Fatal Family Photo - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Happiness Equals Death

"Sir, I've checked around and no one aboard this ship has a name."
"So what?"
"So it means we're goons. Faceless cannon fodder!"
"Bah! You have no proof of that."
"Sir, in case you hadn't noticed... EVERYONE ON THE SHIP IS WEARING A RED SHIRT!"
"Bah! Sheer coincidence!"
"YOU'RE LIVING IN DENIAL! HE'S GONNA WIPE US ALL OUT!"
"BAH! YOU'RE CRACKING UNDER THE PRESSURE LAD. JUST RELAX. HERE, LET ME SHOW YOU SOMETHING. It's a picture of my wife and kids! Ain't they something? They're the reason that I'm here. I'm fighting for them. I ain't going to let them down."
"...Well, nice knowing you, Captain."

—Captain SNES #345

Retirony's equally devious brother. Whenever a character shows the others a picture of their family and/or loved ones, they're shot to the top of the Sorting Algorithm Of Mortality.

It mostly works as a cheap "look at my lovely family" moment so we feel bad for them when the character dies. This isn't immediately lethal though; it usually takes a while to kill the character because it bumps the Red Shirt into the Mauve Shirt's sweet spot for "less likely to die meaninglessly, much likelier to die meaningfully because it'll hurt more."

The variation where the picture directly leads to the character's death could be seen as a subtle acknowledgment of the trope.

Contrast Personal Effects Reveal, which often involves finding a family photo after the death.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Physica from Macross 7, has to be the master of this Trope, not only does he show us a picture of his wife and daughter before he's killed in Combat. But He's about to be re-united with his family a day late for his Daughters Birthday, and the photo he shows us is in a handmade music box for the daughters Birthday. He tugs more at our heart strings by telling us that his daughter doesn't recognize his face... what's more after he dies a senseless death and his team mate (one of the Love Triangle, goes to deliver the birthday gift/family photo to his wife and child, it's implied that his wife was cheating on him. This series doesn't kill very often so they make sure to get their millage. The only other death of note is the Heroic Sacrifice.
- "Heroic Sacrifice" only? There's a certain awesome character in the original series that was Too Cool To Live.
- Yeah but I was talking about Macross 7 (and only the TV series not Dynamite 7) on the UN Spacy side only two characters die, in that series.
In the Full Metal Alchemist manga, Lt. Colonel Hughes carries a photo of his fiancée with him during the Ishbalan war. Genre Savvy Colonel Mustang then points out that if they were in a war story, carrying a photo of her around and showing it off so proudly would be a sure-fire way to die ironically on the battlefield. Of course, this is a reference to the fact that all through the series, he's showing off pictures of his daughter and occasionally of his wife... and is the first important character to die.
- Also played with in manga Hohenheim's case: he chats about his family picture with a young mother on a coach, the coach gets attacked by thugs, Hohenheim gets shot while defending the other passengers... Turns out that he's putting his near-invincibility to good use and that the thugs don't manage to kill or even wound him no matter how many times they shoot him. " How cruel... Shooting so many times. Oh good, the picture has nothing."
The moment Kinue Crossroad was seen looking at the picture of her family in Gundam 00, it was obvious her time was up. Didn't take long.
- Season 2 has the same thing happen to Barack Zinin.
- Sergei Smirnov is arguably killed by at least five family photos on his mantelpiece at home.
In the Excel Saga anime, the titular main character is working part time at a construction site where her Co-worker Pedro weeps passionately about being separated from his adoring family. Naturally, he provides us with a photograph as well as some lampshaded flash back footage. Later on, the construction site catches fire and he dies horribly when he runs back into the inferno to retrieve his family photo.
- That doesn't stop him from becoming a major character, though.
In Saikano, all of the characters that carry the photos of their loved ones to war die horribly. Their loved ones die too
- This doesn't really count as everyone in Sai Kano dies horribly. Except Shuuji and, depending on your interpretation and whether you're watching the anime or reading the manga, Chise.
The first episode of Aegis of Uruk lampoons this trope heavily.
Happens picture-perfectly in the second volume of JoJos Bizarre Adventure. Joseph and Cesare accompany a young Nazi soldier and friend of Cesare to witness the Three Men In The Pillar, and the young man shows them a picture of his girlfriend. Guess who's among the first victims when the men awakens?
Miaka takes a happy picture with her Nakama in the middle of Fushigi Yuugi. Four episodes later, Nuriko dies and triggers the death domino.
Subverted in Zipang. The American pilot of the Dauntless divebomber keeps looking at the picture of his wife just as it looks like he's about to ram his plane into the Mirai. However, he jumps off and parachutes to safety just before impact, carefully keeping his wife's photo before he does.

