Four Is Death / Anime & Manga

Because Japan has the number 4 in its language to be similar to the word "death," there are naturally a lot of examples in Anime & Manga.

• In .hack GU, Tri-Edge's mark looks like a stylized rendering of the Arabic numeral "4", rotated to its side (or mirrored, depending on how you look at it). The mark signifies those that have been killed by the enigmatic Tri-Edge, making the people that got killed fall into comas left and right.
• In Akuma no Riddle, Chitaru is out for revenge on Angel Trumpet, a merciless assassin who kills for fun, doesn't care if the victim is innocent, and uses poison. Chitaru knows her target is a student in Class Black but doesn't know which one. She should have remembered her numerology: Angel Trumpet is number 4 in class order and is staying in room 4.
• In Battle Spirits Shonen Toppa Bashin: Battle Spirits Double Drive has the character Shishi who is ultimately revealed to be a fragment of the Big Bad and is pure evil.
• In Beastars, Louis' product number as a child is 4 before his life is saved by his adoptive father. Later in life, the number four becomes an unpleasant reminder of his childhood.
• The Godhand in Berserk originally had four members before Griffith did his epic Face–Heel Turn.
• In Black Butler II, Ciel and Alois arrange to have a formal duel while their Battle Butlers face off. Ciel explains that it is traditional, in duels, to take ten paces away from each other before the beginning, but, after reaching four (which is deliberately pronounced "shi" rather than "yon") Ciel attempts to cheat by attacking. He is thwarted, but this starts off the duel nonetheless, with it ending in Ciel stabbing Alois, which later leads to his death.
  • More humorously, a fake informercial by the Grim Reapers has the number to call as just 4 for every digit.
• The four of spades in the Osamu Tezuka Reused Character Design playing card deck is Kiriko, the doctor of death from Black Jack.
• In Black Lagoon, Roanapur is controlled by four criminal organisations — the Triads headed by Mr. Chang, the Russian Mafiya headed by Balalaika, the Italian Mafia headed by Verrochio (and succeeded by Ronny the Jaws following the Vampire Twins arc), and a Colombian drug cartel headed by Abrego.
• Bleach:
  • Ulquiorra Cifer is the most powerful espada Ichigo fights, leading Ichigo to initially assume he's number one. Not quite. He's ranked fourth. He's also the only Espada with a second release state, and the first release is so powerful it shouldn't be used under the dome of Las Noches. He also has deathly pale skin, black hair, permanently cold-looking eyes with lines underneath running down his cheeks like tear marks... you get the picture.
  • The Eleventh Division's fourth seat is empty for both the superstition and because Yumichika thinks the kanji for "Four" is ugly.
  • Unohana Retsu, the captain of the Fourth Division is The Dreaded. She is also the First Kenpachi of the Eleventh Division, and the worst criminal to ever exist in Soul Society. Meaning that she was (and still is) worse than Aizen. Her actual name is Unohana Yachiru, the person Zaraki Kenpachi respected the most, and Yachiru's namesake. The name "Yachiru" means 8000 styles, referring to the fact that she has mastered every sword style in Soul Society. To top it all off, she is the inventor of the Art of Killing, which she plans on teaching to her tenth successor. She is probably the most blatant example in all of Bleach.
  • Askin Nakk le Vaar holds the letter designation "D", the alphabet's fourth letter, and his ability is "The Deathdealing." His power is the ability to change the "lethal dosage" of any substance he takes into his body in sufficient quantity, which lets him do anything from become completely immune to an attack to making something as simple as oxygen fatal to anyone around him. He demonstrates this by making the blood in a foe's body toxic, and the only way to escape his power is to bleed to death since he made the "lethal dosage" lower than what the body needs to survive. Oh, and it's almost impossible for him to die — even finally being taken down by Oetsu didn't stick, courtesy of Yhwach's Auswählen.
