NOTE: This is both a Spoilered Rotten trope and a Death Trope, meaning that EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE on this list is a spoiler by default and will be unmarked. This is your last warning, only proceed if you really believe you can handle this list. That being said, it's also possible that examples may involve subversions or multiple protagonists.
- 3:10 to Yuma (2007) ends with the death of the protagonist. After he had survived all the obstacles, too. Not a case of The Bad Guy Wins, though, as even the self-styled heartless villain was touched by his Heroic Sacrifice and stubborn determination.
- James Cole of 12 Monkeys, who is killed before he can stop the virus from being unleashed on the world.
- 13 Assassins: Much like the Gladiator example below, Shinzaemon is stabbed in the gut by Naritsugu before he kills him, and bleeds out after the final battle.
- 30 Days of Night: Eben allows himself to burn in the sun after turning himself to fight the vampires.
- 300: With the sole exception of Dilios, whom Leonidas sent back home to rally Greek support by telling the tale of the 300 Spartans, every one of said 300 Spartans ends up dead on the third day of the Battle of Thermopylae.
- The Afflicted: Grace shoots herself after killing Maggie.
- Ellen Ripley in Alien³. She dies to ensure that Weyland-Yutani can't get the Queen chestburster inside her
- The Alien Factor: The alien who killed the monsters rampaging through the area is shot by the sheriff because of his scary appearance.
- Amen: Ricardo is gassed after infiltrating a concentration camp. Later, Kurt hangs himself when the authorities refuse to believe he resisted the Holocaust.
- Lester from American Beauty tells us that he's dead in the beginning of the film.
- Armageddon (1998): Harry Stamper sacrifices himself to remote-trigger the explosive that will destroy the asteroid.
- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: The Villain Protagonist is shot in the back of the head by the Anti-Hero Robert Ford, who is in turn shot and killed by a disgruntled patron in a bar several years later.
- Taken to the extreme in Avengers: Infinity War where Thanos obtains all six Infinity Stones and snaps his fingers, wiping out half of all life in the entire universe. This includes roughly half the heroes - including Bucky Barnes, Falcon, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, Groot, Drax, Mantis, Star Lord, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury. Later movies reveal that others lost in the snap include the Wasp, Hank Pym, and Princess Shuri. Prior to that, Heimdall, Loki (reformed), Gamora, and Vision are all killed by Thanos too.
- Avengers: Endgame undoes most of those deaths, as those erased by the Infinity Stones are restored, but those who were killed by other means are still dead.note By the end of the movie, Black Widow and Iron Man end up dying to ensure that the day is saved.
- Balibo: Roger East is executed by Indonesian troops during the invasion of Dili. Sadly, it was Truth in Television.
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Just like in the comics, Superman dies and takes Doomsday with him. He would eventually come back to life in Justice League.
- The Battle of Algiers: Ali La Pointe allows the French to blow him up to avoid capture.
- The Black Six are all blown up when the Big Bad makes a kamikaze run at them.
- Nina in Black Swan, who stabs herself with a mirror shard, thinking she has killed Lily, and completes the performance while bleeding profusely. Her actress doesn't believe she died though.
- Officer K/KD6.3-7 in Blade Runner 2049 appears to end up bleeding out from the stab wound given to him by Luv after reuniting Deckard with his estranged daughter.
- Blood & Donuts: Boya commits Suicide by Sunlight.
- Blood Ransom: Jeremiah is shot and killed by Daniel.
- Blood Junkie: Laura has her throat torn out by Andy.
- Blood of Beasts: Freya jumps in front of the villain's blade to save her love.
- Professor Immanuel Rath in The Blue Angel, who goes back to his old school (from which he had been fired) to kill himself.
- In The Book of Eli, Eli has succumbed to his gunshot wound by Carnegie and died upon reading all the contents from his memory of the King James Bible to the Alcatraz press company.
- William Wallace in Braveheart is executed by his British captors, but not before inspiring Scotland for one last push towards freedom.
- Breathless: Michel dies after being shot by the police.
- The Brides of Sodom: Eros is killed by the witches' curse. Later, Samuel is obliterated by the Witch Queen.
- Bubba Ho Tep: After being revealed to have faked his deathnote , the King himself finally dies an old man.
