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alt title(s): Dead For Real As Coroner, I must aver
I've thoroughly examined her
And she's not only merely dead
She's really most sincerely dead.
"No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben."
Where a major character is killed, and is not restored by a Reset Button, or the death was not All Just A Dream, or any of the other resurrection plot devices.
This can be used as vengeance against a recalcitrant actor (see also Dropped A Bridge On Him), especially on soaps such as Coronation Street or Days Of Our Lives. Often reinforced by having it done in a spectacularly over the top way just to make sure that everyone understands this character is not coming back.
This is still, of course, no guarantee against a far-in-the-future Back From The Dead, because nothing is. Even establishing that the character is Deader Than Dead.
Of course, if this happens in the Grand Finale, then yeah. They're dead. For good.
May lead into Personal Effects Reveal, Meaningful Funeral, To Absent Friends, and Dead Guy Junior.
See also: Tonight Someone Dies, Disney Death, Conspicuously Light Patch, Not So Small Role, Really Dead Montage. The Video Game version would be Final Death.
This trope originates in real life, where most deaths are generally irreversible.
Here be spoilers—it's the deathiest of death tropes, after all. You have been warned.
Examples:
Anime
- One element of Code Geass that contributed to its Broken Base was the fact that sometimes a character would appear to be Killed Off For Real, explicitly or at least implicitly, when in fact it was a case of Only Mostly Dead (Jeremiah, Mao, Guilford, and Cornelia) or Never Found The Body (Nunnally, Suzaku). The characters who DO die for real include, among others, Mao (the second time), Euphemia, Shirley, Rolo, Diethard and, finally, Lelouch.
- We are not really sure about Lelouch yet, there is a big issue in fandom about him having possibly inherited CC's immortality. The writers are probably considering this for further seasons.
- A notable anime example is the death of LTC. Maes Hughes in Fullmetal Alchemist, whose irrefutable death by gunshot was prominently featured in an episode aptly titled "'Words of Farewell". To further drive the point home, his funeral was shown in the same episode. The movie has an alternate Hughes, but it's an Alternate Continuity which takes place in another reality (namely, a fictionalized version of our own).
- Just about everyone in Soukou No Strain.
- Martian Successor Nadesico kiled off Akito's friend and enthusiastic mecha pilot Guy Daigoji early on, and teased his return several times. The only time he ever appeared again was in an hallucination, and it wasn't Akito's. The character that did come back was a minor backgrounder. Another example of the show's recurring theme, "life is not like Super Robot anime".
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann contains what is quite possibly a tribute to this in that it kills Simon's enthusiastic mecha pilot friend and inspiration Kamina off in episode 8, with similar repercussions for the main character.
- At least in his case, everybody gets to hallucinate him later.
- Kekkaishi's Gen, much to the surprise of... everyone.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: depending on which ending you choose, either Kaji and Kaworu, or the entire human race except for Shinji and Asuka. Maybe.
- Depending on how you interpret the original ending, possibly the entire human race period.
- Misuzu in Air, in one of the most heart-wrenching anime scenes ever devised (the word "goal" will never hold the same meaning anymore to anyone who has seen it). The fact that she might be reincarnated or freed from her curse does not diminish the fact that Misuzu herself is gone for good and leaves behind her immensely grieving adoptive mother, Haruko.
- This is basically an inviolable rule in the CLAMP universe. If a person dies, there is absolutely NO way to bring back him back to life EVER. In some mangas it is also hinted that not even gods have the power to bring the dead back to life. The entire plot of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle comes from the problems that result from trying to circumvent this rule.
- I guess that means Chii was never Erased For Real, even though Hibiya tried to.
- Note that the rule only applies to living beings who have a "natural existence". So, Chii is excluded from the rule. Even C!Shaoran and C!Sakura can be "brought back from the dead", their "birth" being "unnatural".
- After pulling off a couple fakeout deaths and at least one deliberate death joke, Macross Frontier may have gone overboard in making sure viewers understood that Michael Blanc was dead. He gets stabbed in the chest with an alien claw that's almost as big as he is, and is then sucked out into hard vacuum through a self-sealing hull breach. No real way of coming back from that one.
- Non-minor characters from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha that somehow managed to die instead of simply getting befriended: The first Reinforce, Zest. Non-minor characters from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha that seem to be dead, but probably aren't: Precia.
- The character Cosmo is killed in the last episode of Sonic X. By a shot fired by Tails, using a cannon for which Sonic and Shadow were the ammo, no less. Though this is completely wiped out in the dub.
- The same is true for The revolutionary, Molly, in the episode Molly's Dream. 4Kids even went so far as to digitally edit out her gravemarker in the final scene.
- Simoun has the Heroic Sacrifice death of Mamina. And to add insult to injury, the Simile carrying her coffin is shot down. Other characters are much more ambiguous: We have Rimone and Dominura, who Time Travel, then take off to parts unknown; Amuria, for whom they Never Found The Body; Onasia, who, well, who the hell knows; Yun, who now exists in the sort of limbo the previous did; and Neviril and Aer who Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence. Oh, and let's not forget Angulas, who manages to die as a suicide bomber, but still show up as a body in the cockpit of an enemy Simoun later. Great series, but very very strange.
- Fate Stay Night has the protagonist, Shirou (potentially) killed off in the finale of Heaven's Feel. The Tear Jerker ending sticks to and expands on this, showing the epilogue through the eyes of Sakura as she ages and watches everything change around her, remaining alone until the end... The most depressing part of the game, hands down.
- The original Lockon Stratos was Killed Off For Real near the end of the first season in Gundam00. They first had him drift helplessly in space where he was presumably running out of oxygen, and then had a nearby weapon explode in an enormous blast, taking him with it.