  • A subtle example occurs in Yamamoto's past, which reveals that he previously went by the nickname Eijisai, written 丿字斎 — with the first character being the fourth kanji radical. This is revealed as part of the lead-in to the fight ending in his death.
• Episode 68 of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo has the characters participating in a popularity contest (The results of which are based on an actual contest in Shonen Jump), and Dengakuman ends up in fourth place. Afterwards, he climbs into a coffin.
• Chie Shinohara: The Best Collection has the one-shot Suicide Room Number 404, a room on the fourth floor, which is said to be cursed and cause women to commit suicide over scorned love.
• One episode of Chobits deals with an apparently haunted Room 104.
• Claymores work in fours when participating in group demon-exterminating missions. In addition, when Number 6 (Claymores are ranked by power) lists the top five for her companions to watch out for, the only one to warrant emphasis and additional description is not Number 1 (by definition the strongest) but rather Number 4, who "cares nothing for the lives of her comrades or the lives of humans in general... A woman who lusts for battle and the blood spilled." The Number 4 to take over for her, Miata, is also little more than a Psychopathic Manchild, leading at least a few to conclude that all Number 4 Claymores are crazy.
• In Code Geass R2:
  • The first person to die against Suzaku's new Lancelot Albion is Dorothea Ernst, the debuting Knight of Four, who was a completely new addition to the cast and was created to censor the death of a fan-favorite Knight of the Round (Nonette Enneagram, the Knight of Nine). To add insult to injury, we never even get to see Dorothea's Knightmare Frame before she is unceremoniously killed off in said Knightmare's explosion.
  • The Valkyrie Squadron, a group of female pilots under the command of Luciano Bradley, are four in number... and they are the first to be killed by Kallen in the Guren S.E.I.T.E.N. before she takes on Luciano. Weirdly enough, one of them, Marika Soresi, is revealed to have survived in Code Geass: Oz the Reflection.
• Cyborg 009: Albert Heinrich, aka Cyborg 004, is the most heavily reconstructed and had most of his body replaced with various weapons. The original manga even saddled him with the nickname "God of Death", and his original personality was that of a rather frightening vengeance-seeker that enjoyed battling Black Ghost. However, his character evolved over the years, and in the 2001 version, he's more of a withdrawn, Big Brother Mentor who's very disturbed by his enhancements.
• Deadman Wonderland: The earthquake happened on 4/4/2014, measured 11.4 on the Richter scale, and 148,000 people died/went missing. The odd number out is that it happened at 5 PM.
• The numbers 4, 40 and 400 are all over Death Note... for obvious reasons.
  • Once a name is written in it, that person dies 40 seconds later of a heart attack unless a specific cause is written during that time.
  • You have six minutes and forty seconds to write the details of the death after the name and cause — in other words, 400 seconds.
  • One of the rules unmentioned in the series is that writing a name incorrectly four times in the Death Note by accident will grant the person who the user was trying to kill immunity to that Death Note. However, writing the name four times incorrectly on purpose will not only not render the target immune to that Death Note, but kill the user who wrote the name.
  • When first debuting as the second Kira in order to meet the real one, Misa delivers ultimatums with deadlines of four days.
  • Light has a scrap of Death Note paper hidden in his watch for emergencies, which is revealed by pulling on the watch's crown four times in less than a second.
  • On a far more obscure note, Light's given name is spelt as "moon" (月). This has four strokes, which is ... crashingly unlucky and symbolic. Poor Light, doomed from birth. On top of that, Mikami's office is number 4. Also, Rem is Shinigami ranked number 4.
• In D.Gray-Man a Level 4 Akuma could take on Generals easily and was close to annihilating the Black Order.
• Digimon:
  • Digimon Adventure:
    • Takeru's partner Patamon is the fourth partner Digimon to appear. He is the only partner Digimon to die in the season, pulling a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the first arc to destroy Devimon and reincarnating as a Digi-Egg.
    • The fourth Big Bad of the series is, instead of one powerful and evil Digimon, a quartet called the Dark Masters. They kill several of the good guys' allies.
