Driven To Suicide / Western Animation

"I thought this was supposed to be Disney, the Happiest Place on Earth... happy like a bullet to the head!"

As a Death Trope, expect spoilers, both marked and unmarked.

Times where somebody is Driven to Suicide in Western Animation.

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• Adventure Time:
  • In "Ghost Princess", after accidentally killing his girlfriend, Clarence (who became the titular princess) became a depressed hobo who ultimately died by force-feeding himself liquid cheese until exploding.
  • In "Princess Cookie", this happens to Baby Snaps. His desperate attempts to become a princess culminate in holding hostages to obtain the crown from Princess Bubblegum, which gets him in trouble. She sends guards after him, and rather than getting caught, Baby Snaps decides to purposefully and blissfully fall off a cliff. However, since he's a cookie, the fall simply causes him to break into several still-living pieces which are reassembled in a hospital.
  • In "Dad's Dungeon", Finn tries to eat a poisoned apple after he becomes convinced that his adopted dad Joshua hated him and thought he was a sissy.
  • Princess Monster Wife, arguably. However, her death was a Heroic Suicide; she killed herself by giving her parts back to the princesses from which the Ice King had stolen them.
  • One episode has Princess Bubblegum state that she keeps cyanide pills underneath her table, presumably in case of a worst case scenario.
• American Dad!:
  • In an episode, one of Francine's friends sinks into a deep depression and Roger (disguised as a psychologist) offers this "helpful" advice: "You should totally kill yourself."
  • "Every Which Way But Lose" has Stan take Second Place Is for Losers to new extremes: When Steve and Roger manage to pull off an upset victory in against his peewee football team, Stan immediately goes home and tries to hang himself. Steve tries to demonstrate that losing isn't the end of the world by taking Stan to a carnival; Stan puts a knife to his own throat after missing one throw at an obviously rigged ring toss game. Eventually Steve introduces Stan to the idea of crying, to which Stan replies "What a wonderful alternative to committing suicide!"
  • In yet another episode, this is actually Played for Laughs, believe it or not; Stan gets a call from Steve's principal. He immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion:
    Stan: Oh, God, it's the gay call! I've been dreading this for years! [begins powering an entire bottle of pills] ...Oh, he's just barricaded himself in your office and won't leave? [his mouth begins to froth; he glances offscreen] Dave! Antidote!
  • In a season 8 episode he actually goes through with it, shooting himself in the head with an antique revolver. Fortunately for Stan and others, the episode isn't canon, it's actually a play being performed by the cast in-universe (apparently written by one of the staff writers on a massive cocaine bender before he O'D'd. He actually wrote 12 more, but apparently Patrick Stewart ate them all in a fit of jealousy).
  • In another season 8 episode ("The Adventures of Twill Ongenbone and His Boy Jabari"), Steve's teacher Mr. Brink decides to jump out of the window after hearing one of Stan's monologues about wanting to kill himself.
  • Another episode has Klaus look at the camera and tell an acquaintance to kill himself because of how cliche and formulaic his life is.
    Klaus: Your life has been lived a thousand times! Kill yourself!
• Subverted horribly in Aqua Teen Hunger Force due to Snap Back.
  • In "The Clowning", after being transformed into a clown from buying a cursed wig, Carl attempts to shoot himself in the face with a balloon shotgun.
  • In "Video Ouija", Shake killed himself so he could haunt Meatwad through a video game. In very thorough fashion. (Sucked down carbon monoxide from Carl's car, took sleeping pills, and let himself get eaten by piranhas.) Know the worst part? Meatwad was bored with said video game by then, and his only reaction to finding out Shake was dead was "that's good".
  • In "Dirtfoot", Shake killed himself so an old woman's top would disappear. At least Frylock was happy...
  • Shake also attempted suicide because he's disappointed over his supposed son Ezekial's lack of sports skills. Carl was pissed because Shake was using his car to kill himself.
  • In "Dumber Dolls", Meatwad's Happy Time Harry doll turns out to be a Straw Nihilist who makes everyone around him equally miserable. The last straw for Frylock is when Harry drives the newer Jiggle Billy doll that Frylock bought to shoot his own head off with his musket. Being a toy, Billy doesn't die but says that he's still depressed.
• As Told by Ginger:
  • An episode involved Ginger writing a poem called "And She Was Gone" that the adults at school infer is about suicide. They get worried about her mental health and, despite Ginger insisting that it is just fiction and that she is perfectly fine, she is sent to the school psychologist.
  • A Show Within a Show involved a woman jumping out a window, at her daughter's birthday of all things, because she was dumped. It's later shown she survived though.
• In the Batman Beyond episode "Meltdown", Mr. Freeze, having returned to his villainous ways following an attempted return to a normal life, lets himself be killed by an explosion rather than be saved by Batman. He had already been pretty badly injured by Blight, but his choice was more out of despair than any sense of inevitability. When Batman screams at him to run, telling him he'll be killed, Freeze tells him, "Believe me, you're the only one who cares."