- Just when they're getting developed, Gundam 00 also has the deaths of both Lichty and Christina via point-black gunshot from a mobile suit. It's made all the more tragic considering Lichty used his body to shield Christina, but she got a large piece of debris jabbed into her back anyway. Just in case there was any thoughts they could survive, the cockpit also exploded. This series is obviously fond of deaths by explosions.
- Death Note is set in the Real World. When somebody dies, they stay dead. It is initially implied that, for Death Note users, when they die, instead of Heaven or Hell, they go to Nothingess (Mu). Ouch. It is later revealed that this is true for EVERYONE.
- Not that this has stopped the fanfic writers.
- Cibo and Sanakan from Blame! cop it for real at the end of the series. This comes as quite a shock, as both characters had technically died several times before this. Admittedly, Sanakan's death is heavily Lamp Shaded during a conversation with her apparent superior.
- Latios and Lucario from, respectively, the fifth and eighth Pokémon movies.
- Leomon from Digimon season one and three. Also Oikawa, from season two, as well as some family members of various characters that died before the seasons' start.
- This Troper was under the impression that Leomon from season one would eventually return as a Digi Egg, since Apocalymon and the Dark Masters had been defeated, and the Primary Village could be used to hatch Digimon once more. A better example of being Killed Off For Real would be Wizardmon.
- In Naruto recently, Danzo and Karin bit the dust at the same time after Sasuke struck a fatal blow on both of them.
- There's a common rule in One Piece: If you die in a flashback, you're Killed Off For Real. If you don't die in a flashback, chances are, you might pull off a Disney Death. Prime examples of the former are Bellemere, Hiruluk, Tom, Kuina, Usopp's mother, all of Robin's friends and family members, and Brook's pirate crew. However, the latter rule recently saw itself subverted as hard as you can get, with Portgas D. Ace having fallen straight into this.
Comic Books
- "Nobody stays dead except Bucky, Uncle Ben, and Jason Todd." Of course, since that saying was coined, both Bucky and Jason Todd have found themselves resurrected. But Uncle Ben works, since an Alternate Universe version of him appeared and died.
- For this reason, all the below must come with the caveat "at time of writing."
- If you don't count her clone or her lookalike daughter, Gwen Stacy is, miraculously, still dead.
- Marvel's Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell), Captain Marvel (Genis-Vell), Wasp (Janet Van Dyne), Scarlet Spider (Ben Reilly), Banshee (Sean Cassidy), Thunderbird (John Proudstar), Mastermind (Jason Wyngarde), Abomination (Emil Blonsky), Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Baron Heinrich Zemo, Attuma, Betty Ross-Banner, George Stacy, Carnage (Cletus Cassidy), Synch (Everett Thomas), Destiny (Irene Adler), Hornet (Eddie Mc Donough), Goliath (Bill Foster), Iron Monger (Obadiah Stane), Jean DeWolff, Karen Page, Lilandra Neramani, Microbe (Zachary Smith Jr.), Pyro (St. John Allerdyce), Robert Kelly, Sabretooth (Victor Creed), Vindicator (Heather MacNeil Hudson) and Moira MacTaggert are all, at the moment, very much dead, among others.
- In a move that surprised those who were still reading it, Master Splinter was killed off from old age in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—perhaps the highest point in the current volume of the series. The Shredder and Baxter Stockman—unquestionably the franchise's most prominent antagonists—are also dead.
- Several of the G.I. Joes have been Killed Off For Real over the years. And not just ones created for the comic book, like Mangler. Those with actual figures. The most notably would probably be Lady Jaye, who was killed by a ninja a while ago.
- Played straight and subverted, the famous Batman, in the pages of Final Crisis Batman's corpse was found by Superman and buried, but due to the way Darkseid killed him, his soul is still alive and continuously reincarnated in an endless loop of lives.
- Or so it would seem. It's not yet completely clear exactly what became of him and there seems to be conflicting information.
- Peter David, in his book, Writing for Comics, said that the best way to have a character killed is in a very deliberate, human way. His example: In Fallen Angel, a key character was shot six times in the head and then kicked off a building. He got letters asking if that character was really dead. If he'd been magicked off into a dark dimension, he'd be back to life. No questions asked.
- On that note: about one fourth of Fallen Angel's cast has been killed thorought the duration of the series. To wit: Shadow Boxer, Dr, Juris, Slate, Malachi, Wilde, Moloch/
Jubal have all kicked the bucket.
- Barry Allen had a long and prestigious run on this list (for a popular comic book character), in part because he was given a really good death, reversing that death would have undone the heroes efforts to save the universe, and fans eventually embraced his successor Wally West even if they still wanted Barry back. But 24 years and two mega-crises later, Barry has finally subverted this trope though it looks like he may be skirting the Came Back Wrong trope for a while.
- Most of the cast of Garth Ennis's Hitman series, including the titular character himself, "Hitman" Tommy Monaghan, die by the end of the 60-issue run, and since that was one of Ennis's babies, it seems doubtful anyone will ever be allowed to resurrect them. In fact, compared with the rest of the DC universe, Hitman's Gotham seems almost like some kind of parallel universe where death actually means something.
- Sarah Gordon, Commissioner Gordon's wife, has, remarkably, remained dead ever since being murdered by the Joker in "No Man's Land". At least so far.
- Zenith (2000AD series): Apart from Lux and Spook, who faked their own deaths (unintentionally, in the case of Spook), Dr. Beat/Warhead (alive in name only) and the conflict in the final phase (all of which took place inside the cosmos-mimicing entity Chimera) all of the many character and background deaths in the series were for real.
- Kobra, a longtime Big Bad in The DCU, seems to have been Killed Off For Real (having your heart ripped clean out of your chest by Black Adam will do that). However, since his minions recently resurrected his brother (who was killed off waaaaaaay back in 1978) to become the new head of their Religion Of Evil, all bets are off.
