Too Good for This Sinful Earth

"I loved that girl like she was my own! She was good, she was kind, and you KILLED HER!"

— Davos Seaworth, Game of Thrones

The good die young, or so authors would have us believe.

A popular and old (and perhaps outdated but overused) trope to justify Kill the Cutie. If there is a child of extraordinary beauty, goodness, and innocence in the story, she (it’s almost always a she; male examples are rare) will invariably die in as unsubtle a manner as possible. The child will be certainly Delicate and Sickly, and frequently a Waif Prophet, whose death will be slow, torturous and lingering (tuberculosis or other disease was a particular favorite in the 19th Century), giving the child a chance to bid farewell to everyone she loved in a long, drawn-out drama scene. Sometimes she gets to speak a few last words to hammer in An Aesop relevant to the larger plot at hand. After she's breathed her last, her loss is mourned by all who knew her — in particularly extreme cases even the Big Bad will be shaken and take a moment to reflect on it — and may serve to re-energize tired or disillusioned heroes to fight on for her cause.

The trope name comes from a frequent comment made at the subsequent funeral, that the poor departed child was too good for this sinful earth, and thus was called home to a good afterlife by a just God. In Real Life, this trope is a common way to understand tragic deaths among those who believe in some form of positive destiny.

Often a form of Death by Newbery Medal (a major reason why this trope still lives on and in many people's minds why this trope has yet to be really discredited, or at least is still used). It was especially popular in 18th and 19th-century Romantic literature, where there was a series of characters who committed suicide because they felt they were too sensitive or too idealistic for a crass, corrupt world—from Werther in 1774 to Delphine Gay de Girardin's Napoline in 1833, by which time the trope waned in popularity. Needless to say, in the hands of an inexperienced author, this trope is prone to be used badly.

The Unfavorite is often the surviving child. Indeed, Parental Favoritism may not even really kick in until the Favorite is dead. The Littlest Cancer Patient could be considered the modern take of this trope, but with a slight hope of healing and living for the affected kid (and also more likely to be played for comedy).

This trope often overlaps with What Measure Is a Non-Human?, I Just Want to Be Normal, Become a Real Boy, and some variant of Gentle Giant, in characters that are created by Mad Science or even regular science. In this type of story, the artificial creature is too innocent for this sinful Earth and is at risk of being corrupted by it. Sometimes, instead of dying, the "monster" chooses voluntary exile.

Compare with Diabolus ex Machina and Too Happy to Live. Also compare with Shoo Out the Clowns, in which the light-hearted and comic-relief characters are taken or killed off the story to show that things have gotten serious. Contrast with Asshole Victim, someone who is "Too Sinful For This Good Earth"; and Like You Would Really Do It. See also Purity Sue, for the kind of character who most often gets this treatment; and Bury Your Gays, for how this is applied to homosexuals.

Not to be confused with the Knight Templar, who sees himself as "too good", and his duty as being to wipe away all the "sin" by any means possible.

See also Evil Desires Innocence.

Because this is a Death Trope, beware of unmarked spoilers!

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Examples:

• Anime & Manga
• Literature

Comic Books

• The storyline in the comic Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl where the eponymous character dies (again) makes reference to this trope in its opening. This is intended to be ironic, as the title character has been dead for 100 years, has a wonky eye, is childish, has hair like straw, and tends to directly cause the deaths of nearly every person or animal she encounters — the closing, in fact, seems to indicate that her death is the opposite of this trope, with nature finally getting around to fixing a mistake.
• Spider-Man:
  • Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen Stacy is treated this way in retrospect. Before her death, she was a more well-rounded character who was actually allowed to have flaws like a real human being, but the way she's spoken of nowadays has earned the sarcastic nickname "St. Gwen."
  • This is pretty much what happened with Ultimate Spider-Man. He was the only superhero in the Ultimate Universe to not be an absolute Jerkass despite having a few moments of being a jerk at times. His final battle against the Sinister Six which ended in his death pushed him into martyrdom.
• X-Men:
  • Like Gwen Stacy, Jean Grey was held up as the standard to which all women in the book she'd departed could only aspire after her first "death" (later retconned to be more of a weird coma). After her second death, she didn't loom as large over the books, partly because her primary torchbearer, Cyclops, was already falling for someone else when it happened, and partly because she'd been incorrectly labelled as someone who kept dying and coming back, though Wolverine still worships her memory.
  • Deconstructed with Magik, the younger sister of Colossus. Her death as a young girl seemed to be this trope, since it established what a Crapsack World the Marvel Universe was for mutants, seeing as how an innocent child could die like she did, but she was brought back to life later. She Came Back Wrong and as an adult, she's a borderline sociopath who does things like murdering villains in cold blood. Emma Frost admits that the only reason the X-Men put up with her hideous behavior is that they're all plagued with guilt over her death, especially Colossus. This eventually reached its zenith when Magik responded to her brother treating her like a Purity Sue by forcibly cursing him to be the new Juggernaut.
• In an odd way, Wanda in The Sandman (1989). She isn't particularly "pure" (in fact, she's rather snarky), but she's a very sympathetic character caught in a world in which far too many people (and supernatural entities) impose their own ideas of gender on her instead of accepting her for the awesome woman she is.
• Circles: On Paulie's deathbed, just before he passed away, Marty regarded Paulie as too good for this world, saying that "There are so many awful people in the world and few good people."

Comic Strips

• Lisa of Funky Winkerbean was promoted to this shortly after her cancer returned. After she croaked, it seemed like one could hardly go a month without Les making reference to her. Like Gwen Stacy, a detractor nickname for her is "Saint Lisa".

Fairy Tales

• The Little Match Girl is this. She is a little homeless girl who dies after burning up all her matches, each one causing her to see a pleasant vision of a life she will never have.

Fan Works

• In Connecting the Dots, a Naruto/Justice League crossover, there's a benign, saintly old minister named Norman McCay who advises Hinata and consoles Sasuke. Guess what happens to him.
• Riku quotes this almost word for word when describing Sora's eyes as he's dying in "A Dirge For You".
• Poor Madavi in Freedom's Limits, who is killed in the prologue along with her lover and infant son (so it's basically a triple helping of this trope). She doesn't even fully understand why she's being executed, wondering what on earth she did that was so terrible that she and her family should be condemned to death (her only 'crime' is falling in love with an orc in a world that doesn't tolerate such things). In her final moments, she politely asks the Powers That Be (asks, not demands) to please let her go to Smador in the afterlife – and that if that's not possible, would it be too much trouble to make sure her son finds his way to his father so he won’t be alone and afraid?
• His Lie in April: The child prodigy Kousei Arima gets his brain permanently damaged by three blows to the head, which leads to his suicide by overdose.
• In Robb Returns, this appears to have been the case with Dacey Surestone's father, Torgen, who's dead by the time the story starts. It seems that absolutely everyone who knew him admired him as a good and decent man. Even Tywin Lannister and Roose Bolton have nothing but good things to say about him.
• Hoskuld Thrainsson in Njal Gets Burned, who gets a full series of omens confirming this on his death, much to the Njalssons' annoyance.
• What He Left Behind has Izuku sacrifice himself to save the world from Shigaraki. Later, Kyoka says maybe the reason Izuku died was because he was too good for the world.