- While it's hard to tell whether or not the eponymous characters of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed in the end, due to its Bolivian Army Ending, the ending itself could be interpreted as anything but ambiguous.
- The title character of Carlito's Way is killed just as he is about to reunite with the one he loves.
- Castle Freak (1995): John throws himself off a tall walkway so he can drag the villain down with him.
- The heroine of Cat People dies and turns into a black panther.
- Most films directed by Shaw Brothers veteran, Chang Cheh, ends with a depressing note. His favourite collaborators, David Chiang and Ti Lung, who played the protagonists in Chang's films, are both Chronically Killed Actors who failed to outlive the credits in more than twelve of the various films in which they're the heroes.
- Children of Men. Theo manages to get Kee and her child to the medical boat in the middle of the sea, but at the cost of being fatally wounded by Luke and succumbing to his injuries just before the boat reaches them.
- In both the book and the movie of Cold Mountain, Inman dies after making it home to Ada and fathering a child.
- Luke in Cool Hand Luke is shot and killed by Godfrey at the end of the film.
- The Crow (1994): Eric Draven returns to the grave after avenging his murder.
- Cube: Worth is stabbed in the stomach by Quentin.
- Cy Warrior: CB 3 overloads his own circuits to keep Brandon alive.
- Cyborg Soldier: ISAAC blows up the bad guys' base with himself inside.
- The Dark (2005): Adele drowns herself to get to the afterlife to save her daughter, and is not resurrected with her.
- Dead Heat: Mortis and Bigelow destroy the machine keeping them alive, condemning themselves to decay.
- Death on Demand: Darla is impaled through the stomach by Sean.
- Death Stop Holocaust: Tim shoots himself in his grief over learning that his daughter has been tortured to death.
- Déjà Vu (2006): Douglas Carlin sacrifices himself to detonate the bomb away from the ferry. Zigzagged in that, because of the film's time travel premise, the Doug from the new timeline survives and gets to be together with Claire. But it doesn't change the fact that the Doug whom we followed throughout most of the film is dead.
- The Departed: Costigan is shot through the head by Barrigan.
- D.O.A.. The protagonist was Dead All Along, and the film was a flashback leading up to his death via poisoning. Luckily, he does expose the villains before he passes.
- Donnie in Donnie Darko uses time travel to engineer that he's in his bed the night a bit of debris from a plane crashes into his room - thus preventing the eventual deaths of his girlfriend Gretchen and Frank, the guy in the bunny suit.
- Dread: Steven gets an axe to the chest because an insane Joshua thinks he's working with the Big Bad.
- The schoolteacher who stands up to the corrupt South African government in A Dry White Season (set during the Apartheid) gets run over by Captain Stolz. The next day, Stolz himself is shot by one of the teacher's friends.
- Easy Rider: Billy is shot by a redneck trucker. As Wyatt goes to get help, his bike gets shot and blown up.
- Elysium: Max agrees to die so that information in his head can save the rest of the people.
- End of Days: Jericho Caine throws himself on a sword to banish Satan back to Hell.
- Faust: Love of the Damned: John Jaspers dies in the process of defeating the Devil, which required nullifying the contract that kept him alive.
- Huo Yuanjia from Fearless, who dies after being poisoned during a match. Notably, Tanaka realizes this and has Huo declared as the victor, and the latter succumbs to his injuries seconds later.
- Fist of Fury/The Chinese Connection. Bruce Lee's chracter, Chen, takes on a suicidal fight against a large group of adversaries in order to retain his honor and protect his school. Notably, the real-life Chen Zhen survived and successfully escaped from Shanghai.
- In Ford V Ferrari, Ken Miles dies in a crash while testing at the Riverside International Raceway, just as he did in real life.
- Any one who is familiar with the real life story of the 47 Ronin should know how the film is gonna end.
- Frankenstein's Bloody Terror: Waldemar is shot in the heart by his lover when his werwolf form attacks her.
- The Australian film Gallipoli. Archy is shot by Turkish soldiers after being forced by his commander to make a run into No Man's Land, with Frank arriving seconds too late to relay an order to hold off on the attack.
- Get Carter: Jack Carter (Michael Caine) is shot by the mysterious "J".
- Ling from The Generation Gap ends up being shot and killed by the mobsters, after refusing to serve them in the last few minutes of the film.
