Death Montage

YOU'RE BROWN BREAD!

A montage of scenes of somebody being killed, either multiple characters, or a single person over and over.

Can be played for drama with multiple characters who die for good. In other cases this can be done for laughs, especially with the same character dying repeatedly only to be brought back to life for whatever reason (just to die again). The former often leads to Everybody's Dead, Dave, while the latter is more often than not played as Black Comedy because of the impermanence of the deaths. Might be related to a Failure Montage.

Not to be confused with the Really Dead Montage.

As a Death Trope, may have unmarked spoilers ahead. Beware.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• This happens a lot in the Death Note anime, when Light and the other Kiras go on killing sprees.
• During the Vento Aureo arc of Jojos Bizarre Adventure, Diavolo enters an endless loop of death when Giorno pummels him using Gold Experience Requiem. The boss suffers many different deaths, including being shanked by a homeless man, being conscious during his own autopsy, and being hit by a car. The last we see of him, he is cowering in fear before a little girl, knowing what awaits him.
• Third Impact in The End Of Evangelion plays out like this, showing all the characters being turned into LCL one after another (except for Gendo, who's just killed outright by Unit 01.) All the LCL-ed characters eventually turn out to be Not Quite Dead, though, and have the power to return to their original selves should they wish it.
• Date A Live had a sequence when Shido kept getting killed by the Nibelcoles while Kurumi kept undoing it with time travel. Only a few were shown; an exhausted Kurumi reveals she saved him 204 times before his survival stuck.

Comic Book

• In Joker's Last Laugh, there is a montage of The Joker repeatedly murdering Multi-Man—who is reborn with a different superpower every time he dies—until he develops a power useful for the Joker's escape plan.

Fan Works

• In Rabbit of the Moon, Bell's ability to return from the dead through the Hunter's Dream means he often goes up against the same monsters again and again, being killed a different way each time.

Films — Animation

• The Incredibles:
  • Played for laughs to explain why wearing a cape will inevitably lead to a Cape Snag, and why Edna Mode is very, very adamant about her "NO CAPES!" policy. And to be clear, these are deaths. The database on every hero in the Special Features disc for the DVD does confirm they all died due to "Suit Malfunctions".
  • In an indirect example, once Mr. Incredible gets into Syndrome's database, he finds an entire list of superheroes, his old friends, that were brought to Syndrome's island just like he was... and the version of the Omnidroid that killed them.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Following the opening action sequence, Puss is crushed by a bell and dies. He awakens in the village's doctor's office where the doctor asks him how many times he's died so far. A montage is shown of the previous seven times Puss had died, leading to Puss discovering that out of a cat's nine lives, he's down to his last one.
• Zootopia: Judy fails left and right during her rigorous police training, wiping out in the various environments which simulate Zootopia. Subverted since she does not actually die; instead, her instructor hollers during each failure that she "died" succumbing to the environment. Which includes when she tries to use a toilet not suited for her size. She falls in, and her instructor, who happens to be in the next stall, informs her that she died once again.