  • Digimon Tamers: The fourth Tamer shown to gain a Digimon partner is Juri/Jeri. She is the only Tamer whose partner dies during the series, and she spends the second half of the season in depression.
  • Digimon Frontier: Mercurymon is the fourth and most dangerous of the non-human Warriors. The first time he fights, he kills Seraphimon in one strike and absorbs his data, and when he goes all-out against the Warriors with his Beast Spirit, it takes six episodes for them to defeat him, five of which were part of a Xanatos Gambit to gauge their skills so he could nullify them.
  • In the original Japanese version of Digimon Fusion, Tactimon calls his attacks in increasing levels of severity (e.g. Ichi no Tachi, Ni no Tachi, San no Tachi). His most fearsome attack is called Shi no Tachi. Using the on'yomi for "four", the anime plays on both meanings of the term "shi".
• Doraemon: In one chapter, Tamako chases the cat while repeatedly saying "shishishishi", (Japanese: しししし) and one panel later, she becomes a "money box" and her mouth spawns a lots of money. "Shi" is the same sound as four, which is used as the password Doraemon and Nobita had set. The Chinese version translated it to "die", seen here. The 2005 anime adaptation changed the password to "1529".
• Dragon Ball:
  • Inverted with the Four-Star Dragon Ball, which saves Son Goku's life during his first battle against Tao Pai Pai. This Dragon Ball is a memento to his grandfather Son Gohan. In the anime, after Goku's first son was born, he gave him the name of his grandfather when Goku looked up to the Dragon Ball.
  • Dragon Ball GT takes this inverted trope even further with the Devil Dragon/Shadow Dragon of the Four Star Dragon Ball, Si Xing Long/Nuova Shenron. Si Xing Long is the Token Good Teammate, the Noble Demon and the Anti-Villain among the seven Devil Dragons. He even saves his enemy/friend Goku on several occasions.
  • Played straight with Frieza having four forms, not counting his Full Power and Golden forms, which are simply extensions of his fourth.
• In the animal adventure episode of Excel♡Saga, one of the dogs is portrayed as a gambler who compulsively fiddles with a pair of dice. At one point he rolls a 4 and 2 ("shi ni", meaning "to death") and remarks that it's a bad omen.
• The Phantom Lord guild from Fairy Tail has the Element 4, a Classical Elements Ensemble of wizards and the equivalent of Fairy Tail's S-Class wizards: Aria, Juvia, Sol, and Totomaru.
• In Episode 4 of Fate/Apocrypha, Siegfried, The Saber of Black, dies after he transplants his heart into the wounded Homunculus.
• Lord Fungus in Final Fantasy: Unlimited survived the first three shots from Kaze's Magun, but the fourth did him in.
• In Fist of the North Star, there are four heirs of the Hokuto school of combat. And there is a reason if Kenshiro, the fourth of them, is the Trope Namer for You Are Already Dead.
• In Episode 4 of FLCL, Naota gets beaned by Haruko during the 4th inning of the baseball game at the beginning of the episode. The umpire even shouts "dead ball!"
• At the very beginning of Ghost Hunt, Mai and two other girls are telling ghost stories, at the end of which they count one-by-one, and there's supposed to be an imaginary fourth person. Only, Naru sneaks in and fills the role for real, with obvious results.
• Ghost Stories:
  • Akane-san from the broadcasting room will kill without fail any and all people who hear her voice. She counts aloud the exact time of the sunset before she finally kills her victim, carefully avoiding the number 4. Her spirit can be repelled if one interrupts her count and say the number 4 out loud. To seal her, she has to hear the chime that indicates the end of a broadcast before sunset. That makes four bell rings.
  • If you hear the piano ghost play a particular piece of music four times, you will die. (Coincidentally, this episode was the fourth to air.)
  • A ghost named Datto, the spirit of a boy who ran track, returns to the school on the day of the sports festival to take the feet of a runner in the race. The runner attacked is in lane four. Datto attacks them at 4:44 PM.