- The Ghost Writer: The protagonist gets run over by a car and presumably dies in the final scene.
- This happens in Gladiator. Maximus is fatally stabbed before his fight with the Big Bad, but succeeds in killing him before succumbing to his injuries.
- Godzilla:
- Godzilla (1954): Daisuke Serizawa activates the Oxygen Destroyer to stop Godzilla, then cuts the rope tethering him to a boat so that the secret of the Oxygen Destroyer will die with him.
- Godzilla vs. Destoroyah lived up to its tagline as the Heisei Godzilla dies due to his Superpower Meltdown in the end — and in the process revived his son.
- Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell: Sugisaka is blown up with the rest of humanity by the aliens.
- Walt Kowalski dies at the end of Gran Torino. After Spider and his gang go too far and viciously gang-rape Sue Lor, the audience is expecting bloody retribution of Biblical proportions (since this is a Clint Eastwood movie). But Walt, a veteran of the Korean War, knows full well the horrors of killing, wants nothing to do with it anymore, and doesn't want Thao, her brother, to get himself killed or end up with the stain on his soul that comes with killing. Instead, Walt tricks Spider and his gang into shooting him in broad daylight, shattering the code of silence of the Hmong neighborhood which has kept them unpunished and getting the entire gang put away for murder.
- Guyana: Crime of the Century: The day when the massacre occurs, O'Brien aims to take all the people who accepted to leave Johnsontown to Port Kaituma to travel to Georgetown and then then United States. However, at Johnson's orders, a group of henchmen reach the airstrip and begin shooting at the people who try to leave. O'Brien ends up being one of the casualties.
- Hands of the Ripper: Pritchard bleeds out from a stab wound.
- Harakiri: Hanshiro is gunned down by some Ii clan men.
- Hatchet: Marybeth, the Final Girl of the first three films, is finally mortally wounded by Crowley in the third, but manages to take him out before she expires. Confirmed in the fourth entry.
- Hell of the Living Dead: Lt. Mike London is eaten by the zombies.
- Halloween:
- First, let's count the ways, prior to her surviving the 2018-2022 trilogy that the series has seen Laurie Strode die:
- Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Laurie is killed off-screen in a car accident with her daughter, Jamie, taking over.
- One of the more hated aspects of Halloween: Resurrection was the film opening with Michael Myers killing Laurie Strode after retconning it wasn't really Michael she's killed at the end of Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.
- While she survives to the end of the Halloween II (2009) in the theatrical cut, the director's cut sees Laurie gunned down by Haddonfield's finest after she donned Michael's mask and grabbed his knife.
- Back to the Thorn trilogy, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers sees Jamie murdered by Michael after escaping the Cult of Thorn and giving birth to the child they forced her to carry — which in the Producer's Cut was Michael himself.
- First, let's count the ways, prior to her surviving the 2018-2022 trilogy that the series has seen Laurie Strode die:
- The Hindenburg: Col. Ritter fails to prevent one of the 20th century's infamous air disasters when a bomb blows up in his face.
- Hitler, Dead or Alive: Though his mission to kill Hitler is successful, Steve Maschick is shot at a firing squad by the Nazis.
- Hobo with a Shotgun: The Hobo gets killed at the end by police for killing Drake, but then gets avenged by the townspeople.
- The Howling: Karen is shot after turning into a werewolf on live TV.
- I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House: Lily is scared to death by the haunting, and her spirit ends up haunting the house.
- The bureaucrat protagonist of Akira Kurosawa's classic Ikiru dies in the neighborhood playground he created to justify his life.
- The Imitation Game: Alan Turing commits suicide after being forced into chemical castration.
- Dr. Olham explodes at the end of Impostor when he realizes that he was in fact the biorobot that the police have been looking for. However, his original target, the Chancellor, survives, since she's outside the blast area.
- The Incredible Melting Man: Ted Nelson is shot and killed while trying and failing to convince a security guard that the melting monster is a man in need of rescue.
- The Innkeepers: The ghosts cause Claire to have a fatal asthma attack.
- Detective Will Dormer dies at the end of Insomnia. It straddles the line between downer and bittersweet. He redeems himself for his sins and kills Kay's murderer, and he ensures that Ellie Burr maintains her integrity. On the other hand, by doing so Dormer ensures that a large part of his life's work will be undone when his dishonesty gets out.