Film
Literature
- Some Harry Potter fans hoped for Sirius Black to come back after his death in the fifth novel, as evidenced by many fan fictions. He didn't.
- He should have. Come on. He was Killed By A Curtain, for God's sake. And nobody even looked behind it.
- The same could also be said for Albus Dumbledore, despite much fan speculation to the contrary. Although he did contact Harry from beyond the grave.
- And for everyone who died in the last book. This troper will not say who all died.
- All characters who die in Harry Potter are dead; it's impossible to reverse death.
- Death can be reversed using the Resurrection Stone, but the ones that are brought to life are not the same persons they used to be.
- To be more accurate the Resurrection Stone appears to make temporary ghosts (the see-through floating around kind) of people who died. Whether these are actual spirits or just some very accurate aproximation of the person (like one found in a good quality portrait) is never fully explained like all of the unusual powers displayed by the Deathly Hallows.
- Commander Root in Artemis Fowl.
- Though he gets a Time Travel cameo in The Time Paradox.
- The first Visser One, Jara Hamee, Tom (and his Yeerk), all of the auxiliary Animorphs and Rachel from Animorphs. That last one is the impetus of many a Fix Fic.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe killed of Chewbacca. It took a falling moon to take him out.
Live Action TV
- When the actor playing the part dies in real life, it usually means the character dies as well. Paul Hennessy (John Ritter) in Eight Simple Rules, Ernie Pantusso (Nick Colasanto) in Cheers, Carl Kanisky (Dolph Sweet) in Gimme A Break, Mother Jefferson (Zara Cully) in The Jeffersons and so on.
- Teri Bauer in 24 is the first in a very long line. Subverted in the case of Tony Almeida
- Prue Halliwell in Charmed. Also a case of being McLeaned, since she was fired and an in-story reason was manufactured why her spirit couldn't come back to advise her sisters the same way their grandmother and mother did.
- Jenny Calendar, Joyce Summers, Tara Maclay, Anya Jenkins and to a lesser extent most of the Slayers in training, as well as Xander's friend Jesse on Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- Doyle and Cordelia on Angel. The personality of Fred was also permanently destroyed by an elder god taking over her body, in spite of the entire cast utilizing the resources of an interdimensional law firm to bring her back. Had the show been renewed, however, Fred and said elder god would have somehow been split apart. this may already be happening the canonical comic follow up.
- Friends: Joey angers the writers of the soap opera he is working on, and they kill off his character by throwing him down an elevator shaft. The gang is watching the show when Phoebe says "Well, maybe they can find a way to bring you back" only to be told by Joey "They said that when they found my body, my brain was so smashed in that the only doctor that could have saved me was me. Supposed to be some kind of irony or somethin'." Of course, he did eventually come back in the end, with a different — female — brain in his body.
- A similar plot was used decades earlier by the British show Hancocks Half Hour. In an episode where the Hancock character is a BBC radio soap star (in a parody of The Archers) the other actors are so fed up with his erratic acting style that the producer finally decides to kill him off. Unfortunately it turns out that the character was more popular than the producer thought and the BBC receives a barrage of hate mail. Eventually Hancock agrees to come back as the original character's twin brother - but only if he is given full creative control, which he then uses to kill off the rest of the cast.
- One of the interesting aspects of HBO's OZ is their frequent killing of main characters, even ones who had been well-established over multiple seasons. See Anyone Can Die.
- Babylon 5 had a particularly daring example: At the end of the fourth season, the ranger Marcus Cole gave his life to save his (unrequited) love, Commander Susan Ivanova, from certain death. J Michael Straczynski, the writer, has commented that he would have resolved that differently, had he known he was going to get a fifth season after all, and that Claudia Christian (Ivanova's actor) was going to refuse to come back for another year.
- British series Spooks (known in the US as MI-5) subverted Contractual Immortality in their first series. Helen, played by Lisa Faulkner, was introduced as a major regular character and was then killed off at the end of the second episode. Quite rare for British TV, and an early example of Dead Star Walking. Tom appeared to have been killed for real at the end of the second series, but the start of the third series revealed that he was Not Quite Dead. At the end of that series, Danny was killed off for real (after a series where three out of the four regulars were written out).
- Also getting bumped off fairly quickly was Wild Bill Hickock in HBO's Deadwood, after just four episodes.
- Since the show was based on reality, Hickok in real life never made a comeback either.
- Several title characters were killed off permanently on St Elsewhere, including Drs. Kiem (suicide) and Caldwell (AIDS). In an interesting subversion the terminally ill Dr. Aushlander, whom the residents had a pool for when he would drop, lasted until the last episode.
- Some killings don't provoke the best of reactions from viewers. Television Without Pity writes of a recent killing on Charmed in its summaries for the latest eps: "In other news, Big Gay Chris remains dead. Bastards!"
- Any number of doctor deaths on ER, including Lucy Knight (victim of a mental patient), Mark Greene (brain tumor), Robert Romano (helicopter fell on him, twice), and Michael Gallant (roadside bomb while serving in Iraq).
- Den Watts was Killed Off For Real years ago in Eastenders, but as proof of just how hard it is to kill a soap star, he was resurrected recently (with the Ret Con that he was hiding in Spain). But after this miraculous recovery from the choir invisible, he was finally really, really killed, and just to hammer it home to future writers not to bring him back, there was a whole arc around the disposal, discovery and then burial of his body. So he can't be brought back this time... we hope.
- Parodied in the Doctor Who episode "Army of Ghosts"; when the Doctor is flipping through TV channels, he lands on Eastenders, where Den Watts's ghost appears in the Queen Vic. Peggy, exasperated, yells, "GET OUT OF ME PUB!" at him.