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: Makoto alternately, Kousuke and Kaho is fatally hit by a train just as the town clock strikes 4:00.
• The opening of Goblin Slayer shows a bunch of dice coming up with the number four, each time the titular swordsman cuts down his enemies.
• Gundam's sequels and Spiritual Successors like toying with this:
  • Being the protagonist's Temporary Love Interest, Four Murasame in Zeta Gundam was so predestined to die. And she did. Twice. And again in the Compilation Movies with a bullet to the head.
  • The soundtracks for both Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ have a sting specifically for significant character deaths, which is exactly four chords of descending notes. Subverted at least once for a Fake Kill Scare, when the person who was thought killed turned up alive later.
  • Gundam Wing has an interesting take on this, as Quatre Raberba Winner is the fourth Gundam Pilot (it's even in his name), and has an aversion to killing whenever possible. Yet with his destruction of a whole colony with the Wing Zero, he has the highest body count of any of the Gundam pilots. Also, his Mother apparently died giving birth to him.
  • The second season of Gundam 00 seems to go to complete overkill with regards to the number four: it takes place 4 years at the end of the first season, the main Gundam Meisters are still composed of 4 members, the titular mobile suit's model number is GN-0000 and it is also the only 4th generation model when it debuts. And if you want to take things further, said unit is powered by two GN-Drives, one's from the very first (0) Gundam, while the other is from the protagonist's previous unit which is part of the third generation. Thus 1 + 3 = 4. And the Innovades are four pairs, and it includes the Big Bad and Tieria.
  • Both Gundam 00 and Gundam SEED skip the obvious fours in their Gundam lineups (there is no GN-004 or GAT-X104). We then later find out what became of 004: it's hidden underneath GN-005, Tieria's Gundam Virtue. It's a girly looking Fragile Speedster down to the flowing red "hair" coming out of its head and is called Gundam Nadleeh, which is incidentally the word for people of the third, fourth, and fifth genders in Navajo culture, which only deepens the mystery of whether Tieria's a Gender Bender.
  • The Gundam 00 side stories play it straight: In 00P (the precursor to the TV series), the GNY-004 Gundam Plutone suffered a major malfunction which killed two of the Gundam Meisters and horribly scarred a third (including her hair turning white). The survivor, who ends up running a Celestial Being sub-group years later in Gundam 00F, is understandably reluctant to allow the Plutone to be used again.
  • The Witch From Mercury has a unique instance of this trope with Elan Ceres. It is revealed in Episode 6 that the Elan that Suletta knows is an Artificial Human created to be a Body Double for the real Elan Ceres. He is also the fourth instance so far, and after his failure to gain control of Aerial in the episode, he is promptly incinerated for his failure.
• Parodied in Episode 2 of Haruhi-chan, when a dying Asakura claims to be part of a 'Radical Big Four', the rest of whom will soon attack. Kyon proceeds to call her story cheesy. They never come, nor are they ever mentioned again.
• In the Korean Webtoon Hello Hellper there's a group of four Shinigami known as the Four Poisons (smoking, drinking, gambling, and women). The Gambler asserts that the phrase was named after them, not the other way around, because they were so terrifying not even reincarnated souls could forget them.
• Hunter × Hunter:
  • During the Hunter Exam arc, Hisoka, one of the most deadly villains, is participant #44. And as the (fake) member of the Phantom Troupe, his tattoo has the #4 (though, we don't know for what the numbers of the Phantom Troupe actually stand for).
  • The fourth Zoldyck sibling Alluka has a special power, a symbiote called Nanika who can grant a person a wish at one condition: they have to accept three of her requests. If they ask for something extremely hard to obtain (like money), the next target will pay, as Nanika will ask for their body parts, usually vital organs like liver or brains. If they refuse four times... well, their head, as well as the ones of the people they love, are crushed and explode.
