Troperville
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"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."
'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:
Anime and 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 kiled 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 dilever 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.
- 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 Excel Saga, 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 sight catches fire and he dies horribly when he runs back into the inferno to retrieve his family photo.
- 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 {{Jo Jo's 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?
Comic Books
- Played painfully straight in the first episode of IDW's Transformers: All Hail Megatron. It...it was awful. Seriously, such a deliberate and overt use of a cliche?
- Slightly subverted in the original GI Joe comics during {'Nam}, Snake-eyes was always carrying around a picture of his sister as a good luck charm... while he doesn't die he his horribly wounded and the picture is damaged... when he gets back to The States he learns that it is his family who dies... so the photo didn't do in the soldier but did in the family.
Film
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.
- 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.
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...
New Media
- A Discussed Trope in the Battlefield: Bad Company blog by Sweetwater (We're dead, 6/16/2008), calling Haggard and Bobby Sanford stupid for discussing home, and for Sanford showing a photo of his wife and daughter, calling that particular action 'like signing your own death warrant!'. As You Know, his proof for it is war movies. Also played straight as the Sanford guy does die (apparently, by a tank while trying to defecate).
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.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons had a flashback to Skinner and his buddy in Vietnam. IIRC his buddy got killed showing Skinner his pictures of his girlfriend, because the photo album was brightly-colored and broke his camouflage.
- Averted in Robotech: New Generation and Shadow Chronicles, where Scott and Marcus carry the locket showing Marlene around - and survive, often just as one of few.
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