• Batman: The Animated Series: In "Day of the Samurai", Batman fights a skilled ninja named Kyodai, who is his longtime rival. As they fight on top of an exploding volcano, a river of lava separates them both, and strands Kyodai on a melting rock. Batman still attempts to save him by throwing a Batarang to him, but he tosses it into the lava and silently bows to Batman before being killed by the lava. He did this because he knew he could never defeat Batman, and could never be the best, but at least he showed respect to Batman, who he considered a worthy adversary.
• In the Beany and Cecil episode "Ben Hare" a program on tv is shown about a famous rabbit and his many sons, eventually the stork is so tired of delivering the baby rabbits that he shoots himself, his dead body is then shown smiling.
• By the end of season 3 of BoJack Horseman, pretty much everyone in BoJack's life has either abandoned him or BoJack himself has pushed them away: he fired his agent after losing two possible movie roles, Todd is no longer speaking to him after he reveals he slept with his ex-girlfriend, and he attempts to tape a new reboot of Horsin' Around, the sitcom he loved doing, only to succumb to the pressure. In the very end, to the accompaniment of Nina Simone's interpretation of Janis Ian's "Stars", he is driving his Tesla out in the desert at top speed, with the intention of killing himself, but stops when he sees some wild horses running.
• During his short film days, Casper the Friendly Ghost had attempted to do this every so often, only to get not harmed at all, the good-hearted latter being already a ghost.
• Classic Disney Shorts:
  • One of Disney's Wartime Cartoons, The Old Army Game, had Donald Duck attempting to shoot himself after he believed he had been sawed in half.
  • In an oft-censored scene from "Donald's Dilemma" (seen above), Daisy Duck admits to being driven to suicide when a blow to the head causes Donald to leave her to become a singer.
  • The Pluto short Plutopia has Pluto's cat servant pointing a shotgun to his head after he spills Pluto's milk, causing Pluto to slap it out of his hand. It was All Just a Dream.
  • In the Walt Disney Presents episode "The Goofy Success Story", Goofy nearly throws himself into the sea (in a parody of A Star Is Born) after getting snubbed at the Oscars.
• Code Lyoko features Aelita doing this in the final episode of season 2, but it was stopped by Jérémie. Her motives here are complex and confusing, blending a bit of Goodbye, Cruel World! with Heroic Sacrifice and Martyr Without a Cause. Yes, all of those apply. She did this a ton of times. In "Just In Time", she did this and was brought back to life via backup data.
• Though it's not called suicide, nor is death even alluded, the Wonderful Life episode of The Fairly OddParents! had Timmy eventually concluding that, since everyone's apparently happy in the world where he was never born, he should forfeit his own right to exist. For clarity, this is a ten-year-old boy who comes to the depressed conclusion that he only causes misery in others so he should just accept being erased from existence. Sure, it's all a Secret Test of Character, but the realization needed to "pass" the test was, for all intents and purposes, "my suicide will make everyone else happy." It's one of two episodes which the showrunners requested not be rerun due to the negative viewer reaction.
• Family Guy:
  • Subverted. Neil pretends to be about to jump off of a building, but later he tells Meg that he wasn't going to jump, regardless of whether she tried to stop him.
  • In the episode "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows", Brian regrets yelling at Pearl after he learns of her ill-fated singing career. He rushes to her house to apologize, only to find her about to hang herself. Luckily, he manages to stop Pearl in time and convinces her that he was impressed by her singing, prompting Pearl to have a change of heart.
  • Stewie decided to kill himself over his fear of the cover of Queen's News of the World album, getting as far as putting the gun in his mouth before Brian slapped it away.
  • Subverted in "Believe It or Not, Joe's Walking on Air". When the women decided to make the Drunken Clam their new hangout spot, Peter takes Joe's gun and shoots himself in the mouth. It turned out to be one of his "Scrubs fantasy moments".
  • In the episode "Lois Comes Out of Her Shell" Meg tries to kill herself by overdosing on sleeping pills, but Stewie's homicidal pet turtle replaces them with Alka-Seltzer tablets, so instead of dying she lets out a long burp.
  • Parodied in one episode where Lois tells Meg that "it doesn't matter how many signatures a Facebook petition has, it doesn't mean you have to kill yourself".
  • The trilogy segment "Point of Stew" has Meg tell Stewie to keep her treasured ring with him in a despondent, miserable voice.
    Stewie: *freaked out* Okay, red flag, red flag everybody!