Films — Animated

• Brother Bear has the death of Sitka, the good-natured young chief of Kenai's tribe and literally Kenai and Denahi's oldest brother, who ultimately sacrifices himself to defend his two younger brothers from a bear attack at the very beginning of the film. Unlike Denahi, who is a Big Brother Bully to Kenai, and Kenai himself, who hates bears, thinking that they are monsters, Sitka greatly respects nature, but his death ultimately causes Denahi and Kenai to gradually grow distant from each other, leading to Kenai killing said bear out of revenge, leading to Sitka turning Kenai into a bear himself as punishment due to the bear in question actually being a mother of a cub name Koda, whom Kenai eventually befriends, as well as driving Denahi into a path of darkness consumed by intense rage and grief thinking that Kenai was killed by the very bear Kenai himself was transformed into, and spends most of the movie trying to kill both Kenai and Koda. Forturnately, Sitka puts a stop to this, by transforming Kenai back before Denahi can finally kill him, thus allowing Denahi to perform a Heel–Face Turn after realizing the errors of his ways, only to turn Kenai back into a bear again, but this time permanently, so that Kenai can remain with Koda forever.

Films — Live-Action

• Inverted in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. The human world is sinful, but David, rather than dying, gets trapped and frozen underwater — and winds up outlasting the human world, eventually awakening to find it long gone.
• A rare non-child example, is Vision (Paul Bettany) in Avengers: Infinity War. He is, to be fair, technically only 3-5 years old, chronologically. Vision is the robot created by Tony Stark to defeat Ultron, which he does with the help of the other Avengers. He is saintly, being a combination of the best qualities of all the Avengers all filtered through the Mind Stone. He dies by Heroic Sacrifice to protect the Stone, but unfortunately it is meaningless, as Thanos reverses time to get it anyway. Being killed before the Snap, he also isn't brought back when Tony and Bruce undo it in the following installation and isn't able to be rebuilt once the Stones are gone. A huge part of the reason everyone hates Thanos so much is because of Vision's death because it's very hard to not love the guy.
  • In the same film, Peter Parker, who is portrayed as younger and more innocent than other live-action versions of the character, is also killed by the Snap. His death was a huge emotional turning point both in and out of universe, sparking Tony's Despair Event Horizon.
• In The Big Chill, Harold says this about Alex during his eulogy.
• Chicago gives us Hunyak. The only woman to not commit the murder she was accused of is the only one to hang. What makes this even worse is the fact that this is because no one at the police station could speak Hungarian, and they didn't even bother with getting an interpreter for her.
• Children of Men establishes its Childless Dystopia with a news report about the death of "Baby Diego", the world's youngest person at the age of 18, in a fatal stabbing incident in Buenos Aires — the world has been struck with a plague that induces sterility in women, leaving humanity a depressed and futureless Dying Race. Although subverted because apparently Diego's death was as a result of refusing to sign an autograph and spitting in the man's face. Paraphrasing Jasper, "he was still the youngest wanker on Earth".
• In Cinderella (2015), Ella's beautiful, saintly mother dies from an illness when Ella is a child.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Superman (Henry Cavill), the entire film's running theme is this given how much the general public distrusts and even hates Superman, all of which is contrasted by the unflinching love everyone seems to have for him after his sacrifice to stop Doomsday and save the world... again.
  • The Flash: The murdered Nora Allen (Maribel Verdú) was a kind and loving mother to Barry, and she was also incredibly open-hearted, offering a shoulder to cry on to a total stranger she'd met in the supermarket (Barry himself, unbeknownst to her).
• Neil Perry in Dead Poets Society wishes to be an actor above everything, and has been The Dutiful Son to his Education Mama father otherwise. For his act of rebellion (playing Pan in A Midsummer's Night Dream, which gets him a standing ovation) his father causes a massive scene dragging him away from the theater and gets ready to send him to Military School, and makes clear that he will tighten the leash even harder until Neal is twenty-eight at the least. For this, Neil decides to blow his brains out with his dad's revolver.
• Applies to many (and more accurate to the book) film depictions of Frankenstein's monster.
• Parodied in the black comedy film Heathers. Kurt and Ram are Jerk Jock bullies and date rapists, so Bully Hunter J.D. decides to murder them in the most humiliating way possible. He shoots them naked in a field, then forges a letter saying the two committed suicide because they couldn't be together in life. After their deaths, they are treated as martyrs by their fathers, who see the boys as having died for society's homophobic sins. Exaggerated in the stage show with the number "My Dead Gay Son".
  • Heather Chandler is treated in a similar way earlier in the film. When Veronica and J.D. accidentally poison her with a cup of drain cleaner, they cover up their crime by writing a forged suicide letter where Heather bemoans the loneliness she experienced as the most beautiful and popular girl in school. After her death, she is revered practically as a saint by teachers and many of her classmates, with the stage show in particular hammering home her newfound martyrdom with the number "The Me Inside of Me".
• Into the Wild leans into this in its portrayal of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), the young college graduate who abandoned all his possessions and attempted to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness, only to starve to death.
• The Last Boy Scout: McCaskey is a kindhearted, gentle man and the only character who isn't a Jerkass in some way, shape, or form. He's shot in the head by Milo so he can pin the crime on Joe when he checks Joe's home out at his partner's behest.
• MonsterVerse: Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins) is described by supplementary information as one of the nicest characters around in the setting. She survives the events of Godzilla (2014), but in King of the Monsters, she's one of the unlucky few who gets killed off when Ghidorah chomps on her.
• Ofelia in Pan's Labyrinth who refused to hurt her baby brother and decided to face the wrath of her evil stepfather who coldly shoots her in the stomach.
• Trevor in Pay It Forward is one of the kindest members of the cast and a perfect example of Children Are Innocent, creating the titular scheme of having people doing kind favors to each other. He gets fatally stabbed with scissors by a bully in the film's third act (although the bully appears later in the film, some time after Trevor is buried, quite visibly regretting his actions).
• Pearl (2022): Mitzy, Pearl's sister-in-law, is a nice young lady who leads a privileged life. She is also good friends with Pearl and gives her information and support to help her make something of herself beyond her dreary farm-bound life. Too bad Mitzy has the bad luck of offering her company for Pearl to vent her frustrations on after the latter has already gotten comfortable with murdering people by getting in three (3) tries.
• The film Powder (not to be confused with the video game), in which the main character is the kind-hearted, perfect, next step in human evolution that is Too Good for This Sinful Earth, so his friends cheer him on as he dies and leaves this awful place. Although it's not entirely clear that he dies: he runs into a stormy field, gets struck by lightning, and disappears in a blinding flash of light.
• A Soviet film Property of the Republic (Достояние республики) has The Marquis (played by Andrei Mironov), a former fencing teacher for the nobility. He's adventurous, kind and witty, a hopeless romantic at heart and so out of place in the 1920s Soviet Russia that he inevitably ends sacrificing himself.
• Padmé Amidala is a case of too good for this sinful galaxy in Revenge of the Sith. She's one of the kindest and most idealistic characters in Star Wars and tragically dies after she gives birth to her children. She dies because she loses the will to live after suffering a Trauma Conga Line, including the Republic turning into a tyrannical dictatorship and her husband turning evil and attacking her, after she had tried to help him.
• The Room (2003): Johnny commits suicide over his fiancée having an affair.
  Johnny: Everyone betrayed me! I'm fed up with this wahruld!
• In a film like Salvador set during The Salvadoran Civil War, where most characters are huge jerkasses or fanatical murderers, the Catholic missionary Cathy Moore stands out as an exceptional caring and loving woman. One of the most terrifying scenes in the movie is when she is horrifically raped and murdered by a death squad.
• The Secret Garden: The 1987 Hallmark adaptation invoked this by killing off Dickon, the Friend to All Living Things.
• The Song of Bernadette, based on Franz Werfel's novelization of the life of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, is basically "Too Good For This Sinful Earth: The Movie". Unsurprising given that Saint Bernadette is still regarded by the Catholic Church as this.^note The real Bernadette, as Werfel's novel repeatedly points out, was gentle and humble, but also clearheaded and self-willed enough to be The Determinator about her lady's reality and her requests. Biographical info backs this up.
• Snatch.: Mickey's mother is the only member of the Irish Traveler clan who is not a con artist and is one of the nicest members of the cast. She also is the collateral damage of the film's biggest Drama Bomb when Brick Top sets her caravan on fire (while she was sleeping in it) to make damned clear to Mickey that he will take the dive he is ordering him to take in the upcoming underground boxing match, or Brick Top will kill everybody else in the trailer park. Let's just say that Traveler revenge is a hell of a thing.
• The title character in Starman is an alien who is Too Good For This Sinful Earth. Except that instead of dying, he leaves Earth on a spaceship.
• Subverted by Alice in Super 8. She's practically a saint compared to her troubled father, and she gets swept up by the alien just as the father tries to apologize to her for being cold to her. In the end, her friends save her from becoming an item on the alien's menu, and she lives to reconcile with her now-redeemed father, who had reconciled with Joey's father after her capture.
• Surrounded: Downplayed. Most of the people who die in the movie are racists and/or criminals, but Curly's assistant stagecoach driver Andy sells Mo a ticket without insisting that she give up her gun or ride on the running board the same way his boss does, bravely fights against the outlaws attacking the coach, and still dies from an Agonizing Stomach Wound. This is also downplayed with Mr. Fields, whose racial views are more ambiguous, but who is at least a polite Badass Bystander who is also badly wounded during the robbery and later apparently killed by Clay.
• In X-Men: Apocalypse, Magneto has married a young woman and had a daughter with her. Both are killed by accident by cops who have arrived to take him, leading him to kill the whole squad and eventually relapse into villainy.