- Doctor Who occasionally kills off a character for real, examples including Adric, possibly Jack Harkness and of course, the Doctor himself.
- Technically, the Doctor both plays this one staight and subverts it every time a Doctor regenerates (which was originally a plot to keep filming the series after a Doctor wanted to quit/retire/died). It is the death of the current Doctor: a completely new man gets up and walks away, but that Doctor still has the memories of all his previous lives and the Status Quo doesn't nessecarily change.
- Cigarette-Smoking Man and Alex Krycek of The X-Files are examples of characters who had cheated death (usually because they Never Found The Body) so many times that their real deaths (by being at ground zero of a missile blast and shot right between the eyes, respectively) had to be made very explicit, so as to make it clear that, yes, this time they were well and truly dead. And, of course, Krycek managed to kind-of return for the Finale anyway.
- Scrubs - Nurse Laverne is killed off in season six, as the show's creator thought it was the final year of the show. When Scrubs was renewed for a seventh season, the actress that played her returns as "Nurse Shirley."
- Class clown and school mascot J.T. was killed off for real in an episode of Degrassi The Next Generation. The strange part is that it occurred in an episode that revolved around a drunken house party, with no buildup whatsoever.
- It was because the actor himself had planned on leaving the show and they had to write his death in somehow.
- By the end of the HBO series The Wire, many of the antagonists are either dead or in prison. Even well-known main characters like Omar Little and Stringer Bell were killed off. When an actor died from natural causes (and was playing the role of a policeman), the show would have a scene where all the characters who work in the Baltimore Police Department stage a wake at an Irish pub for them.
- Supernatural - Even if they do appear afterwards, their mother Mary, their father John, Sam's girlfriend Jess, all the psychic children in the Second Season Finale and Bela (Word Of God that she's never coming back) have all been killed off for real.
- Most deaths on Lost are of this variety. The exceptions are Charlie's Disney Death and Shannon's All Just A Dream death in season 1, plus a few Not Quite Dead villains since, but all of these have later ended up Killed Off For Real. Due to flashbacks and apparitions, most characters have appeared at least once after their deaths, which gives the writers the luxury of writing "real" deaths but still using the characters and actors when they'd like to.
- Season 5 played heavily with this trope. Upon returning to the island, John Locke came back to life after being strangled to death by Ben. But in the season finale, it was revealed that Locke actually was dead- Jacob's unnamed nemesis had somehow taken on his appearance and used it to manipulate the Others.
- The majority of the cast of The Sopranos, including the vast majority of the mafia characters of any prominence. Of the mob-level characters who make the main cast, you can more or less count the number who are still alive by the series' end on two hands.
- In the final episode of Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future, Jennifer dies when the Power Base self-destructs. Even though there was a fairly blatant angle for her to come Back From The Dead (The very last thing we see of her is Blastarr aiming his digitizer — a device which can save humans to disc for archival — at her), the Word Of God is that not only did she die, but she already had massive internal injuries from the preceding scene that would have killed her even if she hadn't been blown up. Had the series been renewed, much of the following season would have dealt with Captain Power's failure to cope with her death.
- In the period drama Upstairs Downstairs, Lady Marjorie Bellamy sails to visit family in America and Canada in April of 1912. She's on the Titanic.
- Yes, noone but Marian in Robin Hood.
- And as of the end of season 3 Guy of Gisborne, Allan a Dale and Robin Hood himself
- Farscape set up a brilliant loophole for themselves by having main character Crichton doubled. NOT cloned; the resulting two people were literally one person made two, with both having an equal claim to being the "real" Crichton. Thus, when one was killed off the writers were able to fully play off the emotions surrounding that death while still keeping the character around.
- It helped that the cast was split in half with one Crichton each, and none of the characters knew that there were two Crichtons, so when one of them died, none of the people around him knew that there was another one out there.
- They did know, actually; there was one episode ("Thanks for Sharing") before the crew split that utilized both Crichtons, and the one on Moya at least remains bitterly aware that the other one's with Aeryn, though the Talyn crew does appear to forget or at least disregard the split. But everyone on both ships knew.
- And D'argo is definitively Killed Off For Real in a You Shall Not Pass Heroic Sacrifice in The Peacekeeper Wars.
- Henry Blake in MASH The Series. Of course, he "survived" the next night on The Carol Burnett Show.
- Valerie Hogan in Valerie, when Valerie Harper had a contractual dispute with the producers. Well, they kicked her off the show, her character was killed off, and eventually the show was renamed The Hogan Family.
- Law And Order has had a few over the years: Max Greevey, Claire Kincaid and Alexandra Borgia.
- The new Battlestar Galactica has the resurrection-capable Cylons finally start Dying Off For Real towards the end of the series after their resurrection equipment gets Blown Up For Real. It wasn't afraid to kill off characters from the very beginning, either. Fortunately, it had Loads And Loads Of Characters, so the deaths of Socinus, Crashdown, Elosha, Fisk, Billy, Maya, Kat, Cally, D'Anna, Dualla, Laird, Zarek, Gaeta, several Sixes, and in the finale, Racetrack, Roslin, and Starbuck still left enough cast members to put on a show...
- On NCIS, Kate Todd is sniped in the head while talking to Gibbs and Tony. Combines with Wham Episode and Dropped A Bridge On Him, since the fight was over, she had already dodged one bullet, and prior advertisements did not employ Tonight Someone Dies. Just in case anyone had any doubts, the following episode has her body shown in autopsy and the director recommending a posthumous military award.
- Yes, the same director who was killed off herself in the fifth season.
- They did use Tonight Somebody Dies. This troper remembers trying to guess who it would be. The commercial included shots of every main character getting almost killed and promised one wouldn't survive.