  • After Brian explaining death to him, and following it up with his belief that there is no afterlife, Stewie becomes despondent and decides to just end it all. First by trying to hang himself, which he can't due to his lack of a neck and the football shape of his head, then by Electrified Bathtub, but this fails when the toaster he used just ended up giving him superpowers as "Toasterman". He then tries committing Suicide by Cop, but the cop turns out to be Joe, who is also suicidal and tries to get Stewie to shoot him. Finally, he attempts to just Eat His Gun, but is stopped by Brian. Brian then convinces Stewie there is a heaven, and Stewie gets so excited to be there he attempts to jump out the 2nd floor window.
  • At the end of "In Harmony's Way", Peter talks about how happy he is to be home with his family after his and Quagmire's singing career fell apart, and how "life after fame is always better than before". He then goes straight into his tour bus and shoots himself.
  • Played for Laughs in "I Dream of Jesus" when Stewie gets so annoyed by Peter singing Surfin' Bird that he randomly pulls a gun from his booster seat and puts the barrel in his mouth when he starts singing the song once again.
  • In one Cutaway Gag Lois offers Peter to join her book group. Peter excitedly agrees, then promptly snaps his own neck.
• In the first Felix the Cat short Feline Follies, Felix (then known as "Master Tom") gases himself after learning his girlfriend Kitty White has had over a dozen kittens.
• In The Flintstones episode "Little Bamm-Bamm", when it seems like the Rubbles will not be able to keep Bamm-Bamm, Barney gets ready to do this by tying himself to a boulder and dropping himself in the river. However, when the case is dropped and the Rubbles are allowed to keep Bamm-Bamm, Fred and the others go to stop him just in time. Barney then gives the boulder to Fred, causing him to fall off (lucky for him, the river was shallow).
• Follow the Sun: Happens twice: the first time is an ice-cream dancer hanging herself, and the second is a bag of popcorn attempting this by cutting into it's left eyeball with a potato chip, each cut removing another kernel under the presumption that emptying out all the popcorn will put the bag out of its misery.
• "The Bride to Beat" episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has a depressed raindrop imaginary friend trying to jump off the top of the house after his creator grows up and abandons him. Bloo accidentally throws him off the house. Twice. He survives both times due to holding onto an umbrella.
• Futurama:
  • "Space Pilot 3000": Bender meets Fry while waiting in line to use a suicide booth, later revealing that discovering his primary function was to build the suicide booths was what drove him to the decision.
  • "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back": Hermes threatens to jump off the Planet Express balcony after being demoted by the Central Bureaucracy. However, since he didn't file the proper Suicide papers, doing so would have caused him to be demoted even further.
  • "Less Than Hero" (subversion): Fry and Leela, having gained superpowers earlier in the episode, are in the Mayor's office getting surface passes for Leela's mutant parents when he's trying to summon their superheroic alter egos. After Leela and Bender make up excuses to leave, Fry just yells, "And I just can't take life anymore!" and leaps out the window, only to break through an adjacent window moments later as Captain Yesterday.
  • "The Sting" (serious example): Feeling Survivor Guilt for the death of Fry, Leela decides after a long string of Mind Screws and It Was All Just A Dream that the only way to keep her sanity in check for good is to eat enough space honey to fall into a permanent sleep. Thankfully the whole ordeal was just Adventures In Coma Land and she comes back to reality afterwards, the Fry she was envisioning being the real Fry sitting at her bedside, pleading for her to wake up.
  • Bender's Big Score: A time-traveling Bender mistakes a phone booth for a suicide booth. He asks for "Electrocution, please. Side order of poison." (Neither of which are deadly to robots!)
  • "Ghost in the Machines": After Fry saves a paleontologist from a deadly parade float, Bender becomes so upset over Fry's choice of the human over the robot that he threatens to kill himself, something he has done many times before — only this time, he actually does it. However, after spending most of the episode as a digital ghost, he gets better.
  • "Overclockwise": Fry decides, after Farnsworth gets arrested and Leela decides to leave Planet Express and move to another planet, to kill himself by jumping down Niagra Falls in a barrel. It doesn't quite work, as it turns out.
  • "Meanwhile": Fry proposes to Leela, and tells her to meet him on the roof of the Vampire State Building at 6:30 if she accepts. When she doesn't show up, Fry decides to kill himself and jumps off the roof... only to see Leela arriving: Fry had been fooling around with the Professor's latest invention, a button that rewinds time by ten seconds, which had caused his watch to run late (as it ran normally despite the rewinding of time), and tries to reset time to before he jumped before he hits the ground. Problem is, he'd been falling for more than 10 seconds! Fry falls to his death several times before his suicide is ultimately prevented.
• A metaphorical one occurs in Gargoyles. After the Wyvern massacre and the sleeping curse on the remaining gargoyles, Goliath's last request of the Magnus is to also place the curse on him too so he could be with the last of his clan. Since everyone had believed the only way to break the spell was if "the castle rose above the clouds", Goliath did not expect to ever wake up. Greg Weisman even describes this act as a "suicide".
• In the Polish short A Gentle Spirit, a young woman ran from her husband and jumped out the window.