Comic Books

Film

In the beginning of Shooter Swagger's spotter shows off a picture of his wife and has a chat with the main character about her. He is dead within four and half minutes. However, the wife in question is a Chekhovs Gunman; she turns out to be the only person Swagger can go to for help.
The Core: Sergei shows those damn photos so often that anyone with half a brain can see that he won't make it out alive.
Alien Versus Predator (the first movie): Then again, the victim's photos were the only distinguishing thing about his character (most of the other characters weren't so lucky).
In the first Terminator movie, Kyle has a picture of Sarah Connor he treasures.
Black Hawk Down has Mike Durant showing others a photo of his family. Long after the Black Hawk he was piloting crashes, he's surrounded by Somalians and his photo is lost in the crowd. He survives the entire conflict as a hostage, and is eventually released afterward.
Leads to a death in the film Sum of All Fears, where an Israeli pilot's picture of his wife and kids falls off his plane's control panel, his brief distraction of quickly picking the photo back up and placing it into it's original place leads to him now seeing too late the surface to air missile that's flying towards him and he explodes.
- Tom Clancy himself states that this is the reason why various Air Forces do not allow pilots to bring up family photos, Making this the first in a series of DidNotDoTheResearch
Parodied and lampshaded in Hot Shots! One of the pilots shows everyone pictures of his perfect family, and his beautiful, perky wife even shows up at the base to tell him how things are going with the house they just bought. He also puts off putting the single last signature needed onto the insurance on his life until after this flight, and takes some crucial evidence to the JFK assassination and a winning lottery ticket along with him; his call sign? Dead Meat.
One of the cops at the beginning of The Last House On The Left remake is talking to his colleague about his daughters and their pictures are shown. Is done in such a hammy way it hurts.
It happens in the ending of The Hitcher remake; one of the cops on the cop bus that's carrying John Ryder takes out a photo of his daughter. As the whole movie is So Bad Its Horrible, it's a pathetic ploy to make the movie better. It didn't work. AT ALL.
Doubly-subverted by Grig in The Last Starfighter, when he shows the hero a picture-cube of his family. Grig ultimately survives, and since he has twelve thousand offspring, the cube starts flashing rapid-fire/near-subliminal images of every last one of them.
Independence Day. As Russell Casse is flying underneath the invader's ship, he looks at a picture of his three children in the cockpit just before he performs a Heroic Sacrifice by flying his jet into the ship's primary weapon and destroying it.
During the Joe Don Baker stinker Final Justice (as presented on MST 3 K), Joe Don Baker's Texas lawman is looking at family photos with his partner, moments before the partner is gunned down:
Joe Don Baker: Travis is a cute kid. Yer a lucky man, Bob.
Crow: Uh oh.
Used as foreboding in Deep Impact. When Jenny's estranged father returns and gives her several family photos, it begins a series of events where Jenny gives up the chance to escape the mega-tsunami created by the smaller half of the comet and spends her last moments with her father.
Subverted in Transformers, at least partially. Jorge Figuerosa talks about going back to his mother's house and eating alligator stew, while Captain Lennox actually talks to his wife via webcam and sees his baby. Neither of them die in the movie (although Fig died in a cut scene).
We see a brief shot of Dryden's picture of his wife and kids on a table when James Bond kills him in the opening of Casino Royale.

Literature

Referenced in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Jingo, where a young soldier who has been killed is remarked to have shown his sergeant a picture of his girlfriend the night previous.
Harry Potter. Lupin! How could you have taken out that photograph of your newborn son! And you, Fleur, giving him reason, too! You fools!
- I have to say I'm impressed with the rapidity with which this trope took effect, there. One minute he's stupidly playing show and tell practically in the middle of a battle, and no more than ten pages later...
- The weirdest part is that he only took out the picture and started blabbing about it to relieve the tension from the uncomfortable moment Percy's sudden return had created.
  - As if to add insult to injury(or death), his wife dies as well. Good job, Lupin
Played with in Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Straight Silver. Gutes laments that he has no photographs of his dead daughter and granddaughter; they had intended to send him some after, but then Chaos destroyed their planet. Then he dies.
Inverted in The Things They Carried. In one section, Tim O'Brien is showing Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend when an attack on the camp begins. O'Brien survives, but Kiowa doesn't.
In Graham Mc Neill's Warhammer 40000 Ultramarines novel Warriors of Ultramar, a Guardsman has just such a photo. He survives the battle, and Uriel tracks him down in the hospital and is shown it. And then he survives the war and tracks down Uriel in the hospital, and Uriel is envious of him, having a family to go to.
Beckendorf from Percy Jackson And The Olympians. Before moving out on their mission to blow up the Princess Andromeda, Beckendorf pulls out a picture of his girlfriend, Silena. A mere fifteen pages later, he is dead.
Appears somewhat differently in All Quiet On The Western Front: after Paul kills a French soldier, he founds pictures of his wife and daughter.
In the Halo Expanded Universe novels, some of the otherwise nameless soldiers and personnel have families back home, but are still just as expendable in the novels as they are in the games. To name an example, the first guy you see die from the first game dies while clutching a picture of his family.