- Recently in Reno 911 Deputies Garcia, Johnson, and Kimball were killed in the parade float crash.
- Heroes: Eden Mc Cain, Simon Deveaux, Isaac Mendez, Daniel Linderman, D.L. Hawkins, Kaito Nakamura, Niki Sanders, Bob Bishop, Adam Monroe, Elle Bishop, Arthur Petrelli, Benjamin "Knox" Washington, and Daphne Millbrook are major or significant recurring characters who have died thus far. And there will be one more to come in this season's finale (Season 3).
- Torchwood: In just five episodes, we lost Tosh, Owen, and Ianto.
- The original Stig from Top Gear, even though they Never Found The Body. Only a single black glove was recovered.
- On Fringe the second season opener killed off Charlie. Just to hammer the point home the thing that stole his face ends the episode by tossing the body into an incinerator.
- Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
- On Smallville: Main/recurring characters who are now dead include Whitney Fordman, Dr. Virgil Swann, Jason and Genevieve Teague, Sheriff Nancy Adams, Jonathan Kent, Lionel Luthor, Henry James "Jimmy" Olsen, and Davis Bloome. Lex is most likely a case of Not Quite Dead or Never Found The Body.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 had this happen to an entire race as part of a retcon.
- Horus would be an example of this happening to someone who isn't a Red Shirt and had access to ways of cheating death. He was Killed Off For Real by a psychic attack from the Emperor that obliterated his soul.
- Captain Tycho of the Blood Angels was killed off in the Armageddon world wide campaign.
- Valten in Warhammer Fantasy, at the end of the Storm of Chaos campaign, by Death Master Snicht.
- The rules of Exalted states very clealy that for all amazing things magic and charms and exaltation can accomplish, dead is dead and you can't be brought back. And while reincarnation is a common theme and you may have memories of previous lives, it's made clear that it's not so much your past life as just a past life that happened to have the same shard, which retained a few memories that you can use. And, although spirits do exist, as well as undead, and weapons that can have souls bound to them (rather painfully), one can never return to life.
Theatre
Toys
- Loads of Bionicle characters, including Lhikan, Matoro, Botar, "Ancient", Carapar, Zaktan, Icarax, Mutran, Gorast, Panrahk, Guurahk, Bitil, Chirox, Antroz, Krika, Vamprah, "Guardian", Kodan, Sidorak, Nidhiki, Krekka, Reysa, Jovan, Nikila, Nocturn, Gadunka, Ihu and Kojol.
Videogames
- After coming Back From The Dead some 20 times over the course of the Castlevania series, Dracula is destroyed for good in the beginning of the game Aria of Sorrow. Of course, he tries to reincarnate, but Soma Cruz (the would-be reincarnation) wants nothing to do with it, and thus Dracula stays dead. People argue about to what level Soma is Dracula, but it's kind of a meaningless argument, as the games following it are all set before Aria.
- Final Fantasy VII is popular for the sad, emotional death of one of your main party members Aerith, where she is suddenly stabbed right through her back by the main villain Sephiroth. Although there are many rumours about resurrecting Aerith in some way created by fans, the only way to do so is through some cheating device (which invariably messes up your game anyway). May be spoilers but... surely you've heard of this by now.
- Despite Aerith's death being the most popular permanent death of a party member in Final Fantasy games, Final Fantasy IV is actually the first to have the death of a regular party member, whereby Tellah dies after casting the ultimate magic Meteo to defeat Golbez. In a title positively dripping with I Got Better, this is a little jarring.
- In Final Fantasy IV The After Years, a number of characters can be Killed Off For Real if you screw up. In Rydia's Tale, Calca and Brina will, after glitching due to magic, be scrapped in order to repair the airship, unless you get the Mythril parts. In Edge's tale, All fo the ninja under Edge will die for real if you die during their mission before meeting back up with Edge. Time for some Save Scumming! And in the final chapter, It's possible to lose Golbez forever.
- In Final Fantasy VI Shadow can die for real if you don't wait for him on the floating continent.
- Also, General Leo is killed off for real in a cut scene after the first and only time you get to use him as a party member.
- Final Fantasy V features Galuf, killed by the villain Exdeath. However levelling him up all this time is not in vain, as he imparts all his knowledge into another character who takes his place.
- Final Fantasy X sets you up to think this is going to happen to Yuna. In the end, Yuna lives (obviously, since she's the star of the sequel), but both Tidus and Auron really do die for real. Well, Auron was already dead, but he still sorta counts.
- Although, The perfect ending of both FFX and FFX 2 shows Tidus apparently alive and well. The FFX 2 one even shows Yuna reuniting with him.
- Tidus is an animated dream of several dozen dead people, so technically, he was never really "alive" to begin with. Though this depends on What Measure Is A Non Human.
- The Phantasy Star series also exhibits this with respect to main characters:
- In ''Phantasy Star II, Nei is either killed by NeiFirst completely overpowering her or dies after killing NeiFirst due to them being part of the same original being - even the Clone Shop says that nothing can be done. Subverted in the Sega Ages remake - after completing a process that can only be described as Guide Dang It on a MASSIVE scale, Nei is resurrected without fanfare at the Clone Shop as if it was a normal combat death.
- In ''Phantasy Star IV, Alys Brangwin is hit by, declines from, and permanently dies due to saving the main protagonist Chaz Ashley from the Dark Energy Wave. It is specifically mentioned that healing techniques do nothing to help as her health declines.
- Somewhat offset by the fact that when you fight her murderer, your characters can take the same apparently fatal attack multiple times.
- Tekken has several cases of this, especially after the time skip and Ogre attacked and absorbed several characters' abilities, with suspicions that he killed them for good. But most characters later were brought back in the latter installments, thereby setting up that the only one Killed Off For Real were Jun Kazama and the original King. Not to worry, they got their successors all right (Asuka and the second King).