Live-Action TV

• In the Amazing Stories episode that apparently inspired The Green Mile, a death row inmate gains special healing powers but is put to death anyway just so the episode can pack a dramatic punch. Said punch is somewhat lacking due to the inmate being played by Patrick Swayze.
• The Anyone Can Die nature of American Horror Story has led to several of these. While many are controversial (for example, characters played by Jamie Brewer tend to get this treatment despite being a little morally questionable - to the extent that it's actually Played for Laughs in the fourth season), the examples of Ma Petite and Salty in Freak Show are pretty well undisputed. They're both shown to have the mindset of children and are rare characters in the franchise who are never shown to harm anyone - yet Ma Petite is murdered so that her body can be put on display and Salty dies in his sleep of a genetic condition.
  • Meep is another example from the same series since he is a child-sized, seemingly good-natured individual who gets beaten to death by his cellmates after being falsely imprisoned for murder - though some viewers were put off by his eating a live chicken earlier in the episode and felt it cast doubt on his innocent nature. However, since the tragic death of Meep's actor Ben Woolf not long after the series ended, this trope seems to have taken firmer hold for his final character as well.
• Andor: Nemik is by far the kindest and most idealistic of the Aldhani rebel cell, caring for and trusting people while being dedicated to the ideals of freedom from tyranny and brutal oppression rather than fighting the Empire out of a vicious desire for revenge against the Empire for killing family and loved ones. He dies the most drawn out and painful death of the group, just to make it that much more gut wrenching.
• In the first season of The Borgias the Moorish prince Djem is so handsome, noble, and lovable that something horrible is bound to happen to him. He is soon murdered by Juan Borgia for a ransom.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tara Maclay was without a doubt the kindest, most mature, and most good-natured character of the series - and several critics have noted that of all the Buffyverse regulars, she's the only one never to be even temporarily seduced by evil, essentially making her the only true Morality Chain for the heroes. And this being a Joss Whedon show, she ends up getting shot and killed for no real reason by one of the vilest villains in the series. Doesn't make it any less of a shock.
• Almost an Anthropic Principle of Council of Dads: Scott Perry is a ridiculously perfect husband and father: kind, wise, patient, and loving to his wife, his large and diverse brood of children, and his close friends. So naturally he dies of a terminal cancer in the pilot episode. Of course, his death is the central premise of the show: his three closest male friends come together in the titular Council to help his wife and children however they can. It would seem that he was so perfect that it would take at least three normal men to replace him...
• Chelsea Dawn Anderson, oldest sister of Deadliest Catch fisherman Jake Anderson:
  Jake Anderson: She's in a better place, Mom. (chokes up) She's finally beautiful now. She can run.
• Doctor Who
  • The Eighth Doctor. In his first appearance, he snogged the surgeon who killed his previous incarnation, loved how his shoes fit perfectly, and even offered to save The Master's life. In "The Night of the Doctor", this Doctor tries to save the life of a pilot, only to be rebuffed by her as she hates Time Lords due to their actions in the Time War. He remains on the ship as it crashes onto a planet and dies, but gets resurrected by the Sisterhood of Karn, only to be convinced by them to regenerate into a "warrior" incarnation in order to fight in the Time War. But the worst part of it? He gives up his name.
  The Doctor: I don't suppose there's any need for a Doctor anymore.
• Lady Sybil Branson in Downton Abbey: beautiful, noble, believes in fairness and justice for all, and frequently described as the kindest and sweetest member of the family. In the third series she dies at age 24 from complications following the birth of her daughter.
• Quite a few times in Game of Thrones, as a Crapsack World where Anyone Can Die, a completely innocent and kindhearted character will be killed off through no fault of their own.
  • Sansa's direwolf Lady in Season 1. She was noted as being the most gentle of the direwolves and never hurt anyone, but Cersei demands she be killed in Nymeria's place for biting Joffrey (which Nymeria only did to protect Arya).
  • Shireen and Myrcella in Season 5, the former's death even providing the heartbreaking page quote. She was the sweetest person in Westeros and is sacrificed by her father on the eve of a battle with the Boltons and an upcoming Zombie Apocalypse. Myrcella is acknowledged by Cersei herself who pointed out that Myrcella was kind, sweet, and never had the awful qualities of her brother Joffrey, or Cersei herself. But because of her blood as a Lannister who happened to be in the firing range between an old house rivalry she died, and it's sad to see her go like that.
  • Hodor, who is the most gentle, good-hearted character in the whole series and dies a gruesome death at the hands of the White Walkers in Season 6.
  • Fat Walda is one of the very few pleasant Freys shown so far, and the only member of the Bolton family to show Sansa some sympathy during Season 5. This, coupled with the fact that she's pregnant, makes you wonder how long she will survive. Not long, actually; Ramsay murders her and her newborn baby in "Home" by having them devoured by hounds.
  • There is also Rickon Stark. Aside from a few Creepy Child moments in the early seasons, he was generally a sweet kid who just wanted to be with his family. He was sent to the Umbers for safety during the third season, only to have them betray him to the Boltons three seasons later. His final moments are spent running across a battlefield, ultimately dying mere feet away from Jon Snow when Ramsey shoots him in the back.
  • Tommen was a good person born and raised around vipers. And it doesn't help that his own mother was one of the most dangerous ones. In the Season 6 finale, after his mother Cersei had the High Sparrow and everyone associated with him killed, including his Queen, he realized he was a Puppet King who doesn't have the respect of his subjects and is a pawn of his mother who doesn't take his commands seriously - he commits suicide.
  • According to Oberyn Martell, Princess Elia, though it should be noted he's a rather biased source.
• In Heroes Season 3 Peter goes to the future and finds that Sylar is a waffle-making soccer dad with a four- or five-year-old son named Noah. As soon as you saw that sweet, innocent, and adorable kid, you knew he wouldn't make it to the end credits alive. Claire, Knox, and Daphne barge in, and Knox crushes Noah with furniture in a battle in Sylar's kitchen, after which Sylar literally explodes.
• In How I Met Your Mother, the Mother is presented as a flawless person, the perfect fit for Ted, who gives sage advice to all of his friends. She then dies (without any particular angst) in the finale so that Ted can get together with Robin.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider 555 has the group using the Kaixa gear in its debut all shown as nice people willing to do the right thing. The fact they all end up dead after one use tells you what type of person will be the permanent user.
  • Takeru Tenkuuji and Kanon Fukami from Kamen Rider Ghost are both virtuous, selfless, and died as young teenagers; leading to a conflict in the show's first arc as to which of the two should be resurrected via the use of magical artefacts.
• Deconstructed on an episode of Law & Order where a woman smothers her baby and then incinerates the body so the child won't have to live in this terrible world. Her defense lawyer then argues that it was the Will of God that she murder her baby.
• In Manifest, Zeke describes his beloved little sister Chloe as the best part of his family. She died when they were kids in an accident while Zeke was supposed to be watching her, which he has never forgiven himself for.