- It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want To: It's not made abundantly clear what happens to Sara, but she's dragged off by a ghost and blood splatters on the door she was near, so she's probably dead.
- John Wick: Chapter 4: After fighting his way through all of Paris' goons and having his final showdown with Caine and The Marquis, all of the wounds John has accumulated through this and all the previous movies finally catch up with him and he (possibly) passes away a free man.
- Jug Face: Ada is sacrificed to the Pit to sate its wrath.
- Kagemusha: Kagemusha is gunned down by Nobunaga snipers.
- A foregone conclusion in Kate since the premise is that the poison will kill her within 24 hours. And it does.
- Ah Jong of John Woo's The Killer (1989) dies without fulfilling his promise to have Jenny's eyes fixed. Wong Hoi, the same triad boss who killed Ah Jong, is finished off by Inspector Li Ying, the other primary hero. But Li is arrested by his fellow officers afterward because he did it in cold blood right in front of them.
- The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue of Kill the Messenger reveals Gary Webb was Driven to Suicide. Sadly, it was Truth in Television.
- L: change the WorLd: To capture Kira, L writes his own name in the Death Note, giving himself 23 days to live. The film is about how he chooses to spend them.
- Firefighter Jack Morrison in Ladder 49. Once he realizes he has no chance to escape the burning building, he tells everyone else to get out and lets himself perish.
- The Last Man on Earth: Robert Morgan is speared to death by other survivors, who view him as a monster for unwittingly killing them.
- Lawrence of Arabia actually begins with Lawrence's death in a motorcycle accident in 1935. It's followed by a funeral scene where several of the other characters talk about their impressions of the man before flashing back to World War I, where the rest of the film takes place over the course of 1916-1918.
- Lincoln: It's about Abraham Lincoln. What do you expect?
- Logan, as befitting the fact that it was (supposed to be at the time) the last time Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart played the respective roles, sees Wolverine and Professor X die with Xavier being killed by a clone of Wolverine and Wolverine, with his Healing Factor failing, succumbing to injuries he received trying to protect his "daughter" Laura and the other runaways. After they bury him, Laura goes back and turns his gravemarker on its side to make an "X" to honor him as the last of the X-Men.
- While it's hard to call the protagonist of Looper a hero, he does give his life to keep the woman safe and her son from becoming a monster in the future. Since he's too far away to keep his embittered future self from shooting the woman, he turns his blunderbuss on himself, and his future self vanishes moments later. The gold further ensures the woman and her son get to lead a better life, so perhaps the boy won't grow up to level cities with his mind.
- Mad Dog Morgan: Morgan is killed by gunshot during his last stand.
- In The Magician, the Villain Protagonist is stated to have been killed in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue.
- John Creasy dies at the end of Man on Fire, but he accomplishes all his objectives by taking out almost all of the kidnapping organization and even saving Pita's life. His death is also a "screw you!" to the bad guys, since he dies before the Voice (the brains behind the operation) can get his hands on him. The Voice himself is killed by Detective Manzano on the same day.
- Manborg: Manborg gives up his life support to save Mina's life.
- The Matrix Revolutions: Neo and Trinity die at the end of the film, though it isn't a Downer Ending, since he fulfilled his purpose successfully.
- In Max (2002), the titular Jewish art dealer is beaten to death by some Germans who have just heard Adolf Hitler's latest speech.
- Monty Python's Life of Brian: Brian gets crucified. While the death itself doesn't happen onscreen, the fact that anyone who knew he was hanging from a crucifix all decided to just leave him there makes it extremely unlikely he would have made it out of that one alive.
- Mulholland Dr.: The heroine commits suicide.
- Nazi Overlord: Captain Rogers explodes from the zombie virus-carrying bugs busting out of his body.
- Ned Kelly (1970): The film opens with Ned's hanging.
- Night of the Living Dead (1968): After surviving the eponymous first night of the Zombie Apocalypse, Ben is killed the morning after when he is mistaken for a zombie by a group of roving bikers who are cleaning up the problem themselves.
- No Country for Old Men is a particularly interesting case, both in the original novel and film adaptation. Llewelyn Moss dies off-screen after being tricked into a meeting with Mexican gun runners, with Sheriff Bell only finding his body minutes after the fact. Definitely a The Bad Guy Wins and a Downer Ending.