- Armor King was another case where at first, he's thought to be Killed Off For Real outside the Ogre interference (Marduk killed him), but he reappeared in Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. However, his personality is rather different, raising predictions whether Armor King really came Back From The Dead, or it's Armor King's successor and the first Armor King was really Killed Off For Real.
- Kunimitsu is probably dead for real. (killed either by Yoshi or Ogre)
- Zato-1 from Guilty Gear. His voice actor died, and they didn't want to use anyone else for the character, so they killed him off. Doesn't stop people from saying he should return. Conveniently, his character story involved being menaced by a psychic parasite he gained as part of a bargain to trade his eyesight for power, so they had said parasite kill him and take over his body, writing him out of the story, but keeping his moveset and sprite in the game.
- The death of this same voice actor (Kaneto Shiozawa) also necessitated the killing off of another his characters, Rival Schools' Hyo Imawano at the end of Project Justice.
- Metal Gear Solid 2 has a character named Vamp who, no matter how many times he'd seemingly "die," he always comes back to life. Metal Gear Solid 4 explained this as a result of nanomachines enhancing his already powerful healing factor, and once Snake disables them with a syringe, Raiden is able to kill him off for good.
- In Persona 3, Aragaki Shinjiro bites it a mere month after he joins your party. And so does Junpei's love interest, Chidori (though in the FES version of the game, it is possible to resurrect her). And in the very end, the Main Character sacrifices his life to save the world.
- In Clive Barkers Jericho, a game in which the main characters make up an army-based squad of people with supernatural powers, two of whom who have the ability to bring recently-deceased squadmates back from the dead provided that they maintain visual contact, has both Simone Cole and Xavier Jones being killed off (extremely horribly) towards the end of the game, when the Firstborn decides to blow them into bloody pieces, with no chance of revival even remotely possible.
- Steel Battalion does this WITH THE PLAYER. The game is so determined to present the most realistic mecha combat simulation possible, that there is no way to resume a game after you die; when your mech is close to blowing up, you are given ample chances to eject. If you don't, and your character dies, it ERASES YOUR SAVE.
- Zero, throughout the entire Mega Man series, has been killed and resurrected several times already. However, at the end of the Zero series, he is never coming back, with a Heroic Sacrifice that will last.
- Tassadar, in the original Starcraft, dies to save the galaxy from the original Zerg Overmind. It is completely real, as far as video games go: he gives a stirring speach to those who will live on after him, to remember what was done there that day, which is then followed by the cinematic of him effectively blowing himself up via his awesome psionic abilities, and taking the Overmind with him. In sequel games, the death is so complete that the Protoss change their usual greeting of "An'taro Adun," which effectively means "May Adun protect you," to "An'taro Tassadar." If he were brought back, it would destroy half the Starcraft canon.
- Many other characters are also killed, most of them in the Brood Wars expansion and some in official(or authorized) side campaigns. Other than obviously the Overmind(and the new Overmind formed to replace it); these include Raszagal, Gerard Du Galle(suicide), Edmund Duke, Fenix(died, came back, then Died For Real), Aldaris, Alan Schezar, probably Ulrezaj, Atticus Carpenter, Edullon, Jack Frost and EVERY ZERG CEREBRATE. Most of these are unlikely to come back, however it is not impossible as Fenix came back once before dying again, and it turns out Alexei Stukov is definitely Back From The Dead. Even so, the only ones likely to come back are the cerebrates...and even then probably not the same ones. Other characters also die in other media, such as the novels.
- While a few characters in the Warcraft series have cheated death such as Medivh, many others have been Killed Off For Real. King Llane, Blackhand, Gul'dan, Anduin Lothar, Ogrim Doomhammer, King Terenas, Uther the Lightbringer, Grom Hellscream, Tichondrius, Mannoroth, and Archimonde from the RTS games have all died in ways to show that they likely won't be coming back, even with all the resurrection and necromancy present in the series. Llane had his heart ripped out, Blackhand had his head cut off, Gul'dan was torn apart by demons, Lothar and Doomhammer both died on the battlefield (not the same battle), Terenas and Uther were both slain by Arthas with Frostmourne, Hellscream died in a Heroic Sacrifice, Tichondrius was permanently killed by Illidan after Illidan absorbed the Skull of Gul'dan's power, Mannoroth was killed by Hellscream's aforementioned Heroic Sacrifice (and his skeleton has been made into a memorial dedicated to Hellscream), and Archimonde was disintegrated by the released power of the World Tree. And that's not even covering the characters permanently killed by the players in World Of Warcraft.
- Although Gul'dan's soul "lived on" within his skull.
- In the Wrathgate event of World Of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Highlord Bolvar Fordragon and Dranosh Saurfang are killed off for real. With Wrath's new "phasing" technology it's now possible to kill NP Cs off for real for any individual player by changing the way they interact with the game world. This happens to a number of NP Cs in several quest lines, after which they are never encountered again by that player and other NP Cs will refer to them in the past tense. (Although they can still be not-yet-killed from another player's perspective.)
- As of the most recent patch, neither were actually Killed Off For Real. Saurfang returns as a Tragic Monster boss, Deathbringer Saurfang, in the Lich King's dungeon, and while we have yet to see Bolvar, he appears to be suffering a Fate Worse Than Death at the hands of the Lich King.
- The MMORPG Shaiya does this to players playing on Ultimate Mode. While you have access to the most powerful weapons and equipment on that difficulty level, if you don't get revived by an ally within three minutes of your character's death, that character's data is erased, and you have to start all over.