• Gideon Goddard in Mr. Robot. He's the benevolent boss of Allsafe who cares for all his employees and is the character who is most patient with Elliot's social anxiety. He even tries to get Elliot to come out of his shell at his own pace, and even acts as a sort of father figure to him, a Good Counterpart to the sinister Mr. Robot. He even ignored Elliot's weird behaviour that could've implicated him in the E Corp hack, which Elliot was responsible for. He only gets angry when Elliot, who he knows is somehow involved, refuses to do something to get the FBI off his back. Even then he doesn't follow through with his threat and tell them what he knows. He's shot in the throat at a bar by a crazy person after news breaks about his "involvement". A key factor to Gideon's character? Elliot will always see the negative in people, and he even hacks into their various accounts. When he sees Gideon? He says he sees a good man.
• Nirvana in Fire: Prince Qi. He was just too good and had too many loyal followers, making him a threat to the emperor and the powerful Xuanjing Bureau. So he was framed for treason, thrown in prison, and the emperor — his own father — forced him to commit suicide.
• Only Fools and Horses: Del considers his mother Joan as having been an example of this. Subverted big-time in Rock and Chips where it's revealed that Joan was nearly as devious as her son—if a bit more kind-hearted—and not only did she have an affair which resulted in her becoming pregnant and giving birth to Rodney, she used Rodney's birth to secure the family a better home in Nelson Mandela House. Even before Rock and Chips, it was obvious just how oblivious Del was to what type of lady she was. Such as how Joannie was the first woman in Peckham to smoke menthol cigarettes, how she was often to be found in the corner of a pub with two geezers and of how she used to buy her school-aged son alcohol in pubs.
• Downplayed with Poussey in Orange Is the New Black. Sure, she was in prison for a reason- but it was a minimum-security prison for a non-violent offense. Plus she was the friendliest inmate- kind towards everyone, always in a good mood. Yet she dies young while in prison- and her death was not a direct result of anything wrong she did.
• Humperdoo from Preacher is largely a comedic deconstruction of an Inspirationally Disadvantaged archetype, but this trope is still played surprisingly straight for him. After shooting him in order to avert the impending apocalypse he was fated to kick-start, Cassidy tearfully eulogises Humperdoo as the best person he ever met, saying that "he liked everyone — even arseholes" and that everyone felt happy when they were around him.
• Chris Miles from Skins fits this trope, although he's a rather odd choice for it: he does lots of drugs and has lots of sex. Not "sinless" by many people's standards. He's clearly meant as this by the show, though, when they take care to point out how he has so much more love in his heart than just about anyone and how he's an innocent Woobie who got repeatedly shit on by life. There's also his method of death; he dies due to an illness that has been plaguing him since childhood, and which previously claimed his brother's life.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand features several examples. Generally, if you're a kind, gentle person without a ruthless bone in your body in the Roman Republic, things don't often go well for you.
  • Pietros is one of the very unambiguously good people in the series and is sadly one of the very first to die. He takes his own life after believing his lover Barca had abandoned him to be abused by a brutal gladiator, after promising to earn them both their freedom; he doesn't realize Barca was actually murdered, not freed.
  • Melitta, Oenamaus's gentle and kindhearted late wife. After her tragic death, Gannicus remarks to Oenomaus that she was "The rarest of women. A flower of beauty and compassion in a world full of shit". Even Lucretia is horrified by Melitta's death especially as it was technically Lucretia's fault.
  • Diona in Gods of the Arena. An innocent, kind and bubbly young slave girl in the House of Batiatus? It was never going to end well for her. She is ultimately executed in the final episode for trying to flee slavery, after suffering a Trauma Conga Line.
  • Spartacus certainly thinks of his murdered wife Sura this way. One of the reasons he is so distraught and enraged by her fate is because she was completely innocent of any wrong-doing, but was punished for his so-called crimes.
  Mira: Was she such a woman, your wife?
  Spartacus: She was the sun. Never to rise again.
• Star Trek: Picard: Hugh, the former Borg drone who has dedicated his life to helping others like himself, is a decent, gentle, and brave Non-Action Guy, and his heroic death is later avenged by his friend Seven of Nine.
• Stranger Things: Apparently there's no justice or sense of proportion in the world of Stranger Things, hence why purely good characters like Barb, Bob, and Chrissy are unfairly killed off.
• Superior Court: A couple of episodes:
  • There was the episode where a defendant, a cult leader was accused of killing several young women. He unsuccessfully tried to justify the killings as God telling him the women were too innocent and pure to live in this world. Needless to say, he was convicted and sentenced to death.
  • In an early first-season episode focusing on the rights of the accused vs. victims' rights, a court hearing is held to remand a 7-year-old girl to the custody of the state after she killed her younger sister. The hearing reveals that the girl had been viciously sexually abused by her father (a respected Southern Baptist minister and community leader) and that he was starting to target the younger child, who was 5. The truth comes out only after the girl's father is removed from the courtroom (when the judge noticed the girl was intimidated and taking cues from her father). In the end, the judge acquits the girl, saying she indeed was trying to protect her sister and stop the cycle of abuse ... she was too good and innocent to endure her father's abuse. (He is taken into custody, charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison.)
• Supernatural:
  • It pokes fun at this trope in the episode "Tall Tales", with Dean exaggerating Sam's empathy in a recollection.
    [to a guy Dean and Sam are interviewing about a case]
    Sam: You brave little soldier. I acknowledge your pain. Come here. [hugs him] You're too precious for this world!
  • And then this trope smacks you straight in the face by killing the only truly good angel.
  • Also done with the death of Charlie Bradbury, who Dean eulogizes as ultimately simply too good a person to survive in the Crapsack World of the show, no matter how competent a hunter and survivalist.
• The Terror gives us Lieutenant Thomas Jopson. The fact that he's one of the nicest, kindest men makes his death that much more tragic. To wit, the dying-from-lead-poisoning Jopson hallucinates a feast, with Crozier seated at the head of the table, completely oblivious to him. Jopson then proceeds to crawl on the table, knocking everything off, in an attempt to get Crozier to notice him, but then the scene cuts away and we're shown that he's only been crawling on sharp rocks, and dies believing that Crozier has left him for dead. His death is rightly considered by many to be the most heartbreaking in the entire series. And if the source material is anything to go by, he dies on his 31st birthday.
• Meg Manning from Veronica Mars is a Double Subversion. Throughout the first season, she's portrayed as the nicest student at Neptune High, going out of her way to be friendly with her classmates. She's even nice to Veronica who's a social outcast. In the second season premiere, she's on board the bus that goes over the cliff into the sea, but the subversion happens in the following episode when it's revealed she was the only survivor. She remains comatose for several episodes before waking up, then dies from a blood clot in her heart. She lives just long enough to give birth to Duncan Kane's baby.
• Referenced / inverted in a particularly cynical comment by Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes, Minister:
  Sir Humphrey: Bishops tend to lead long lives — apparently the Lord isn't all that keen for them to join him.