- No Time to Die: After being infected with Safin's nanobots, which are programmed to kill Madeleine Swann and her daughter should he come into contact with them (in addition to an unknown number of other people), James Bond (the Daniel Craig incarnation) decides to stay on Safin's island while the Royal Navy missile strike he asked M to order rains down on it and dies in the ensuing explosions.
- Bond's best friend Felix Leiter gets killed earlier in the film after CIA traitor Logan Ash fatally shot him and left him and Bond to drown.
- Jack Harper (Tech 49) does a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Oblivion (2013) by detonating a nuke within the Tet and destroying it. Fortunately for the heroine Julia, Jack's other surviving clone (tech 52) manages to reunite with her after 3 years of searching the forest house.
- The Open House: Logan is strangled to death by the killer after being hunted down for a night straight.
- In Pan's Labyrinth, Vidal shoots Ofelia as the mill is being raided by the rebels. Given that she is actually a reincarnated fairy princess, dying means she gets to rejoin her people in the faerie realm.
- At the end of The Parallax View, Joe Frady is shot and killed by an assassin.
- Paranormal Activity: Every film in the series has the main protagonist die at the end of it.
- The Passion of Joan of Arc: Joan is burnt at the stake.
- In Pay It Forward, Trevor dies protecting a kid from some bullies. Nonetheless, his dream of changing the world by doing random acts of kindness lives on.
- The 1960 Film Noir Pay or Die is a Biopic of Lt. Joe Petrosino, a crusading honest cop who fights against The Mafia. It ends with his assassination in Sicily.
- In Philadelphia, Andrew Beckett wins his trial, but succumbs to AIDS.
- El Wray in Planet Terror is shot by a Sicko while protecting Cherry, and tells her to go to the ocean before he dies.
- The Professional: Leon is shot In the Back by corrupt cop Norman Stansfield but is able to kill him with a grenade before he dies.
- Le Professionnel: Josselin Beaumont is sniped by Farges on the orders of his former French secret service boss just as he was about to board a helicopter after causing the death of the African president he was ordered to kill before the French secret service sold him out.
- Ran: Hidetora has a fatal heart attack after losing his kingdom and his daughter.
- In Ra.One, both human hero Shekar and his robotic successor, G.One, die (although G.One ultimately comes Back from the Dead). Shekar ends up dying by attempting to protect his son from Ra.One, while G.One sacrifices himself at the climax of the film to ensure the defeated Ra.One stays dead.
- Both Red Dawn (1984) and Red Dawn (2012) end with Jed dying. The former occurs when Jed is shot by Colonel Strelnikov in the process of defeating him, and the latter occurs at the end just after Jed kills Captain Cho.
- Red Sun: Jubei is shot by Gauche, but Link manages to complete his quest.
- Remember Me: At the end of the film, Tyler Hawkins is revealed to be one of the thousands of people who perish at the 9/11 attacks.
- Robin and Marian ends with Robin Hood dying after defeating the Sheriff of Nottingham. He is poisoned by Marian, who took some herself.
- Rogue One: Jyn and Cassian die in the Death Star blast after transmitting the plans needed to destroy it to the Rebel Alliance.
- The Room (2003): Johnny is Driven to Suicide by his fiance's infidelity with his best friend.
- In the Liam Neeson movie Run All Night, Jimmy Conlon dies after being shot by Mr. Price, but not before killing him with a well-placed headshot.
- Sabotage (2014): Breacher bleeds to death after being fatally shot in the final shootout.
- Savaged: Zoe is burnt alive by her boyfriend in a Mercy Kill.
- Captain John Miller and nearly all of his squad from Saving Private Ryan die holding a small bridge from the German army. Miller dies just after U.S. reinforcements roll in to save the day.
- Shane is remembered for its heart-breaking final scene in which the hero rides away without his bullet wound being treated. While we never find out for sure that the shot was fatal, it's probably the most common interpretation of the ending.
- John Wayne's final film The Shootist ends with John Books walking away from another gunfight, only for another assailant to take him down with a shotgun.
- Orpheus is decapitated by the Furies at the end of Shredder Orpheus, finally reuniting with Eurydice in death.
- The Sixth Sense: Malcolm himself at the end is revealed to be Dead All Along. The film concludes with Malcolm saying goodbye to his wife and moving on to the afterlife after he finally comes to terms with his fate.