- There is actually an AP item (premium item that you have to pay REAL money for) called "Character Revival". It costs 7500 AP. Keep in mind, the exchange rate of AP to USD is approximately 100:1 (i.e., it'll cost you $75). However, seeing as how you have to reach level 40 on both Normal and Hard mode (no mean feat, if you don't use AP items and have a life outside of playing the game) to be able to create an Ultimate mode character in the first place AND it takes 4x the normal XP to level such a character, it may be worth it.
- Surprised that no one mentioned Mass Effect yet. More specifically the Virmire mission where you have to leave either Kaidan or Ashley behind as a nuke goes off. Oh, and if you kill Wrex as well, he's dead and gone for the rest of the game too. What BioWare has said about potential character carryovers in the sequel -which they've stated explicitly, mind you- that the dead party member(s) will not return- could potentially solidify the series' listing under this trope.
- And in Mass Effect 2, one ending kills off Commander Sheperd permanently, which brings questions about what happens in Mass Effect 3 with that save file.
- It was recently revealed that Shepard's death will only mean that the player won't be able to use this save file in Mass Effect 3 and the game will follow the ending, in which the Commander survived.
- The Flash-based platformer You Only Live Once is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. If you die once, it's game over. Try to continue, and you'll just get several cutscenes showing your girlfriend finding your body, calling an ambulance, a news report of your death, etc. Keep reloading the game and it'll just end up showing your grave. You can't play again. (unless you delete two save files from your computer).
- Most every Roguelike game has this in effect for the player; dying deletes the save for the character, meaning any player death is permanent. Often times in these there are randomized dungeons involved that can very easily lead to player death for something small or impossible to see coming, like a very powerful creature showing up well before the player is ready, or a trap destroying critical pieces of the player's equipment. Slightly subverted in those that have an item (Amulet of Life-Saving in ADOM) that will resurrect the player immediately after death (usually breaking to avoid invulnerability).
- The upcoming PS 3 exclusive HeavyRain will feature permanent death, even making it possible to have a standard ending with all of the playable characters dying.
- After being a pretty much immortal villain for almost the entire series up until Resident Evil 5, Albert Wesker turned into a monster and was finally -according to Word Of God- killed for good
 . Of course, Word of God also said Resident Evil would definitely never come back to the Playstation, so make of that what you will.
- This happens to four characters in Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time. These four are Dr. Nefarious, Ratchet, Alistar, and Captain Quark. Dr. Nefarious, after getting whooped by Ratchet once again, stops working properly... at the worst time possible. The ship they were on top of is flying at top speed towards Nefarious' lair, and the pilot (Laurence) has abandoned ship. Ratchet goes to say goodbye to Clank, but then Alistar comes to the rescue. Nefarious and his ship hurtle into his lair, which explodes. Ratchet dies after they get back to the Great Clock soon after. Clank has explained everything to Ratchet, and he now understands the dangers of trying to fix the past, and tells Alistar to drop it, knowing full well that his species isn't dead, just somewhere else. Alistar doesn't take this very well. Actually, he takes so badly, he fires his weapon at Ratchet, which hits him right in the chest as he turns around. Ratchet gasps for breath in his last moments as he falls into the abyss. Clank averts this though. Since Clank is the Timekeeper, he knows the true potential of the great clock. As he reaches the lever before Alistar does, he recalls what the plumber told him in his subconcious. He turns time back six minutes, back to the moment of Ratchet's death. He pushes Ratchet out of the way, and the True Final Boss starts. Alistar dies after learning the error of his ways after pulling the lever. After Ratchet fails at saving the universe (Due to the lever BREAKING OFF) Alistar uses his weapon as a substitute in a cliche self-sacrifice moment. Now for Quark. After the credits, we find that Quark was still near Nefarious' lair when it exploded, and now he's stuck on an asteroid...with his pet Snowball. Snowball just so happens to get hungry right as the cutscene starts, and begins to try to eat his master. Right as Snowball catches Quark and pins him down to eat him, we hear Quark say (in his ever cocky voice) "Hey, easy on the goods!" as the screen turns black. I don't know about you, but I don't think Quark is gonna weasel his way out of this one alive.
- I do. Quark is a recurring comedic buffoon, and the post-credit sequences in the series tend to be more "humorous" and less "kill off a long-running character". Also, I'm not sure if Ratchet counts here, either, since the Reset Button is hit IMMEDIATELY after his death.
- In The World Ends With You, all the Players are already dead and are playing the Reaper's Game to win another chance at life. However, Players erased by the Noise are killed off permanently and their entry fee is lost forever. Notable victims of Erasure include Rhyme in the first week (she gets better though), Sota and Nao in the second (as well as that Reaper)) and all three Game Masters (Sho also gets better) as well as Megumi.
Webcomics
Web Original
- Survival Of The Fittest: Everybody except the winners of the game and Burton Harris, due to some Body Double antics in Burton's case. He ends up dying anyway. Also. some handlers are fond of putting fake 'Student deceased' messages in their posts when it seems as if the characters have died but are actually alive. (very uncommon though, and it's invariably revealed to not be the case).
- Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog: Penny.
Probably Definitely.
- Subverted or not? Too soon to tell; the clearest Word Of God actually states that Joss and the cast and crew want Felicia Day back for the sequel in any capacity; her revival as Penny is neither guaranteed nor ruled out.
Western Animation
- WITCH killed of quite a few of the lesser villains, such as Tridart and Ember being disposed of by Nerissa when they were no longer needed. In the finale, Tracker is also subsequently impaled and killed.
- Thanks to Media Watchdogs and the cultural osmosis of a certain comic book trope, being Killed Off For Real in American children's programming is so rare, it's hard for some to grasp. Jet's fate on Avatar The Last Airbender, despite being tragically obvious, was surrounded by speculation that he somehow survived. They just don't do that in kids' shows! A SciFi.com interview with the program's creators, however, has confirmed this character was indeed Killed Off For Real.