Manhwa

• The Priest has Nera, one of the fallen angels who serve Temozarela and the only genuinely good character in the entire series. She refuses to infect the village close to her caravan with the Dark Doctrine despite given the order to do so and in fact protects it from any harm. Nevertheless, the villagers mistake her as a witch, slaughter her friends, and hang her. Even then, she refuses to spite people; when Temozarela himself appears to Nera as a vision and offers to free her if she declares her hatred against God, she tells him that despite everything Temozarela has done, deep down he still wants forgiveness from God and then calmly accepts her fate.

Music

• Billy Joel's "Only The Good Die Young" insists that since those who are holy and good die earlier, it is better to sin and give up on purity to elongate time on Earth. Of course, he mainly just wants the schoolgirl he's talking to to give up on her virginity.
• Queen's "No One But You", written as a moving tribute to the late Freddie Mercury, speaks of a person who dies young because of their goodness: "One by one/ Only the Good Die Young"
• Jimmy Eat World's "Hear You Me" insists the person being addressed died because her love was too big for the world as it is. (The song was written in tribute to Mykel and Carli Allan, fans and friends of both Jimmy Eat World and the band Weezer, who lost their lives in a car accident on the way back from a Weezer show, along with their younger sister.)
  And if you were with me tonight,
  I'd sing to you just one more time.
  A song for a heart so big,
  God wouldn't let it live.
• Michael Jackson's "Little Susie" (HIStory) has an extreme example with the title character, an abandoned tyke. She sat alone in an apartment and in her loneliness sang along to a music box song all day; "She knew no one cared" and "Neglection can kill/Like a knife in your soul". Only one other person was aware of her and did nothing — and then she was found dead and bleeding at the bottom of some stairs. As Joe Vogel's book Man in the Music points out, for all the song tells the listener, it could have been suicide, an accident, or even murder (in which case it would have to have been a stranger throwing her down there For the Evulz!). In any case, everyone in the building gathers around to weep and gnash their teeth over the wasted life.
• The title character of "Ocean Gypsy" by Renaissance, after being dumped.
• The sculptor's lady in "Turn of the Century" by Yes, motivating him to memorialize her in stone.
• Jenny Drew in "Nothing that I Didn't Know" by Procol Harum
• Micheala from Story of Evil. In a Crapsack World like that, we all knew she wouldn't even last one song.
• "Amelia" by Tonight Alive:
  Wish you were here, but it's becoming clear,
  that Earth's just not the place for an angel like you.
• The 1921 hit "They Needed a Songbird in Heaven (So God Took Caruso Away)".
• Don McLean's song "Vincent" almost literally quotes this trope:
  When no hope was left in sight
  On that starry, starry night
  You took your life as lovers often do
  But I could've told you, Vincent...
  This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.
• Daniel Johnston's "Danny Don't Rap" from Yip/Jump Music, about Danny Rapp from Danny & The Juniors who committed suicide, quotes the above lyrics using Danny's name.
• Bob Dylan's "Joey", which caused quite a bit of controversy, as its subject, Joseph Gallo, was a notorious gangster.

Music Videos

• The unnamed girl from the "Concrete Angel" music video by Martina McBride. She's a cute little girl that the video's protagonist crushes on, is heavily abused by her mother... and in the middle of said video, she's beaten to death by said mom. The "concrete angel" is actually located on the girl's grave.

Mythology and Religion

• Christianity:
  • The Bible:
    • In the Book of Genesis, one of the only good men in a world of murderers was Enoch, who "walked with God, and was not, for God took him." According to Rabbinical literature, God took Enoch so the pre-flood world couldn't corrupt him.
    • In the Books of Kings, the prophet Elijah fulfilled his mission with such faithfulness and devotion that he was snatched up to Heaven in a flaming chariot sent by the Lord.
    • According to the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus Christ Himself ascended out of the world and into Heaven as befitting His glorified nature.
  • According to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary was bodily taken to Heaven, since she was too good to rot in the Earth. Whether or not she had actually died and was restored to life, or was taken to Heaven alive to spare her from dying altogether, is left up to interpretation.
• Arthurian Legend: Galahad of King Arthur's court. No sooner does this sinless, invincible young Christ figure achieve the Quest of the Grail than he is taken up to Heaven.
• Norse Mythology: The god Baldur already lived in heaven, but maybe he was Too Good For This Sinful Asgard. In any case, he was the best of the gods, so of course, he died.

Radio

• A horrifically Invoked Trope in the Sherlock Holmes (BBC Radio) episode "The Saviour of Cripplegate Square": a woman who runs a home for unwanted babies has been poisoning her charges. She says that she loves them, which is why she kills them while they're still innocent and happy rather than letting them grow up and become part of the London poor.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • This is a common view of Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels. A man with a kind heart who genuinely believed in the goodness of others, he still tried to turn his brother Horus back from Chaos in their final battle and gave his life in a battle he knew he could not win, but still fought.
  • Though now non-canon, the imperial guardsman Ollanius Pius was another such figure, standing between Horus and the Emperor with nothing more than a lasgun.
    • He's back- in the newest Horus Heresy novel, Know No Fear, which he was portrayed as Perpetual—a rare human with immortality through reincarnation or regeneration—who is currently living in Calth and worshiper of Catheric religion (also one of few) left in the universe..