• Home on the Rails: The gold prospector kills himself by laying down on the railroad tracks when an encroaching railroad means he can't pan for gold anymore.
• The House of Mouse episode "Dennis the Duck" focuses on the eponymous black-and-white duck character, who idolizes Donald Duck and dreams of being as funny as him. Donald spends most of the episode pushing Dennis away, prompting Dennis to conclude that if he isn't funny, there's no point in living. He then erases himself with a pencil eraser, but a repentant Donald arrives just in time and re-draws him before convincing him that his signature sandwich gag really is funny.
• In the Jem episode "A Change Of Heart", Minx nearly drowns and the experience causes her to change her personality. Her bandmates can't stand how she isn't her confident, arrogant self anymore and kick her out. She turns to Rio when she has nowhere to go but he states he has his own life to live, which upsets her. Saying she has nothing to live for, Minx tries to jump off a building but is stopped by Rio. Later in the same episode it appears she's going to attempt suicide, but she really just throws one of Rio's instruments off the building in anger and goes back to The Stingers.
• Kaeloo:
  • Usually happens to poor Stumpy, who fails all his attempts. Reasons include thinking he can't impress a girl he likes and finding out that magic isn't real.
  • In one episode, the trope is Played for Laughs. Mr. Cat gets so fed up with Stumpy's idiocy that he hangs himself. Since Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, he's alive and well by the next scene.
• Bill Dauterive of King of the Hill had periodic bouts with depression turn so bad that he became suicidal especially on Christmas because that was when his wife divorced him. Bill's suicide attempts were played seriously, but his neighbors' reactions to it were not. Hank was annoyed by having to take time off of work to go on "suicide watch", Dale didn't care if Bill died or not and was eager to steal his stuff, and Boomhauer was tired of it eating up so much of his time.
• Many Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons feature characters offing themselves after seeing something particularly ridiculous. Occasionally, especially in Tex Avery's cartoons, they ended with the main character shooting themselves, such as in Red Hot Riding Hood. These scenes are particularly shocking to modern audiences, and typically censored these days except in uncut releases.
  • Bob Clampett's Tortoise Wins by a Hare is a commonly cited example of this trope. A group of mobster rabbits have bet heavily on Bugs Bunny to win a race between him and nemesis Cecil the Turtle, wherein both participants are up to lots of chicanery to one-up each other, and it eventually has both rivals disguised as the other species (i.e., Bugs as Cecil and vice versa). Cecil-as-Bugs wins, thanks to the other rabbits attacking Bugs just a hair (or is that hare?) from the finish line and allowing Cecil to win. A frustrated Bugs reveals he was the rabbit and while Cecil is celebrating his victory, the trope kicks in: "Eh! Now he tells us!" they say in despair as they line up and blow a single bullet through each of their heads, shocking Bugs as they fall dead in front of him at the iris out. ^note (In virtually every television print since the 1960s, the cartoon immediately fades to black the instant before the rabbit on the left is seen reaching into his pocket for his gun.)
  • Bugs Bunny also starred in another cartoon where a suicide took place: 1957's "Rabbit Romeo." Here, Bugs, trying to dodge Elmer Fudd's new pet rabbit — a grotesquely fat, horrifically ugly Slobbovian rabbit named Millicent — takes Elmer's pet goldfish and rubs it across Millicent's lips, to make her think she's kissing Bugs. After Bugs puts the goldfish back in its bowl, the fish takes a gun from his pocket, goes into his abode ... after which a gunshot is heard, implying he killed himself.
  • In Chuck Jones' Cheese Chasers, a pair of mice named Hubie and Bertie decide to commit suicide-by-cat after having eaten themselves sick on cheese and decide that there's nothing left to live for since they'll never be able to enjoy cheese again. They only succeed in driving the cat (Claude) to suicide as well. A bulldog, Marc Antony, being provoked to kill Claude, tries to find logic in the scenario, but he ends up snapping and chasing after the local city dog catcher.
    Marc Antony: HEY! WAIT FOR ME! WAIT FOR BABY!
    Claude: [chasing Marc] Hey, wait for me! You gotta massacre me!
    Hubie and Bertie: [chasing Claude] Wait, you cowardly cat!
  • In "Martian Through Georgia", an alien bored and unhappy with his home planet's near-utopian society decides to visit Earth for a change of pace. When he realizes the Earthlings hate and fear him as an invading "monster", the alien is so distraught he briefly contemplates suicide (in a scene usually cut in syndication).
  • Sylvester's first appearance in the cartoon "Life with Feathers" is brought on by a suicidal lovebird, who (like Hubie and Bertie) wants to be eaten when his "Sweetie Puss" kicks him out of the nest. He figures that, as a lovebird, life is pointless without love, so Sylvester eating him is the logical choice. Sly, however, thinks the bird is poisoned and refuses, leading the bird to try and force Sylvester to eat him.