- In the third season, Combustion Man is also Killed Off For Real.
- Let's not forget Yue in the first season finale. An odd one, as the excuse for Jet's death not being shown was that the network wouldn't let them show a kid die onscreen - but Yue's death was onscreen, and she was the same age. Evidently it's not okay for a male kid to die onscreen, but visibly killing off a female kid is okay.
- Actually somewhat arguable, as she pulled a Heroic Sacrifice to replace the moon spirit Zhao killed, and thus lives on in a way as said spirit. But she really is gone for good.
- Plus, in the case with Jet, he was murdered. His death was a lot more intense than Yue's, so you can't really blame the writers for wanting to candy coat it more.
- Also, Zhao and Hahn from the first season.
- Parodied in an episodes of The Simpsons. Moe gets a facelift and becomes handsome, and is awarded a role on a Soap Opera. After reading a new script that says he dies, he retaliates by revealing all of the major plot twists in the show for the next year on air (the show was filmed live, apparently). The director than angrily informs him that his character wasn't being killed off and that that page of the script was a dream sequence.
- And not parodied with the very "real" (at least in animation terms) deaths of Bleeding Gums Murphy and Maude Flanders. Dr. Marvin Monroe was also apparently dead enough to have a hospital named in his memory (but he got better...) and Hans Moleman has technically died several times due to explosion, motor accident, fire, and pack of hungry wolves, but has yet to have been killed off for real.
- Dr. Nick Riviera was killed off in The Movie, but he got better and resurfaced in a later episode of the TV show.
- And of course, when the hated Poochie is killed off, Krusty signs a legal document swearing that he will never, ever come back.
- This trope finally caught up with Mona Simpson, Homer's mother. What makes this death particularly impacting is her successive Not So Dead track record in previous episodes.
- In Robotech, the episode, "Goodbye Big Brother," should have made it obvious to this troper what was going to happen with Rick Hunter's brother, Roy Fokker, but the usual standard bowdlerization of 1980s television animation made assuming that the show would choke rather obvious. When the show actually followed through and killed him off, it showed this was no ordinary animated series on North American TV. Of course, Moral Guardians raised a fuss and complained that it was bad for children.
- No such ambiguity in the Super Dimension Fortress Macross original episode, "Pineapple Salad." Three ragged holes in his back and everything. And the reactions of the rest of the main characters pretty much seals the fact that he wasn't coming back. In fact, just to give Akira Kamiya more stick time as Focker, they had to bring him back in a prequel.
- In The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, while the show's other main villains tended to get the No One Could Survive That treatment in their last episodes — and since the show didn't get a third season, it's probably safe to say that they're gone for real — Ezekiel Rage had an established tendency to cheat death. Therefore, just to be sure, he got sent back to prehistoric times and blown up by a nuclear bomb, leaving a skull behind for good measure. Deader Than Dead? Deader than dead.
- The Venture Brothers has quite a few, most heartbreakingly 24's death by exploding muscle car.
- In King of the Hill, quite a few recurring or main characters have been killed off over the years including Luann's first boyfriend Buckley, Buck Strickland's mistress Debbie, Pops Poppaseto, Cotton's war buddy Topsy, and most recently Hank Hill's father Cotton Hill.
- Transformers as a whole has never shyed away from this.
- Beast Wars continually killed its cast. Some simply died. A surprising number died, were brought back, and died again. Two of them died, were brought back as a fused form of the two, and then died. And two of them died with the possibility that they might return, but didn't.
- In Transformers Animated Blurr is killed, pretty graphically, for a machine. It's 'possible' he'll come back, but given that his remains were handed over to another character, in convienient crushed-box form, and were immediately dumped down a trash chute...it may be that we have seen the last of him, although his 'spark', or soul, can be partially seen in some shots, so it's might be a Not Quite Dead.
- The finale also killed off Prowl and Starscream. Prowl sacrificed his Spark to save the city, and Starscream's Allspark fragment, the only thing keeping him alive after he was killed by Megatron in "Megatron Rising", was pulled out of his head. To hammer the point home, their bodies turned completely grey, the telltale sign in this series that a Transformer is really dead barring interference from the Allspark itself.
- Jazz was killed by Megatron in the final battle of the first live-action movie. The Fallen was killed by Optimus at the end of the sequel and pretty much every Decepticon (who isn't Megatron) that has been killed has stayed dead so far.
- The Movie killed off a good chunk of the G1 roster.
- In Family Guy a few recurring characters such as Mr. Weed, Paddy Tanniger, and Vern and Johnny have been killed off.
- It was recently revealed as well that Joe's son Kevin had died in Iraq. This was done because the writers thought he was boring.
- In a subversion of the very trope named after him, the Joker eventually got this treatment in the DCAU. Yes, having proven himself as much of a survivor as his counterpart in the comics, every bit the "no one" in No One Could Survive That, The Movie of Batman Beyond took the big leap and put him down once and for all - killing him twice in the same movie just to make sure. (In just a bit of a cheat, the event occurs at the far end of the universe-at-large's history, allowing him to show up in stories taking place earlier; Justice League took advantage of this.)
- In The Animals of Farthing Wood quite a few of the main characters were killed off like the Hedgehogs, Badger, Mole, Bold, The Great White Stag, Sinuous (this troper doubts it, mostly because of how horribly off his death was, since that's not quite how you would choke a snake...nor how you draw the inside of the mouth) and quite a few others.
- Unless Isaac Hayes is somehow reanimated in real life, Chef from South Park is likely gone for good, despite his "Darth Chef" remaking.
- Inverted with Kenny. He was killed off for real but they decided to randomly bring him back in "Red Sleigh Down", one season after his deaths.
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