What's the saddest you've ever got over the death of a fictional character? (WARNING, spoiler city)

Aiko's death in Oyasumi Punpun.

She's lived a completely miserable life, ends up running away with Punpun after he kills her mom in self defense, spends the last few chapters basically rotting and regressing slowly and painfully, as both of them are destroyed by growing toxicity brought about by bubbling anxiety.

It hit hard when she killed herself, it was something that actually took me awhile to get over.

Honorable mentions include Nina's death in Fullmetal Alchemist, Gyro's death in Steel Ball Run, Johnny's death in Jojolion, Naoko's death in Norwegian Wood, probably a fuckton more I'm forgetting.

edited 27th Aug '16 8:22:41 AM by mrsunshinesprinkles

Rundas in Metroid Prime 3, not helping that he was giving me trouble and I thought 'okay, die!' Up until then, I was thinking 'you saved me, now I'm gonna save you!' but I lost it and then I lost him.

Didn't cry, and I have shed tears over fiction before, but his death really brought me down.

edited 29th Aug '16 6:43:20 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

The little girl in Himeko's flashback from Narcissu 2. I literally cried.

From a meta standpoint, all of Shane Bane Neumann's characters.

Thanks to Author Existence Failure... all his pretty awesome OCs are pretty much gone now. Not only was this the death of the OCs that I had fun discussing about, but also the death of one of my best friends (my first friend on TV Tropes, even!)

edited 31st Aug '16 1:00:57 AM by ironcommando

Death of Daniel Jackson, Stargate SG-1.

He got better though.

edited 31st Aug '16 2:31:31 AM by TerminusEst

Poussey Washington without a doubt. Then comes Maes Hughes.

Honorable mentions go to Stoick the Vast, Mordin Solus and Marcus Tullius Cicero, although the last one was a Foregone Conclusion and was as dignified as humanly possible.

Naomi Misora's death, while rather minor, is notable as being the moment where I started feeling pure, genuine, unadulterated hatred for the protagonist and only kept watching the show to see him get his comeuppance - kinda like Nina Tucker's but this one got settled pretty quickly in comparison.

edited 31st Aug '16 12:30:07 PM by Julep

Kingdom Hearts days... Xion...

Also Buffy's mom on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, partly lately for personal reasons and partly because that whole episode is one huge Tear Jerker anyway.

I also felt kind of hollow after finishing Code Geass.

I haven't.

They're fucking FICTIONAL. Why should I get sad over them!?

I mean...if you personally don't get emotional over fiction, then that's fine. But for a lot of people, the ability to evoke emotion and make you care about the characters is an important part of a good story. If it succeeds in doing so, then yeah, people generally get attached, especially if it's a long-running series that they've been following for a long time. You can acknowledge that a character is fictional and still care about them on some level.

I guess from a purely logical perspective it doesn't make much sense, but stories can be powerful that way.

edited 1st Sep '16 8:08:34 AM by SapphireBlue

Getting emotional over things (such as death) happening to a character in a work of fiction just means that the author/artist/director/whatever has done their job and has you invested in the story and what happens to these people.

Yeah, it's even possible to get sad over events that aren't death. (And if someone wants to make that thread, I'll definitely have something to post in it.)

Man, come to think of it, now I have two major contenders:

• Setsuko's in Grave of the Fireflies
• Applejack's in Three Wishes: The Cutie Mark Crusaders Before They Changed the World... even though her death is temporary and sets up a moment of AWESOME for Apple Bloom

I don't know. Cedric's death Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire caught me off guard, but I wasn't super sad. I don't know. I don't get that upset over character death, never to the point of crying or anything.

That death was spoiled for me before I read the book. There was something on the news or some other TV show addressing controversial kids' books and they mentioned they thought that scene was too heavy for younger readers.

The funny thing is, when I first heard that as a kid, my reaction was - and this was in complete Sincerity Mode - "I can't believe it! Cedric dies. No! Why, Cedric? Wait... who's Cedric?"

edited 7th Sep '16 3:40:30 AM by FingerPuppet

When I was reading Homestuck for the first time, long before I was numb to characters dying in the comic, I actually cried over dream!Jade's death. I do not usually cry over characters dying.

Gundam Tanaka's execution in SDR2 got me really bad, too, though.

edited 8th Sep '16 10:31:51 AM by SilvieSkydancer

For me, it's gotta be a two-way tie between Nia Teppelin and Pip Bernadotte.

The deaths of Kamina, Thane, Robb Stark, and Han Solo all had me sobbing for days too, so I'd give them my honorable mentions.

edited 12th Sep '16 12:32:39 AM by sanfranman91

Every single death in Private Peaceful by Micahel Morpurgo. I remember reading it as a kid and being really upset over Charlie's death at the end.

Lennie from Of Mice and Men. Han Solo, Calliope, Cedric Diggory to name a few.

Also, Church from Red vs Blue. Last two times, anyway.

edited 13th Sep '16 12:01:25 PM by RandomWriter413

Can I just talk about LISA again? More specifically the Brad/Dad fight in Joyful? For those who haven't played it, here's the rundown. At the end of Painful, Brad gets shot down Red Dead Redemption style. In his final moments, he asks Buddy to hug him, which gives us the saddest hug in video game history. That's not all, though. In Joyful, you play as Buddy, going around practically committing genocide. The final boss involves Buddy realizing what she did. How? She hallucinates a fight with Brad, which slowly descends into pure unfiltered tears. It is easily the saddest I've ever been with a video game.

edited 13th Sep '16 12:20:12 PM by BaconZorp

You know what the absolute worst is?

When a character dies (even if it's temporary) and the full emotional impact doesn't hit you until much later, because the character took a while to grow on you and you didn't like them all that much when it happened.

The Sniper has very suddenly grown on me the past few days, and now I'm going back to his death in Blood in the Water and I Suffer. Poor dude.

There are a few characters from the Redwall series that come to mind:

• Killconey from Redwall. Easily the most sympathetic, Affably Evil villain in the book. Heck, as far as I remember, he doesn't even do anything actively villainous, he spends his time assisting the other mooks. Yet he gets a shockingly brutal death - Cluny pushes him in front of Matthias, who, without thinking twice, slices him in half with his sword.
• Mask from Mossflower. Such a cool, unique character, who sacrifices himself to save some characters that Tsarmina has taken prisoner.

My mother was both saddened and enraged when Clara Oswald died. I had to convince her to keep watching the show and point out that it's probably a Disney Death, and I was right

Madoka Kaname in the third timeline of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. She basically begged Homura to shoot her corrupted Soul Gem and end her suffering. Worse, Homura had already and painfully reset the timeline twice already, all to save her, and she failed again. The pained scream before Homura pulls the trigger, as well as the silence ensuing during the inevitable gunshot made me stop the episode to contemplate what had just happened.

Spottedleaf's second death in The Last Hope. It felt like a slap in the face and was enough to make me refuse to read any new books in the series, because what's the point of watching if my favorite character isn't around?

Also, Laurel's death in season 4 of Arrow. Poor Black Canary really got screwed over, and she definitely didn't deserve what happened to her. She and Oliver are supposed to fight side by side, which only made it even more heartbreaking.

Edited by Spottedleaf on Jul 22nd 2019 at 8:24:28 AM