Theater

• Rodrigo di Posa in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Don Carlo (not in Schiller's play) might be a male version of Liu (from the Turandot example below), only with a different social status.
• In Arthur Sullivan's dramatic oratorio The Golden Legend, Elsie's self-sacrifice inspires an A Cappella chorus to sing, "O pure in heart!" It turns out, however, that she doesn't have to die after all.
• Henry VI, right up to his death in Henry VI Part 3 — he is consistently portrayed as far too meek and unworldly to wield power. In Richard III, Lady Anne is reproving Richard for having murdered him, and Richard responds sardonically:
  Anne: Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed!
  O he was gentle, mild, and virtuous!
  Richard: The better for the king of Heaven that hath him...
  Let him thank me, that holp to send him thither,
  For he was fitter for that place than Earth.
• Though it might fall more under Mentor Occupational Hazard, Abuela Claudia in In the Heights is probably the most selfless, good-hearted person in the entire barrio, and probably the most beloved person in the entire community. Guess what happens to her at the beginning of Act 2? But she's not a completely straight example, in that she's an older woman to begin with (and what this means is that her death is more understandable than these other examples).
• King Lear: The eponymous King's youngest daughter Cordelia. It is announced during the final scene that they were just a little too late to save her from execution, and cue her devastated father staggering in with her corpse in his arms…
• In the stage musical of The Little Mermaid (1989), Ursula's introduction song "Daddy's Little Angel" says this of one of the older sisters she killed. "How could I compete with a girl so heaven sent? Just a spell from the shell, and back to heaven she went".
• Little Shop of Horrors: Poor, poor Audrey.
• The Princes in the Tower, in Richard III. This is certainly justifiable from our point of view because Richard almost certainly had them killed, but in Richard's time there was no big outcry - people didn't sentimentalize childhood as they do now, and the average Englishman of Richard's time didn't care about the Princes' deaths as much as he did about the survival of his own children, which was more likely under the stable government Richard had set up.
  • IRL, he probably didn't do it. The evidence they've got at The Tower of London paints a pretty convincing case for Henry being the guy who did it.
    • That's a bit generous. He remains to most historians the most likely suspect, but there's nothing totally conclusive; Henry VII is a distant third as the most likely (#2 is Buckingham, to most people).
    • There are documents dealing with the princes' care dating after Richard died. This does seem to make him an unlikely suspect.
  • There is a contemporary diary from an Italian merchant living in London, who records that people were weeping because the princes had ceased to appear and they assumed they had been murdered.
• The Nurse's daughter in Romeo and Juliet: "Well, Susan is with God; /She was too good for me."
  • And, of course, Romeo and Juliet themselves.
• In Spring Awakening, Wendla dies because of a botched abortion. This makes it so much worse because she didn't even know what she did with Melchior was sex, as her mother never explained what it was.
• In Time and the Conways by J. B. Priestley, Act 2 is set nineteen years after the events of the first act and shows how the lives of all the Conways have completely fallen apart. Carol does not reappear, and we discover that she died of appendicitis at age eighteen - implied to be because she was too good and innocent to deserve the same fate as the rest of the family.
• In Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot, Liu does a Heroic Sacrifice, and everyone weeps for her, except for the titular ice princess (who hasn't had her "Shut Up" Kiss yet). Then the composer dies, leaving the ending to be written by Franco Alfano.