Live Action TV

Parodied and Lamp Shaded in an episode of The Goodies. When one Nazi sentry starts showing his partner a photo of his girlfriend in Dusseldorf, the other starts telling him to put it away and ends up screaming at the top of the lungs to the British commandos he is certain are about to leap and murder them that he is not with this guy.
Played straight several times in 24, but subverted in season 7. Jack & Tony go to a dock to intercept a weapons shipment, where we see a security guard working the night shift and getting off the phone with his wife, who is pregnant with twins. Jack & Tony inform him of the dangerous shipment and convince him to go undercover for them. After the guard leaves the room, Jack feels bad for him and Tony tells Jack that "we both knew he was dead as soon as he walked out that door." But Jack defies tradition and saves the guard's life when he's about to get killed for "knowing too much", even though it jeopardizes the mission.
Subverted on Stargate SG 1, in "Heroes, Part 1". One of the members of SG-13 passes round an ultrasound picture of his unborn child. He then goes on to be the first one to get shot, but he's not the one that dies...
Sort of referenced in season 5 of Supernatural. It's only right after a meaningful "family photo" is taken that Jo and Ellen both die.
The West Wing, of all shows, has an example in the second episode. An Army doctor giving President Bartlet a checkup tells him all about his wife and their newborn baby, shows him a picture, and says he's leaving them for a while to work in a teaching hospital in Jordan. We had to get to like him in a hurry, because the episode ends with the news that his plane was shot down over Syria, and the entire next episode ("A Proportional Response") is spent convincing Bartlet not to go ballistic and bomb the shit out them in retaliation. (This is all possibly lampshaded when Leo is talking about how he knows Bartlet liked the guy, and Bartlet responds that he did, but he barely knew him, it's not like it was his son.)

New Media

Video Games

Inverted in Gears Of War 2, where Dominic shows everyone a picture of Maria, his wife who had gone missing in the war. It turns out that She was captured by the Locusts, put into a Work Camp and gets a Fate Worse Than Death. So Dom has to kill her.
- The first Gears Of War plays it straight with Rojas. The first mention of him is when you see an unidentified corpse from a bridge, and one of your squadmates says something along the lines of 'I hope that's not Rojas. His little boy turned two last week". The corpse you saw WASN'T Rojas, but you do find his mutilated body later.
Ace Combat Zero has Patrick "PJ" James, who was the Butt Monkey of the Crow Team of fighter pilots due to his girlfriend back at the air base. Nevertheless, both as Crow 3 and as Galm 2, he's perfectly fine. Well, until after successfully destroying the WMD controllers inside the Avalon Dam, he announces to you that he's going to propose to her when he gets back...
In the introduction sequence of Xeno Gears we see the Captain open up and look at a photo locket before he sets off the Self Destruct Mechanism. As the scene plays out the camera focus pulls back to show us that it's a photo of his (presumed) wife and child. On a second play through of the game you realise that they bear a remarkable resemblance to some of the characters in the game that follows.
Barry Burton of Resident Evil. The guy's a nut for his family and keeps a photo of them in his pocket. Later in the game, If the player decided, Barry will be knocked off a cliff to his death, leaving the photo of his family behind. In a reverse example, in Jill Valentine's ending (if Barry survives, and if the player dosen't rescue Chris Redfield) Barry will show the same picture to Jill and talk a bit about his family
Defied in Grand Theft Auto IV: there's a mission where the characters are ambushed by the Feds and have to run. You're riding with the guy who was supposed to watch for them, who says it's because he was distracted thinking about his wife, who he just got married to. He offers to show Niko a picture in the middle of the chase. Niko's response: "I don't want to see a fucking picture!" And he survives.
- He actually can die, but you pretty much have to shoot him yourself to make it happen. So Yeah.
Done twice in Metal Gear:
- In Metal Gear 2, Snake and Natasha take cover in a sewer and she tells him about her mother and ex-fiance. As soon as she leaves the sewer, she gets blown up.
- In Metal Gear Solid 3, Sokolov shows Snake a picture of his wife and son. He gets tortured to death in the very next cutscene. Subverted. He got better.
One of the items you can get from the Cola Wars battlefield in Kingdom Of Loathing is the "picture of a dead guy's girlfriend", found in the backpack of a dying soldier.
Heroes Over Europe plays it straight. Since the beginning of the game, a friend of one of the main characters keeps mentioning his beloved wife. Fast forward a few missions, and he gets hit by a german plane; he refuses to bail saying he can hold the plane together. Sure enough, a few minutes later his remains are inside the flaming wreckage.
Inverted in Metal Slug. Why does Allen O' Neill keep on coming back from the dead? According to the developers, it's because he's Made Of Iron... and has a wife and kid to go back home to.