• Guido Mista of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind has a very Japanese-like obsession with the number 4, which is all the more bizarre since he's Italian. When Bucciarati's gang is first introduced Mista is freaking out because the waiter at their restaurant brought them four pieces of cake, and the first to take a slice, Abbachio, is also the first to die. When the gang rents a yacht he very fervently tells Bucciarati not to rent Boat #4. This even extends to his Stand Sex Pistols, a group of six gremlin-like creatures who help guide his bullets; they have numbers on their foreheads, but naturally, they skip the number 4. Number #5, the fourth member, is quite timid compared to the others, though in a twist of irony, this aspect of being fourth regularly proves to be a lifesaver, as he tends to hang back when his compatriots rush into the fight and quickly get killed off. Near the end of the story, Mista accidentally drops four bullets and begs someone else to drop one more, just before Narancia's death. During the second half, the villain attacks and kills multiple members of the main group, and in a twist of cruel irony, there are only four protagonists left alive when it's all over, one of which is Mista.
  • Inverted in Diamond Is Unbreakable: Being Part 4 of the saga, it has one of the lowest body counts of any Part, even in spite of its main villain being a Serial Killer. It helps that said Serial Killer has enough self-discipline to not kill as much as necessary.
• Joshi Kausei: In "The High School Girl and the Unlucky Day", Momoko starts her day by spilling coffee on her sweater in the shape of a 4. At the end of the episode, a crow poops on her sweater in the same shape.
• Karakuri Circus: The strongest Automata in the Midnight Circus are "Les Quatres Pionniers" ("The Four Pioneers" in French), the first four Automata built by the Circus' founder. Later on, we are introduced to another group of four Automata nicknamed "Les Dernier Quatre" ("The Final Four"), all of which are Foils to the Pioneers.
• In Kill la Kill, Nonon Jakuzure is the fourth of the Council Ryuuko fights and the one with the most death focused visual motif, what with the skulls and bones.
• In Legend of the Galactic Heroes the first fleet to be defeated is the 4th fleet.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's has the four Wolkenritter, harbingers of the destruction the Book of Darkness will bring.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS:
    • There are four models of Mecha-Mooks used by the Big Bad. Types I through III are relatively benign: sure, they might hurt you and knock you out for a bit, but they are not really meant to kill people. Type IVs, on the other hand, are the Hero Killer kind, designed specifically to make people (especially mages) very dead. In addition to redshirts, their rap sheet almost included the title character herself and Vita by the end of the series. And it's also probable that they killed Subaru and Ginga's mother Quint when they showed up, and Lutecia's mother Megane barely survived.
    • Quattro is one of the two most evil Numbers (the other is Due), and she enjoys to do evil things, including bringing people to death. Ironically, she is also one of the two weakest Numbers (the other is Uno).
• In a Fictional Document in Monster, called "The Nameless Monster", the Nameless Monster goes through four hosts. The first three are consumed from the inside out. The fourth consumes everyone who knows his name.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Hero Killer Stain made a point of always striking four times in any given city, whether that meant killing or crippling. Much later, he claims that he's killed a total of 40 heroes.
  • Tomura Shigaraki, The Heavy who decays anything he touches with five fingers, was born on April 4th, or 4/4. In My Hero One's Justice, hitting an opponent with his special move four times kills them instantly. The pop-up that appears upon connecting displays a number that increases with each hit, until the fourth one, which says "DEAD!".
• From Naruto:
  • Naruto's Superpowered Evil Side becomes dominant and goes into "kill everyone" mode when he grows four fox tails. At this point, he can't tell friend from foe anymore and has to be forced to simmer down.
  • The Fourth Hokage spent the shortest time in office, a tenure that ended with him saving the village with a "Seal Evil" technique that required him to sacrifice his own life and seal his soul in the Death God's stomach, in eternal combat with the sealed Evil.