Video Games

• Leonhardt in Agarest Senki dies after three battles and is pretty much an all-around Nice Guy. Of course, he gets better... technically...
• Mayu Suzumoto of Corpse Party is an extremely sweet, caring, and sensitive soul, who showed the ghosts of the murdered children sympathy, played with them, and would not leave them when her classmates came to get her out, despite the danger the children posed. What did she get in return for her kindness? Getting rammed into a wall at supersonic speed by the same children. It reduced her to nothing more than a mess of blood and organs that even her closest friend could not recognize.
• Danganronpa:
  • Chihiro Fujisaki in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. He can't even bring himself to swat a mosquito while it's biting him, because it might have a family. He blames himself for the death of the culprit in the first trial when the entire class was forced to vote for someone to be executed under the threat of being killed en masse. His murder, by someone who's jealous of his unexpected strength of will and who deeply regrets it later, kicks off the second trial.
  • Chiaki Nanami in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. She is a Benevolent A.I. acting as The Mole of the group, but only to help with the student's rehabilitation process, and is immune to Monokuma's motives, thus disabling her from committing murder. Overall, she is a very kind-hearted girl, supporting Hajime throughout the game. She ends up becoming the culprit of Chapter 5, but only because Nagito relied on his luck to make her the killer. Once this is revealed, along with her being the traitor, the remaining students (especially Hajime) are devastated.
  • Gonta Gokuhara in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. Despite his menacing appearance, he is very gentle and friendly and dislikes the idea of harming or murdering his fellow students, even claiming to have never killed a bug. Unfortunately, he becomes the culprit of Chapter 4, but only because he intended to Mercy Kill everyone by graduating after he learned about (what seemed to be) the state of the outside world. Even worse is that he committed murder in a virtual world, but he mixed up the wires he was supposed to plug into his headset, causing him to lose all of his memories from the virtual world, including his crime. Once he finds out what he did, he's absolutely horrified.
• Leah of Diablo III is this. She was a good and nice girl until her mother betrayed her and the entire team, including an angel, to bring back the Prime Evil Diablo into full power.
• In Digimon Survive, Miyuki is an Emotionless Girl for most of the game, but only because she's missing half of her soul. When she gets her complete soul back, she turns out to be a very sweet and kind person, and even insists on going back into the digital world despite the danger because the other humans can't return to the human world without Miyuki's song, and as per this trope, in 2 out of 4 routes, Miyuki dies. However, unlike most examples of this trope, the player can avert this and save Miyuki; she dies on the Harmonious and Wrathful routes, but she survives on the Moral and Truthful routes.
• The intelligent deathclaws of Vault 13, from Fallout 2. After visiting numerous places, most of which suck to varying degrees, you come upon a clan of what you've by then come to recognize as animals that are pretty much massive biological killing machines. Cue their leader greeting you in the entryway, and rather than charging you with a growl... he politely greets you and welcomes you. With words, of course. When you explore the vault, you see that amazingly there are humans living there, too. And they're all free to leave at any time^note except one man who openly wants to exterminate the deathclaws, despite all the obvious evidence that they are not evil (which he ignores) - yet choose not to, because they're quite happy there. The deathclaws see it as their duty to protect these people, in the same way that they would do so for any deathclaw of the clan. Oh, and once you do a fix on the Vault's computer, the above-mentioned clan leader gratefully gives you the vault's G.E.C.K., which is the MacGuffin you've been searching for the whole game.
  • This society, strange as it is, is all things considered the best one there is in the entire area where Fallout 2 takes place. It's the one place you might feel like settling down permanently at... a little slice of heaven in the wasteland. About a week or two after you leave the vault, it's raided by Enclave troopers who didn't take kindly the escape of their living weapon a year or so ago (the deathclaws; they were genetically altered by the Enclave, granting them intelligence). Everyone living in the Vault is massacred.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • The game provides one of the most famous examples in gaming with Aerith Gainsborough. She is kind, cheerful (despite her terrible upbringing), everyone in the party likes her and she is the only of them who isn't some edgy Anti-Hero or troubled soul. So naturally she is also the only one of them to not live to see the credits roll; she dies about halfway through.
    • From Crisis Core, Zack Fair. Zack was a textbook example of The Ace, a Soldier First Class, a Nice Guy, beloved by his allies, and respected by his enemies. Unfortunately, he was Doomed by Canon and died fighting off a literal army of Shinra troops to protect Cloud.
  • Final Fantasy XV has Lunafreya Nox Fleuret filling in a similar role as Aerith. Pure, adored, and always clad in a Ethereal White Dress, she is killed in the middle of the game. As Dartigan points out at her death scene, "You just got Aerithed."
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: Subverted with Ninian. She dies after being practically forced via a Breaking Lecture into her dragon form, dies forgiving the person who slew her (the guy whom she crushed on, for worse, and who did it while under the influence of a magical weapon)... and is brought Back from the Dead right before the Grand Finale. (But might be played straight if she marries Eliwood and becomes Roy's mother, as any of Roy's moms is Doomed by Canon.)
  • According to those who knew and loved him, Prince Lyon in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones was this to a T. He's frequently described as kind and gentle, and everything he did was in an attempt to help his country. Naturally, it went horribly wrong, nearly destroying his country instead and leading to his death.
  • Queen Emmeryn in Fire Emblem: Awakening, via Heroic Suicide. She survives, but she's suffered massive memory loss and brain damage, so in a sense she's still "dead" despite walking and breathing among them. Also, finding out about said survival is optional.
  • Fire Emblem Fates:
    • Played straight with Elise (specifically in the Birthright path). Little Sister Heroine, sweetest and kindest of all the Nohr siblings and the most attached to the Avatar, to the point where she takes a fatal blow meant for them and dies in her older brother's arms. Her last words are pleading with him and the Avatar to make peace with each other...unfortunately, after this Xander commits Suicide by Cop, leaving her final wish unfulfilled.
    • From the same game, Queen Mikoto. From everything we learn about her in supports, she was a kind and caring mother, even to her step-children (who all refer to her as their mother) and her technical captive (and niece) Azura. She was also a good queen who ruled Hoshido peacefully. Naturally, the last thing she does in the game is jump in front of an explosion meant for the Avatar, and her dying words are expressing relief that they're safe.
    • Also Lilith, at least in Birthright and Conquest. She's lived with the Avatar for years and seems fairly close to them and the Nohr siblings, she's sweet and helpful, and it turns out that she's actually their sister (though Corrin never learns that). Her last act in life is also jumping in front of an attack meant for Corrin, and they nearly name-drop this trope in the Conquest version of the scene.
• Lirum, Kaim and Sarah's daughter from Lost Odyssey. Thought to be dead by the main character for most of the first disc, then dies of a chronic illness roughly five minutes after he finds her and realises that this isn't the case - talk about a Player Punch...
• The Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. A warm-hearted, kind, and compassionate patriot through and through, but her country branded her as a traitor and left her to die on foreign soil just to save face. Something that she willingly goes along with to prevent another world war.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption had a Player Punch in the form of three amazing bounty hunters being corrupted early on and eventually fought and killed. One of them, Ghor, was perhaps the nicest guy in the franchise, as revealed through his backstory.
• Hinawa from Mother 3. It's all way too soon, and she barely got to be seen alive in a full chapter.
• Nei from Phantasy Star II became a poster girl of the series for this reason, serving as a deconstruction. In the game, she's the only bio monster that isn't evil, and she is in fact more optimistic and cheerful than most people. She fights to protect her friend, knowing that killing a certain bad guy will also kill her permanently (in a game where Death Is a Slap on the Wrist). And the reason for all this is because she split herself off from Neifirst as her "good" half. Of course she's Too Good for This Sinful Earth, she's literally everything good about one girl in an independent form. Which is also why Neifirst can survive if she dies, but not the other way around; Nei might be inherently good, but a person can't be a complete person without at least some negative traits; this comes up later in Phantasy Star IV when it's directly pointed out that it's necessary for humans to have "bad" feelings in order to be human in the first place.
• Yumemi (or Reverie) in Planetarian, she better belongs to the heaven of robots... no, to the Heaven where Humans and Robots live together, since that's what she wished for.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Tikal from Sonic Adventure. A pacifist and Friend to All Living Things, it's implied she had to give her life to seal Chaos and save the world.
  • Maria Robotnik from Sonic Adventure 2. Her last wish to Shadow was to make sure that the inhabitants on Earth can have a chance to be happy.
• Faize Sheifa Beleth from Star Ocean: The Last Hope, who becomes the Final Boss due to the amount of senseless death and destruction that he encounters throughout the course of the game.
  Edge: "You were just too kind... kinder than anyone... anyone else. But... your kindness was too much for this universe..."
• Tales of the Abyss likes this trope, since it gives you a direct example in Ion, who is by far the nicest person in the game, even to Jerkass Luke until his death just over halfway through the game and then Luke, while less directly this, takes up the title of most pure and innocent character in the entire game and ends up sacrificing himself twice since death didn't exactly stick the first time but he was dying as a result.
• Laphicet in Tales of Berseria. He's a sweet, sickly kid, doted on and cared for by his older sister Velvet. He just wants to see the world beyond the isolated village he lives in, despite being too unwell to make it to a cliff overlooking the sea one day. And then he's betrayed and killed by his brother-in-law, sacrificed as part of a ritual. Of course, being a Tales game, this is deconstructed. Laphicet was suffering an incurable disease that would kill him by age twelve and volunteered to be the sacrifice to help create a better world for his sister; however, he never bothered to tell Velvet any of this. Moreover, when reincarnated as the Empyrean Innominat, he's a selfish, manipulative, puppy-kicking little brat. How much of this is Innominat's influence, and how much is Laphicet's personality Beneath the Mask with his earlier portrayal being colored by Velvet's opinion of him, is left to player interpretation.
• This happens to one character in Undertale, but you wouldn't know the full story of it unless you're on the pacifist route. Asriel Dreemurr, the son of Asgore and Toriel, was described as a young boy who was very kindhearted, possibly more so than his parents, and his birth brought happiness to his parents since they were now a family. Asriel also became best friends with a human child that the family adopted and was willing to do anything the human wanted, even when the pranks got less funny and more dangerous.^*Though Asriel somewhat knew the Fallen Child wasn't exactly a good person. Eventually, the child hatched a plan to kill all the humans in their village by killing themself so Asriel could absorb their soul and gain the power needed to kill the humans. Asriel's goodhearted nature won out at the last moment and he could not go through with the plan. When Asriel brought the child's body back to the village, the humans thought Asriel had killed the child and attacked him in response. Asriel did not fight back and eventually went back to his home where he died from his wounds. His death kickstarts the entire plot and many characters in the game state that Asriel was very pure, innocent, and how tragedy washed over the entire monster kingdom when he died.
• Isara in Valkyria Chronicles, who then becomes Welkin's dead little sister; unfailingly kind and forgiving, gentle and demure. Her death is more significant to the story and the development of the rest of the cast than her life.
• While it's optional, sacrificing Rosea in Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume is pretty much this, as she gets to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence as one of Lenneth's Einherjar. She's probably the most Woobieish characters in the series.
• Heather Poe in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is the player character's ghoul and as much of a Nice Girl as you'll ever encounter in the World of Darkness - notably, she never does anything immoral unless she's under vampiric influence, and while she eventually ends up seducing potential victims for you, it turns out she literally can't bring herself to use a weapon to save her life. Guess who ends up horrifically killed, sending the PC on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for failing to protect her?
• Wildstar has the Angel who played a role in the game's Shade's Eve (Halloween for Wildstar's universe) in-game story and event. She was a kind-hearted and compassionate girl based on her spirit's interaction with player. She was one of the few surviving settlers on Cassus when the plague struck on the planet. Due to her immunity from the plague, her blood can be used to create vaccine but her diminutive body meant that she will not survive in the process. Despite the risks, she agreed with her volunteering and her sacrifice immortalized her as the Angel of Shade's Eve celebration.
• It happened multiple times in Xenogears for all of Elly's past incarnation selves, a gentle and sweet nature girl who always sacrifice her life for Fei, causing endless grief for him. The most notable one among her deaths is as 'Mother' Sophia 500 years prior to the game's storyline which became a great lost to the world and is still remembered fondly by future generations

