having an iceberg dropped on him (there wouldn't happen to be a bridge frozen somewhere inside that iceberg, would there?).
- 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.
- Terrorsaur and Scorponok's death could also be seen as being [1], since both are seen glowing while they sink into the lava— implying they too were going through Transmetalization. Had the story called for it, they could have returned and used their Transmetalization as an excuse for how they survived.
- 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.
- The Maximals weren't immune to this trope either. When Tigatron and Airazor were moved to Beta Couple status shortly after the arrival of Silverbolt and the beginnings of his crush on Blackarachnia, they were almost immediately Put On A Bus. This turned into a borderline Bus Crash with the appearance and death of their combined form, Tigerhawk.
- 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, whether or not this matters in regards to his body is up for debate. plus it doesn't negate any other death defying character survivals.
- In Transformers Animated, they just give him an Allspark fragment and make him immortal. Now they can kill him, whenever they want!
- Not to mention Blurr's sudden death at the hands, erm, walls, of Longarm/Shockwave
- And Ultra Magnus being beaten into a coma. Since the series is over and he didn't get better, this may be considered a bridge drop or Bus Crash.
- 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, 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, which hints 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.
- "Bang" indeed: Ezekiel had always planned on destroying the world that so callously destroyed his family, and he had managed to create rather spectacular nuclear weapons to do just that. When the Quest team resorted to time travel to prevent it, the devil in the details led to Ezekiel and his weapon getting stranded sixty-five million years previously, where he did destroy the world.. of the dinosaurs.
- The G.I Joe animated series did this to Serpentor in the post G.I. Joe The Movie episodes done by DIC. Said movie (which was never theatrically released) sort of dropped a bridge on Cobra Commander by having Serpentor throw dust on him that turned him into a snake — and then apparently perishing in an explosion. However, when Cobra Commander returned to get revenge in the DIC episodes, the former Big Bad Serpentor is easily captured and turned into an iguana. And then the Australian-accented Dreadnok (can't remember his name) says something like "I think I'll put him on the barbie". We never see Serpentor again after this, so we assume he ended up as a barbecued iguana.
|
|