    • The puddy tat's suicide is averted in Scardey Cat, when, after multiple attempts to get Porky Pig to believe his claim that a "quaint, quiet" mansion he just purchased is overrun by psychopathic, murderous mice fail ... he pulls a gun and points it at his head. This only further disgusts an already short-on-patience Porky.
  • In one Pepe Le Pew cartoon, Penelope locks herself in a glass case so he can't get at her. When Pepe asks her why, she replies because he stinks. Shocked at this revelation, Pepe takes out a gun, waves good-bye to Penelope and walks offscreen before a gunshot is heard. Frantic, Penelope leaves to case to check on him...and finds Pepe waiting for her on the other side.
    Pepe: I missed. Fortunately for you.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • In the first season, Tarrlok realises what he's become and, feeling that neither he nor his brother deserve freedom, kills them both.
  • It's also very heavily implied that Korra is contemplating it at the end of the season with her crying and looking over the edge of a cliff.
  • In a far more humourous use of the trope, Jinora tells a tale of a princess who discovered she could not be with her one true love, and so rode into battle on a dragon, burned down an entire country before jumping into a volcano. She feels this is the best way for Korra to deal with her own crush.
  • At the beginning of Book Three, Harmonic Convergence has granted airbending powers to a considerable number of nonbenders. One of them, distressed at the way his out-of-control powers keep causing harm to those around him, flees to the top of Kyoshi Bridge and is obviously on the point of jumping. Korra comes up and talks him out of it.
  • In Book Four, Varrick blows up his lab with a spirit energy bomb, intending to be inside when it goes off. (He wants to blow up the lab to keep Kuvira from acquiring spirit energy weapons, and he means to go down with the ship because Zhu Li betrayed him.) He doesn't seem to mind at all when Bolin rescues him, though.
  • It can be inferred from the final scenes between Korra and Asami in the finale that Korra's death may be the catalyst for Asami to consider this. As Asami states, "I'm just so happy you're here now. I just don't think I could have handled losing you and my father in the same day," during the aftermath of Varrick and Zhu Li's wedding. From Asami's talk with Korra, it is subtly implicated that, had Korra died fighting Kuvira, she would have likely lost all will to live, and we all know what that could lead to...
• The Legend of Vox Machina: In the final episode of season 1, Percy is taken over by Orthax, who tries to force him to shoot his friends and sister. In a blind panic, Percy wrestles control of his gun back just long enough to place it under his own chin, though Orthax prevents him from pulling the trigger.
  Cassandra: Percy, you can't!
  Percy: (terrified) I don't know what else to do!
• Metalocalypse:
  • The members of Dethklok jokingly tell someone to kill himself. He does.
  • Nathan Explosion believes all dentists are suicidal whackjobs. He's right.
  • All Dethklok fans might qualify, since they sign Pain Waivers absolving Dethklok from any responsibility for accidents, injuries, and fatalities during their concerts.
  • In The Domstar Requiem, after realizing he's the villain, Magnus Hammersmith stabs himself in the chest while letting out a death growl.
    One of them has died, it's all my fault
    I can't believe what I've seen, they have the power of Gods
    And I tried to bring them down
    I'm not a hero; I'm the villain
    And I, too, must go down
• Moral Orel:
  • A weird example occurs when Orel attempts this twice, not out of any sort of depression, but because an accidental near-death experience had him convinced that God is trying to communicate with him, so he attempts suicide to have more near-death experiences. The last one led to his gnostic revelation that one does not need a church to worship God. Unfortunately, the revelation is literally beaten out of him.
  Doughy: [after Orel electrocutes himself and falls unconscious] That was easy!
  • For a Suicide as Comedy example, Orel sees a guy jump off a bridge, only to discover the lake is only knee deep. He's then arrested cause suicide is a federal offense in Moralton.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In the episode "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place", Rockhoof is a legendary figure who can't adapt to modern life. His old town is an archeological site and every job he gets leads to disaster. He eventually decides that there's no place for him in this era and asks Twilight to turn him into a statue.
• Rick and Morty:
  • At the end of the episode "Auto Erotic Assimilation", after being dumped by Unity, Rick becomes so depressed that he attempts to disintegrate himself with a laser, but passes out just before it activates.
  • Also, in "Mortynight Run", when the duo got surrounded by rescuing a telepathic gaseous organism Fart, the latter successfully gets the two off the hook after giving one of the cops a vision that his girlfriend is cheating on someone else, causing him to intentionally crash his vehicle to another, which in turn causes a series of destruction that wipes out everything.
    Gear Police: My life is a fucking joke!
  • In "The Ricks Must Be Crazy," when exploring the "Teenyverse," a scientist named Carl hears Rick and Zeep fighting and realizes that Rick created the universe where Zeep was born (to power his car), who then created the universe where he was born (to power Zeep's world), and were his father died and whose funeral he skipped because he was busy creating the "Teenyverse." When Morty tries to console him by saying that stuff like that happens to him all the time, Carl goes into his ship, and crashes it onto a mountainside.