  • Meanwhile, the Fourth Kazekage seemed to be the worst thing to ever happen to Suna. He sealed a Tailed Beast in his son (in this case Shukaku, the One-Tailed Tanuki) which was already contained in a tea kettle. Gaara wasn't born yet and as a result the Kazekage's wife died delivering him. He then proceeded to alienate the boy from birth and when Gaara showed signs of being Ax-Crazy (like all of Shukaku's previous hosts) he ordered the poor kid's uncle (the only person up to this point who had shown any kindness to him) to assassinate him. And to top off his career, he got his face torn off by Orochimaru as a prelude to his village being used as cannon fodder in an invasion.
  • According to the Fifth Mizukage, the Fourth Mizukage was like this for the Mist Village, and is largely responsible for the "Bloody Mist" image held by most other countries. The fact that he was being mind-controlled by Madara ^note  More accurately, Obito probably didn't help.
  • The Forest of Death's official title is the 44th Training Ground and has 44 gates.
  • The fourth stage of the Uchiha's Sharingan is the Mangekyo, which requires the user kill their best friend.
  • Of the Eight Celestial Gates, first through third are Initial, Heal, and Life; the fourth, however, is the Harm Gate. When opened, this gate puts enough strain on the body that the muscles tear themselves apart. And twice that, the eighth gate, is the Death Gate (Opening that gate gives the user great power for a while and then a one-way ticket to Dead Meat County).
  • Sasuke was going to be the fourth body Orochimaru claimed before Sasuke thwarted Orochimaru and killed him, and before that, was going to be the fourth body Orochimaru had, including his original, before the Sound Four took too long and Orochimaru had to transfer prematurely.
  • Akatsuki member Kakuzu harvests the hearts of the victims he kills, and his special ability is Four Hearts Jutsu, with which he prolongs his life by adding four hearts to his own.
  • The series' final war is the Fourth Shinobi World War, and the Fourth Division, who suffers the most casualties, is first to be victimized by Madara Uchiha.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the fourth Evangelion unit (really the fifth unit if you count the prototype 00, but being called the 04 was all it took) disappeared into a Dirac sea during a startup experiment, taking a large chunk of the Mojave Desert with it. Also, Unit 03 — the real fourth Evangelion — got taken over by an Angel and had to be destroyed, nearly (and in the manga, actually) killing Toji too, who was, of course, the Fourth Child. And if that wasn't enough, Toji shortly prior became the fourth person that Hikari makes lunches for. Ouch. Unit-04 was always referred to as yon-gouki in dialogue. Even Rebuild does this. And when Shinji achieves a synchronization ratio of 400%, his body dissolves into LCL. Don't worry, he came back.
• One Piece:
  • Chapter 4 ends with Koby getting shot.
  • Chapter 44 features Gin, gaunt and nearly dead from hunger, shooting a Marine dead as he escapes.
  • Chapter 444 has the Straw Hats arrive at a haunted island.
  • In the Baratie Arc, Don Krieg is the fourth pirate captain that Luffy faces on his journey, and he's the first one who even comes close to killing him.
  • Mr. 3 and Miss Goldenweek are the fourth-highest-ranked team in Baroque Works, and Mr. 3 is the fourth Devil Fruit user that the Straw Hats fight. The pair of them come dangerously close to defeating and killing the Straw Hats and Vivi; if it weren't for Usopp and Carue evading capture and breaking Mr. 3's wax trap and Miss Goldenweek's Colors Trap, 3 would have had no fewer than four new wax statues that were once living people.
  • Alabasta Kingdom is the fourth island on the Grand Line that the Straw Hats visit. It's a desert kingdom in the middle of a drought, on the verge of civil war orchestrated by Baroque Works, is naturally infested by at least half a dozen deadly animals and natural disasters...what else? Oh, right, it features the first time that Luffy outright loses to the bad guy, who comes close to killing him four times (first by drowning him, second by burying him alive, third by dehydrating him, and fourth by poisoning him).
    • The royal family has an elite guard, the Kicking Claw Force, whose four members use a special substance that gives them tremendous power but kills them in five minutes to try to fight Crocodile. It doesn't work at all.