- The Slaughter: Dana blows herself up in an attempt to destroy the demons.
- Curtis from Snowpiercer pulls a heroic sacrifice by shielding Yona and Timmy from the explosion blast, his body wasn't shown in the aftermath.
- The eponymous antifascist of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Pretty much a Foregone Conclusion, especially if you know the Real Life story of Hans and Sophie Scholl.
- Luke Skywalker, the main hero of the Star Wars movies dies peacefully in The Last Jedi after spending his life force to create a projection light years away to protect what's left of the Resistance.
- The film adaptation of The Stepford Wives ends with Joanna being killed and replaced with a robotic lookalike.
- Sunset Boulevard opens with Joe's corpse lying in Norma's pool. The rest of the movie follows the events that led to his murder.
- Tales of Halloween:
- "The Night Billy Raised Hell": Billy is gunned down by the police the second he's released from captivity.
- "Ding Dong": Jack is shived in the oven after his wife learns he had a vasectomy.
- Talk Radio: Barry Champlain is shot in a parking lot by a deranged Neo-Nazi.
- Teenagers from Outer Space: Derek is killed by the mass crash of the alien fleet.
- TerrorVision: Sherman is devoured by the Hungry Beast.
- Nada (played by Rowdy Roddy Piper) from They Live!. His death ends up saving the world, however. At the end, he dies giving the camera the finger. Arguably a metaphor for the whole movie.
- Tian Di ends with the protagonist, Cheung, and Sole Survivor of the detective squad, delivering the evidence on the villain Paul Tai's drug dealing activities... only for the military general receiving the evidence to suddenly betray and shoot Cheung dead. Turns out the general has been bribed by the villain. Cue a really depressing The Bad Guy Wins ending.
- Thelma & Louise ended with our heroines driving their car off a cliff. It ends on a freeze frame, though it's obvious they won't get out of this one.
- The end text of Time After Time mentions H. G. Wells's real world death in the 1940's.
- Jack Dawson from Titanic (1997), who ends up freezing to death in frigid water after the Titanic sinks.
- Train to Busan: The main character Seok-woo is turned into a zombie at the end.
- Tremors 7: Shrieker Island sees Burt Gummer give up his life to kill the Grabiod Queen.
- Uncut Gems: He's a Villain Protagonist, but Howard ends up getting killed by Phil after winning the biggest bet of his life.
- Kaja, the main heroine of Utøya: July 22 by Erik Poppe, a reenactment of the Breivik Massacre (which happened on the island Utøya on 22. July 2011) from the perspective of the victims. Shot dead in the last two minutes of the attack, while searching for her little sister, mere moments before they could be reunited.
- V for Vendetta: V allows the baddies to gun him down so his final attack can be seen through.
- The Vampire: Beecher is gunned down by police while his Superpowered Evil Side has taken over.
- According to the ending scroll of Vlad Tepes, Vlad is killed two months after taking his throne back.
- The Void: Carter throws himself into the Void to kill the Big Bad.
- Von Ryan's Express: Joseph Ryan is shot in the back at the end by Colonel Gortz.
- The Wages of Fear is a French film about a man in South Africa hired to drive a Nitro Express to put out a fire in an oilfield. Out of all the men hired, he's the only one to make it to the oilfield. He gets paid a fortune... and then decides it's a fun idea to drive his truck fast on a winding mountain road. You can guess how this ends.
- The Wailing: Jong-Goo is stabbed to death by his possessed daughter.
- War for the Planet of the Apes: Caesar is mortally wounded in the Final Battle, but lives just long enough to see his fellow apes finally get their happy ending, with his closest friend Maurice assuring him that future generations of apes will know what he sacrificed for their kind.
- When the Last Sword Is Drawn: Primary protagonist Yoshimura Kanichiro makes it back to Nambu horribly wounded from his battle with the Imperial Army, and succumbs to his injuries overnight.
- The Wicker Man (1973) famously ends with Sgt. Neil Howie being burned alive inside a wicker man as a pagan sacrifice.
- Wolfman: Colin is knocked out of a second-story window and has a silver dagger pierce his heart during the climactic battle.
- Zombie Wars: Danny is shot through the head by soldiers who confuse him for a zombie.