• Robot Chicken:
  • When fighting one of the Winged Monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, The Crow gives him a depressingly nihilistic monologue that causes the monkey to just hang himself. Cue Crow wiping away a tear.
  • The Bloopers show host kills himself at the end of every segment he's in. During the infamous "The Rescue" sketch, the titular Robot Chicken interrupts his suicide. The host concludes that if someone had the heart to save him, his life must have meaning after all. Then the chicken crushes his skull.
    • The final Bloopers sketch actually has the suicide fail because the host's pregnant, 13-year old daughter refused to help him commit seppuku. It then turns out that there's no one in the studio, and the Host has just been imagining the audience's reaction the whole time.
  • The episode "Moesha Poppins" had a Where Are They Now-type sketch concerning girl toys where Venus de Milo, the fifth female turtle from Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, was so devastated by her lack of popularity that she killed herself by drowning herself in the toilet.
• In Samurai Jack, Jack meets a Viking king who was defeated by Aku years ago and cursed with immortality in the body of a rock monster. Tired of his years of suffering, the warrior is desperate to be killed by a Worthy Opponent. Jack eventually grants the warrior his fate.
  • Jack himself becomes this over the Time Skip in the fifth season after having spent fifty years trapped in the Bad Future without aging, having become The Ageless as a result of being flung through time by Aku, and considers committing Seppuku to end his misery. Subverted when Ashi, the Sole Survivor of the Daughters of Aku who pulled a Heel–Face Turn, snapped him out of it.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: After everyone she thought was a friend gets fed up with her abuse and leaves, all her ambitions are thwarted, and she's subjected to a Breaking Speech by Double Trouble, the last person she trusted (rather unwisely on her part), Catra is left so broken that when Glimmer threatens her with a weapon, all she can say is, "What are you waiting for? Do it." Glimmer doesn't, and Catra begins to pick herself up...first following Glimmer as she tries to fix her mistake with the Heart of Etheria, then saving Glimmer's life when Horde Prime is about to kill her - albeit by tipping Horde Prime off about the Heart's power as a weapon.
• The Simpsons:
  • A Running Gag is that the bartender Moe frequently attempts suicide. It's his holiday tradition for some reason. He's usually accidentally saved.
  • Themes of suicide have been seen as far back as Season 1, in the third episode, "Homer's Odyssey". After he is fired from his job at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant (one of multiple times he's lost his job there), Homer is unable to find a new job and, believing his life to be worthless, decides to jump off a bridge and end it all. His family saves him in time.
  • In "Homer and Apu", after Apu is fired from his job at the Kwik-E-Mart by a group of executives for violating the Health Code, he tries to commit suicide by eating one of the store's hot dogs (he's a vegan, and the hot dogs are of questionable quality). He has to be restrained by the same executives who fired him, who start pleading with him that it isn't worth it.
  • Subverted in "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds". When it turns out that the Simpsons' dogs are world champions and have earned Mr. Burns' millions after he adopts them for free, we see what looks to be Homer hanging himself. Marge is horrified, only for the scene to show that he's just batting a lightbulb while hanging by his arm on the rafters.
    Homer: Marge, you know batting this lightbulb is the only thing that cheers me up after losing those million-dollar Greyhounds! [the bulb hits Homer in the head, causing him to lose his grip and fall off]
  • Frank Grimes from "Homer's Enemy" — although with Frank, it isn't so much "driven to suicide" as "driven stark raving bonkers and unable to recognize that yes, electricity does kill you if you approach it the wrong way".
  • In "Lisa's Sax", a five-year-old Bart is having a very rough time in school and draws a crude picture of himself impaled with a knife with "blood" trickling down.
  • In "Viva Ned Flanders", a drunken bender in Las Vegas have Homer and Ned end up married to a local woman each. Homer tries to argue that they're already married, but the Vegas gals won't hear of it, claiming they're stuck to them until "death do they part." The view pans to show Ned fashioning a noose as he says, "I'm working on it." Homer stops him ("Think of your wives!").
  • In the "Treehouse of Horror XII" segment "Hex and the City", Homer's friends and family are cursed by a gypsy. Bart's neck becomes so long that he can barely hold his head up. Eventually, he can't take it anymore and drowns himself in his breakfast.
  • In the "Treehouse of Horror XIV" segment "Reaper Madness", after Homer kills the Grim Reaper, he briefly creates a world without death. Moe hangs from a noose while a customer berates him, culminating in Moe saying "that's why I'm up here".
  • In "Million Dollar Abie", Homer's dad inadvertently ruins the town's shot at getting their own football team, causing him to become a depressed pariah. His friends then recommend assisted suicide (which is a parody of the Home process from Soylent Green), but the law allowing it is overturned before he can go through with it. He gets better.