  • Enel is the fourth user of a Logia-type Devil Fruit to appear in the series. He's a Psycho Electro with a God complex who incinerates anyone who speaks out of turn in a pillar of lightning and, in the arc's climax, attempts genocide on the people he rules over, using gargantuan storm clouds to obliterate the islands. If Luffy wasn't immune to his powers, nothing would have been able to stop him. He also has a Quirky Miniboss Squad of four Priests who serve under him, each of whom has their own Ordeal, deadly tests with anywhere from a 50% to a 0% survival rate.
  • Near the end of the Water 7 arc, Nero, a new recruit to CP9 who only knew four of the Six Powers martial arts, lost to Franky and was (seemingly) executed by Lucci.
  • In the Enies Lobby arc, Blueno, the fourth-strongest member of CP9, is the first one to fall to the Straw Hats.
  • The death of Going Merry, the Straw Hats' beloved first ship, occurs during the fourth saga, which is itself divided into four arcs (excluding filler).
  • The series has four superpowerful pirates known as the Four Emperors (one of whom happens to be someone extremely important to Luffy) who act as a counterbalance to the Marines and the Seven Warlords of the Sea. Whitebeard ended up dying among the four, and Blackbeard usurped the empty spot he left.
  • Bartholomew Kuma is the fourth Warlord that the Straw Hats meet. Both times that he meets them, he defeats them all effortlessly, nearly killing Zoro the first time and dying himself, by robotization, less than two weeks after the second time.
  • PX-4 was the first of the Pacifista to be destroyed.
  • Impel Down's fourth level is the Blazing Hell. It may not be the deadliest of the prison's floors, but it is where Warden Magellan's office is, and nothing in the prison is deadlier than him. Point of fact, this floor is where both Luffy and Blackbeard are brought down by Magellan's poison.
  • The 4th Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates, Thatch, was the only commander who met an unfortunate end before the present story. He was murdered by Marshall D. Teach because Thatch had found the one Devil Fruit Teach desired most — the Dark-Dark Fruit.
  • As an inversion, the fourth child of the Vinsmoke Royal Family, Sanji(third of a series of quadruplets, who have an elder sister), is the Token Good Teammate and the White Sheep of the family because of the resistant drugs his mother took when his father wanted his kids to have Lack of Empathy and cold super soldiers. Taken further when you recall that he was the fourth person to join Luffy.
• In Outlaw Star, the #4 Caster bullets are capable of killing the shooter if they fire them in succession. (As do the #9 and #13 bullets, both also being unlucky numbers.)
• Pokémon: The Series has Charmeleon/Charizard's disobedience arc: Charmander (Pokedex Number 004) was the forth Pokemon Ash caught, and was on his team for the forth longest time when he started to disobey Ash. The episode his rebelious phase started? The Problem with Paras, the 44th aired episode of the series. Charizard was also responsible for four of Ash's losses (his first fight with Blaine, the Indigo League match with Richie, his fight against Prima, and his first fight against Tad).
• In Re-Kan!, when the friendly samurai ghost somehow manages to send a text message to Kana, his phone number appears as a string of fours.
• Rosario + Vampire:
  • In the anime, Tsukune arrives at the bus stop at 4:44 pm and is attacked by rivals for Moka's love. Later on, 4:44 pm is the scheduled time for his execution for being human.
  • Kuyou, the leader of the Student Police, is a youko with four tails.
• Saint Seiya:
  • In the Zodiac arc, the local Psycho for Hire resides in the Fourth Temple of the Sanctuary, the Temple of the Giant Crab. He's actually named Cancer Deathmask. Subverted in that Pisces Aphrodite is said to be actually worse-Deathmask is just more blatant.
  • As the fourth sign, all Cancer Saints have powers strongly associated with death and the underworld. They also tend to be violently insane because of it (canonically, Deathmask was trained by the ghost of one of his predecessors).