Webcomics

• The epilogue of Darken reveals that the Hero Antagonist Tyr, the Abel to Gort's Cain, disappears from his sickbed after being exorcised of a Prince of Hell's possession, leaving nothing but a long white feather. Since he's previously seen in the company of actual angels and Physical Gods, one can assume Heaven has a good retirement policy.
• Klik of Goblins is one of the all-around kindest, most loyal characters in the series. He is brutally and mercilessly killed while defending the severely wounded Dies Horribly from his (Klik's) psychotic, murderous offspring. His death is one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the comic, at least as much as Chief's.
• Feferi Peixes from Homestuck is a very idealistic character who wanted to create a more equal and just Troll society. When her genocidally Fantastic Racist would-be suitor realizes that she will never be interested in him, he murders her before she has a chance to put any of her plans into effect.
• Nana's Everyday Life ends this way.
• Unsounded: The Platinum caste of Alderode die of old age at 30. The popular Gefendur explanation for this is that Plats are holy enough to be on their final Reincarnation cycle and the Gods cannot bear to be away from them for long. In practice, however, the lack of elders in their caste means they're all childishly foolish until they die of biologically-induced premature organ breakdown.
  • It's even worse with twins; in accordance with Gefendur tradition they are isolated in shrines until they turn 22. The latter is sacrificed and cannibalized, while the elder is Forced to Watch. Did we mention this is a bastardization of the original tradition, where sapient lions would murder their cubs en masse and the humans would follow suit in reverence?
  • Saya and Ilya get their deaths even earlier when their shrine explodes.
  • Subverted with Matty, who loses his innocence before his gruesome demise.
• In The Warrior Returns, Dohun Lim is a teenager who sacrifices decades of his lifespan and suffers Rapid Aging without regret to save the Time World. He's a loving son to his parents and a selfless hero who gave up what few years he had left in an attempt to create a safer world for his family. His kindness and generosity make him Loved by All, with the leaders of Time World begging forgiveness for forcing him to suffer so much to save them. He's ultimately sent to die fighting against Minsu by the South Korean government, his name and face largely unknown to the general populace despite coming close to killing Minsu outright.

Web Original

• Parodied, as always, by The Onion: Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure. This is the origin of Tumblr's use of "cinnamon roll" as an endearing nickname for Ensemble Dark Horses, woobies, and innocent characters/people, many of whom can be found on this page and/or Incorruptible Pure Pureness.

Web Videos

• In Brad Jones' Demo Reel, Admiral Crackers suffered a drug overdose but later turned out to have survived, and Braddie says he was "too sweet for this Earth". Sid is annoyed by Braddie's schmaltz and tells him to fuck off.
• Penny in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Played with in that (almost) everyone mourns her loss as "Captain Hammer's Girlfriend" rather than recognizing the good, selfless person that she was.
• Many would argue that in Escape the Night, Matthew and Rosanna from the third season count. While both come back, Ro ultimately ends up dying a second time.

Western Animation

• Played shockingly straight in the Adventure Time episode "All Your Fault," with the death of Lemonjon, the eldest child of the Lemongrabs. He sacrificed himself so he could save his family. In his Final Speech, he says, "I must dissolve the bonds uniting me, and become component to all!" Finn and Jake are respectfully silent for a moment, before Finn sadly says, "Man, that Lemonjon was all right."
• Beast Wars mixes this trope with Sacrificial Lamb, introducing a deformed, yet powerful robot known as Transmutate, with a child-like innocence that starts off its episode not even knowing good from evil. It winds up befriending Silverbolt and Rampage, who both want to protect it for different reasons. Silverbolt cherishes its innocence, while the insane mutant Rampage feels A Shared Suffering. By the end of the episode, it winds up sacrificing itself to stop its two friends from fighting.
• Bojack Horseman: Beloved Character Actress Margo Martindale namechecks the trope almost verbatim when Skippy (the giant paper mache Todd head) is destroyed.
• Castlevania (2017): All Dracula's wife, Lisa, wanted was to be a doctor, but when a Bishop from the Church mistakes the futuristic medical equipment Dracula gives her as "witchcraft", he has her burned alive. Her final moments are spent telling her son, Alucard, and by extension, Dracula, not to avenge her death, to be better than the people who don't understand she was just trying to help them.
• Spoofed by Futurama, where Bender and every other robot on Earth is being tricked into getting deactivated. They are the cause of global warming, as it turns out. Bender, in a rare moment of altruism, is willing to die (for the turtles), and Fry claims that the world isn't good enough for him. Bender simply replies, "Not even close."
• Mentioned for Laughs in "Toys Will Be Toys" of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
  Billy: (in tears) Oh, Grim, why do the good die young?
  Grim: Well, usually because I get confused.
• Subverted with Pigeon Man from Hey Arnold!, whose decades of negative experiences with human beings don't cause him to commit suicide, but rather fly away with his pigeons into the sun in one of the series' most notable examples of Magic Realism.
• King of the Hill when Buckley dies and causes Luanne to go a little crazy and lose faith in humanity's goodness.
• Spoofed by The Simpsons when Smithers cradled an apparently dead Mr. Burns and cried he was too beautiful to die.
  • Even better, Smithers thought Burns drowned and screamed: "Why do the good die so young?"
  • Played Straight with Bleeding Gums Murphy.
  • Also parodied in the April Fools special. Grandpa says this about Homer when he was in a coma. However, when Homer starts drooling, Grandpa freaks out.
    Grandpa: AAAHH!! Kill it!! KILL IT!!!
• Played with in South Park with Kenny who is arguably the most down-to-earth and morally centered of the four boys (that is, when he’s not unhealthily obsessing over boobs and sex) and he, of course, gets killed in nearly every episode of the first five seasons and nowadays once a season.
  • Played Straight with Chef who was possibly the most down-to-earth of the townsfolk.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "The Gungan General": While Senator Kharrus was probably too much of a sarcastic cynic to actually be considered for the trope, Jar Jar's little eulogy for him alludes to the concept:
  "You-sa find rest, senator. Thosen with good in their heart always passen too soon."
• Deconstructed and ultimately subverted with Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond in Steven Universe. She gave up her physical form to birth Steven, and is described by Steven's dad and the Crystal Gems as the most kind, beautiful, and strongest person they'd ever known. As the series goes on however, Steven finds out that his mother left behind quite a few skeletons in her closet and was lacking in emotional intelligence.
  • Played Straight with Baby Melon, who performs a Heroic Sacrifice so the gems and the other melons will stop attacking each other in "Watermelon Steven". This prompts Steven to tearfully give a "The Reason You Suck" Speech that properly shames everyone into declaring a truce.
  Steven: Look at what you've done! You think I wanted this?! You should all be ashamed! He knew this is what it would take to calm your rage! ... He understood true loyalty. Go! Think about what you've done! And don't come back until you understand what he did for me, for all of us!

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