  • In the infamous episode "The Boys of Bummer", Bart gets harassed by everyone in town when he causes his team to lose the Little League championship and because of it, goes crazy and jumps from the town's water tower. He survives.
  • Subverted in "24 Minutes". Driven to guilt from acting as Jimbo's inside man, Martin gets on a stool and is seen hanging when he knocks it over. A pull back of the camera shows that he just wedgied himself.
  • In "No Loan Again, Naturally", when it looks like the Simpsons are going to move away when the house is put up for auction, Homer attempts to hang himself from a tree. His weight ends up taking the tree down, and to add insult to injury, the tree smashes his car.
  • In the "Treehouse of Horror XXI" segment "Master and Cadaver", Marge and Homer kill an innocent man after mistaking him for the person who poisoned the pies. Unable to live with the guilt, Marge kills herself. Turns out this story is just Maggie's twisted imagination.
  • In "The Man Who Grew Too Much", Sideshow Bob is driven to leap off the Springfield Dam after realizing the genetic modification he has given himself has made him a monster; unfortunately, he survives, as he also gave himself gills.
  • In the "Treehouse of Horror XXV" segment "The Others", the Simpson home is haunted by the ghosts of their 1980s counterparts. Modern-era Marge is jealous of '80s Marge and commits suicide by burning her head in the oven so Modern-era Homer will pay attention to her again. This leads to the mass murder of the modern-era Simpson family (except for Maggie, who was killed by Groundskeeper Willie). The segment ends with a tribute to the "Family Photo" short.
  • In the "Treehouse of Horror XXVIII" segment "Mmm... Homer", Homer is left home alone and attempts to cook a hot dog. However, he accidentally slices off his finger and the hot dog is stolen by Santa's Little Helper. He reluctantly decides to eat his finger and discovers that it is delicious. Later, Homer is invited over to Ned's house for lunch but is disgusted by the food, which Ned is concerned about. Homer then becomes so addicted to eating himself that he consumes 20 pounds worth of his body parts. Bart and Lisa become suspicious when they notice Homer's oven mitts and the fact that he is limping. Later that night, Marge catches Homer cooking his own severed leg and is shocked. The two go to counselling the next day, with Homer missing his entire lower body. Marge tearfully leaves him when he tries to saw off his arm. Later, Mario Batalli offers to cook Homer's head. When Homer is finally dead, Mario opens a bunch of Homer-themed restaurants where the customers eat the remaining body parts, along with parts of Barney Gumble, Comic Book Guy, and horse meat. Up in heaven, Angel Homer eats his own wings; Jesus says "You know you don't get more of those".
• South Park:
  • "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes": The owner of the local Wall-Mart faces an angry mob of townspeople fed up with its influence, nervously going back and forth between lauding its qualities and expressing his own negative yet defeated opinion of it. During the conversation, he writes and shows a note telling the crowd to meet him outside. After then townspeople leave the office confused and disappointed, the owner suddenly jumps through the window, hanging by a noose. Seconds later, he craps his pants, proving Cartman right about the phenomenon to his satisfaction. The same thing happens later with the founder of Wall-Mart, who shoots himself... and then craps his pants.
  • "Die Hippie, Die": Mayor McDaniels shoots herself in the temple when the hippie music festival she authorized turns South Park into the hippie capital of the world. She survives.
  • "Cartman Sucks": Numerous boys in the gay conversion camp that Butters is sent to end up doing this. Butters' "accountabili-buddy" Bradley attempts this as well, but is talked down by Butters. The saddest part is that this is Truth in Television and only a minor exaggeration.
  • "Night of the Living Homeless": A man tries "to take the easy way out" by shooting himself. He shoots himself over and over again, destroying his body further, but not dying. This is also an example of Crosses the Line Twice.
  • "Britney's New Look": Britney Spears blows her head off... and lives. So, the cult which apparently everybody in the country belongs to, decides they need to try harder. "It's gonna be a goooood harvest." The episode is a parody of The Lottery, comparing the book's sacrifices to how the U.S builds up and then tears down celebrities.
  • "Elementary School Musical": Cartman tries to kill himself after watching the latest "cool" movie, High School Musical. Unfortunately, his mom drives a hybrid car, which doesn't produce enough carbon monoxide to do the job.
  • In "Pinewood Derby", Mr. Hollis blows his brains out when his son loses a Pinewood Derby race.
  • In "Coon vs. Coon and Friends", Kenny/Mysterion attempts to goad Cthulhu into either removing his curse of immortality or simply killing him once and for all. After a particularly irksome situation where a mysterious stranger behind a CGI portal gives a speech about powers, destiny, an extraterrestrial origin etc. only to find out he's talking about Mintberry Crunch, who then disappears along with Cthulhu and Cartman, Mysterion goes back to headquarters/Cartman's basement after Mintberry Crunch saves the world. There, he tells his gleeful superhero buddies that he wants to "take a nap" then promptly shoots himself. For the third time in the trilogy.