• Sekirei gives us the Black Sekirei, #04 "Karasuba". Considered the most dangerous Sekirei in existence by those that don't know about #01, Miya, she is referred to as "MBI's dog" for her work hunting down anyone that breaks the rules of the game. She's a Blood Knight Master Swordsman obsessed with killing the heroine during the final battle, and actively encourages her to become stronger because otherwise it won't be enjoyable. And she's an Omnicidal Maniac that intends to use her victory in the Sekirei Plan to destroy all life.
• The fourth episode of Shiki is appropriately titled "Fourth Death". It repeats for Episode 14, given the kanji used.
• Soul Eater:
  • Weapon meisters use a form of spiritual telephone to keep in contact — the number for direct contact with Shinigami-sama is 42-42-564 ('shini, shini, goroshi' out loud — in other words, 'die, die, kill').
  • The 'shini' part gets used for Kid in the increase in the size of his soul - one scanlation translated Liz's comment as "42 soul-widths") and the Sanzu Line-enabled form for the Thompsons - Death Eagle .42.
  • This is also the other reason that Death Robbins ice cream has 42 flavors instead of 31. Ohkubo seems to really love this trope.
  • Also, the zeppelin they use to get on the moon to fight the kishin has a big '42' painted on the side (only in the manga).
• In The Summer You Were There, Kaori's collapse and the resulting Internal Reveal of her terminal illness to Shizuku happens just after meeting of herself, Shizuku, Ruri and Seri, in which Shizuku hoped to apologize to Ruri for bullying her in the past. The meeting date was arranged four days in advance. Chapter 16 (4 x 4) is when Shizuku learns the truth that Kaori is going to die in the near future.
• In Super Cub, the story begins when Koguma buys her titular Super Cub motorbike for the incredibly low price of only 10,000 yen (about $100). When she asks the shopkeeper why he's selling it for so cheap, he answers that it's because it caused three people to die. The inference is that discounting it so heavily was the only way he'd ever be able to sell the machine, as most people would not want to risk being the fourth death. Koguma doesn't mind and buys the motorbike.
• In Sword Art Online, Yuuki Konno's funeral was held on April 4 (4/4), 2026.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: In Real Life, the fourth episode was guest-directed by Osamu Kobayashi and greatly criticized for its animation quality and odd character designs.
• In Tomorrow's Joe, Carlos Rivera destroys Japan's #1-ranked bantamweight boxer at the end of the fourth round. He could have done so at any moment, he just choose the fourth round because he knew what the Japanese think of the number.
• In Ultimate Muscle Tel Tel Boy (Dialbolic) schedules his fight against Mantarou for 4:44 PM. Mantarou immediately notes that four is unlucky.
• Moroboshi Ataru of Urusei Yatsura was marked out as a Cosmic Plaything by being born on the second most ill-omened day in the Japanese calendar, the thirteenth of April: 4-13. (This was also on Butsumetsu, the anniversary of the Buddha's death; the only unluckier day is April 4th, which is Four Is Death squared.) Additionally in the first episode, his jersey has the number 4 on it.
• Appears repeatedly in Weiß Kreuz: not only is Weiss, a team of assassins, made up of four members, so are three different groups of antagonists they go up against, and one team of allies. Sequel series Weiß Kreuz Gluhen, which re-forms the team into its fourth iteration, does not end well.
• In Yakitate!! Japan, Kazuma's Ja-pan Number 44 is rather dangerous. It's so delicious, anyone who eats it for the first time has a Near-Death Experience.
• In Your Name, October 4th is when Tiamat crashes into Itomori and destroys it, killing 500 of its inhabitants.
• In Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs, Kogarashi's room in the Yuragi Inn is #4. Yuuna, the ghost girl's room is/was the room she had when she was alive.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Seto Kaiba ripped the fourth copy of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon in two so it could never be played against him. After the first season, it's shown that Yugi and his grandfather collected the two halves and just taped them back together.