  • "Cash for Gold": After discovering how his vulnerable, Alzheimer's-stricken grandfather was being screwed over, Stan repeatedly tells the host of a home shopping network to kill himself in an epic case of Deadpan Snark. He finally does it, after getting the same calls from his former clients.
• Spider-Carnage at the end of Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Completely insane and aware that he cannot drive the symbiote off of him, he hurls himself into an unstable vortex and disintegrates. Horrifyingly, this was probably best for everyone involved, himself included.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • The episode "One Coarse Meal" features a scene in which Plankton lies in the road in an attempt to get run over when Mr. Krabs's "Knight Templar" tendencies go too far. SpongeBob defends Plankton and prevents such by trying to tell Mr. Krabs off, but he doesn't listen.
  • In "Something Smells," SpongeBob's rancid onion breath causes his own reflection to smash itself and two nearby fish to grab onto a fishing hook and get reeled up.
  • Subverted in "Are You Happy Now?". When Squidward becomes severely depressed, he sticks his head in the oven... while taking brownies out. In another scene, he hangs a rope from the ceiling and turns out to be hoisting up a bird cage.
  • In "Dunces and Dragons" a guard turns his spear on himself but decides not to, saying "Someday, but not today".
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • A Twi'lek slave, having failed to assassinate her master, leaps to her death rather than continue living as a slave.
  • In the season 2 episode, The Mandalore Plot, a bomber working for Death Watch commits suicide after being cornered by Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• In the first season finale of Star Wars Rebels, The Inquisitor, after losing to Kanan, decides to drop himself into a burning reactor to kill himself rather than report his failure to Darth Vader.
• Steven Universe:
  • In the episode "Shirt Club", when Steven asks the Gems to help him stop some t-shirts from being distributed, they (incorrectly) assume the shirts are dangerous and start making various guesses as to what the threat is. This culminates in Pearl guessing that the shirts cause their wearers to lose the will to live, "thereby shutting down Beach City" via mass suicide.
  • In the episode "Buddy's Book", Buddy sticks his head in a lion's mouth and tells it to go ahead and eat him.
  • In "Bismuth", Bismuth repositions a weapon in Steven's hand to aim it at her own gem, and tells Steven to shatter her. He refuses.
    Bismuth: At least if I were in pieces I wouldn't have to know how little I matter to [Rose].
• In the "Night of the Living Pets" segment from the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Toons from the Crypt", two of Elmyra's pets are shown to have died this way. Elmyra screamed in the ear of a horse named Flicka, frightening her and causing her to jump off a cliff.
• Would you believe that Tom and Jerry does this sometimes?
  • In "Blue Cat Blues", a Jerry voiceover details Tom's slip from love into debt, drink, and finally, a long wait on the train tracks. At the end of the short, Jerry's girlfriend leaves him, so he joins Tom.
  • In another short, the young duck tries to get Tom to eat him because he's "ugly."
• Dinobot in Transformers: Beast Wars is seen in his quarters, early in the episode "Code Of Hero", overcome by dishonor and holding his sword at his chest before tossing it aside in disgust. Some fans view his Heroic Sacrifice later in the episode as suicide, given the odds stacked against him. Complicating the situation is the fact that the Golden Disk says that he is going to die in that battle, something that had been weighing heavily on his mind for a while. There's no clear answer here.
• In Twice Upon a Time, the Big Bad's lackey Scuzzbopper tries to hang himself after his boss throws out his manuscript for a "great A-Murk-ian novel", but he doesn't quite succeed. Fortunately, the heroes find him, talk him out of it, and enlist his aid in thwarting the bad guys.
• The Big Bad of Season 1, Nox in Wakfu, after he finds that even after slaughtering countless creatures for 200 years to power magic beyond the power of gods, even after performing said magic, that was said to most likely destroy the universe even if it worked at all, perfectly as intended, and travelling back in time, so that he can save his family... all the reserves of power he stored in 200 years, allowed him to rewind time for only 20 minutes, meaning that both his family and victims of all but the latest of his genocides will stay dead. After that he just lies on the graves of his wife and children and lets the magic that kept him alive go, turning to dust and leaving only his armor and bandages behind.
• In Winx Club, Nebula decides to stay in the Omega Dimension as it crumbles into nothingness, believing that her quest for vengeance has corrupted her irretrievably. Layla, too, wants to die in the Omega Dimension, ashamed at turning on her friends and filled with misery over Nabu's death. Bloom convinces them to leave, though.
• Xiaolin Showdown: "The Deep Freeze" has a robot example. Jack used the Heart of Jong on Dudebot to make him alive. He wanted nothing but friends and hugs, but since the Xiaolin Monks kept fighting him and he had to fight back, he decided that it's not worth feeling human emotions, he sheds tears, he rips the Heart of Jong out of his chest, he throws it away and, he drops dead, motionless.

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