Films — Live-Action

• In Best Picture-winner Cavalcade, World War I is illustrated with repeated shots of British soldiers marching under the same bridge, superimposed with repeated shots of individual soldiers getting shot and killed.
• Occurs in Groundhog Day, when Phil chooses to kill himself pretty much just to see if it will stick. It doesn't.
• In Revenge of the Sith, when Palpatine issues the infamous Order 66, we're treated to shots of many Jedi being turned on and slaughtered by their own Clone Troopers, who have all been conditioned to treat them as enemies of the Republic. And later on, Palpatine's New Era Speech is contrasted with Anakin Skywalker assassinating the CIS on Mustafar.
• The Godfather ends with Michael Corleone ascendent, overseeing the baptism of his sister's child while the heads of all the other crime families (along with Moe Greene) are summarily executed. Other examples of this trope are often homages to this scene.
• Goodfellas has one after Jimmy decides to cut off his connections to the Lufthansa heist by killing off everyone else involved. Especially memorable as the piano section of Derek and the Dominos' "Layla" plays throughout the entire scene over Henry's narration.
• Connor MacLeod's famous Duel on Boston Common in Highlander devolves into this, with Mr. Bassett repeatedly skewering the drunken Connor until he finally sobers up enough to apologize for calling the man's wife a bloated warthog.
• Casino closes most of its narrative with a very effective one, a great number of characters get taken care of to the music of "The House of the Rising Sun".
• Forrest Gump explains Lt. Dan was from a long military tradition. Then we see a montage of Gary Sinise (the actor playing Lt. Dan) playing a different ancestor just at the moment of his death, in a different battleground, with a war uniform more modern that the last.
  Somebody from his family (thud) had fought (thud) and died (thud) in every (thud) single (thud) American (thud) war (thud)
• Played for laughs in Get Smart. Chief says that the identities of every CONTROL agent has been compromised, and we cut to a shot of all the CONTROL agents dropping like flies in some of the most hilarious ways possible.
• The Wrong Box starts with a montage of various tontine members meeting grisly and hilarious ends, setting up the film's premise wherein only two are left.
• The Many Deaths of Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in the "Groundhog Day" Loop war movie Edge of Tomorrow. Sometimes played for laughs (usually Cruise), sometimes for drama (usually Blunt).
• Mortal Kombat: The Movie has multiple Kombatants dropping like flies when Shang Tsung decides to unleash Goro on the tournament.
• In keeping with the circle-of-life theme in Antonia's Line, a montage towards the end shows how several of the older residents of the town croak.
• Deadpool has a murder montage, when Wade goes on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge, killing various gang members in frequently hilarious ways.
  Deadpool: Hahahaha... you're... you're about to be killed by a Zamboni!
• The sequel, Deadpool 2, has an attempted Death Montage showing Deadpool repeatedly trying to kill himself following Vanessa's death. As outlandish as the attempts are, his ridiculous Healing Factor prevents any from sticking.
  • The deaths of every X-Force team member except Domino during their parachute drop play out as a more traditional example of the trope.
• Killer Angels: The introduction of triad assassin Michael, which takes up the first five minutes of the film, depicting Michael killing at least seven mobsters in quick succession using various weapons including guns, knives, and a garrote.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Doctor Strange, the eponymous character gets repeatedly killed by Dormammu before the later relents in order to break the time loop.
  • Avengers: Infinity War: After Thanos performs his Badass Fingersnap with the fully armed Infinity Gauntlet, viewers are treated to a quiet, somber montage of watching superhero after superhero being Reduced to Dust one at a time, starting with a series of victims on the Wakandan battlefield before moving on to those on Titan.
    Steve Rogers: Oh God.
• Il Divo (2008) opens with the assassination of several prominent figures who died during the controversial career of Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, the subject of the film.
• Happens to Tree once she first tries to find out who her killer is in Happy Death Day. The sequel does it again, only instead of being killed, Tree kills herself to restart the day.
• Shark Attack 3: Megalodon has the infamous montage that is hilarious.
• The Sum of All Fears ends with the assassinations of the conspirators responsible for the Super Bowl bombing.
• Downplayed in The Fourth Protocol. The General Secretary of the Soviet Union launches an operation that could have serious consequences for his country and himself if exposed, so he arranges for the death of everyone involved which happens at various points in the movie once they have outlived their usefulness. As the operation is in its final stage he's shown destroying his files, with flashback scenes of these people being killed.
• Stone. The deaths of the three outlaw bikers that cause the title character to be put on the case—one by decapitation by high-tension wire stretched across the road, one by a bomb wired to his motorbike's ignition, and the last one who's run off the edge of a cliff by a car, followed by the iconic scene of his funeral procession on the F3 freeway, with his coffin carried on a sidecar while the other bikers act as escort.
• Live and Let Die opens with the murder of three British agents over a 24-hour period—in New York, New Orleans and the Caribbean—causing M to assign James Bond onto the case. The murders also serve as an Establishing Character Moment for the scope of the Big Bad's organization. The first murder is during a meeting of the United Nations attended by Dr. Kananga, showing he's a Villain with Good Publicity. The New Orleans murder is observed by hundreds of witnesses who either do nothing or play along, showing his control over the African American community. And the third is during a Hollywood Voodoo ceremony on the island of San Monique, showing how he maintains that control and foreshadowing where the climax of the movie will take place.

Literature

• At the start of Feersum Endjinn, Count Sessine keeps getting murdered, then wakes up in another body thanks to Brain Uploading, only to get murdered again and again (in one case witnessing the explosion in the distance that killed his last body only to be killed by another explosion) until he's finally downloaded somewhere secure enough to start wondering Whodunnit to Me?

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: One of these shows the leadership of HYDRA all being killed in one fell swoop.
• In the "Groundhog Day" Loop episode of Supernatural, we are treated to a series of Dean's deaths in increasingly unlikely and frankly, hilarious ways.
• Played for drama in an episode of House where recipients of someone's organs all died at approximately the same time and their deaths are played rapid-fire in The Teaser.
• A variation in Torchwood: Miracle Day when the immortal Captain Jack Harkness is tied up in a basement and killed over and over — except it's not just a montage; he really is being killed that many times per minute.
• Happens in the alternate universe episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called "The Wish", where Oz stakes Willow, Angel gets staked by Xander, Buffy stakes Xander, and then the Master kills Buffy. Then the wish is reversed and the audience suffers Mood Whiplash.
• VERY dramatic example in Doctor Who "Journey's End" when Davros reminds the Doctor of the number of people who have died helping him. It's a lengthy montage even though it only includes deaths in New Who.
• In the Breaking Bad episode "Gliding Over All", we're shown a montage of the simultaneous assassination of all eight of Fring's former employees (plus Mike's lawyer) currently in jail. Creepily set to Nat King Cole's "Pick Yourself Up."
• The famous ending montage of Six Feet Under shows how all the main characters die in the future.
• The Star Trek: Discovery episode "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" includes a montage of Harry Mudd using his "Groundhog Day" Loop device to let him kill Captain Lorca multiple times as revenge for leaving him in a Klingon prison.
• Ultraman Geed: The episode featuring the return of Starbem Gyeron, a space monster with powers of Resurrective Immortality and capable of regenerating itself after being blown into chunks, shows Geed and Zero defeating and destroying Gyeron again and again for at least 7 times in a row. Between each defeat, the citizens and defense force are required to collect and freeze every remaining chunk of Gyeron before it regenerates, which they succeed by the end of the episode finally putting a stop to the monster.
• In Retro Game Master when Arino dies in the same area more than 16 times, several clips will be shown in a highlights grid to skip repetetive footage.

Video Games

• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate opens with the entire cast being wiped out by Galeem's now-infamous blazes of light. Each character tries to avoid it in their own way. Highlights include Snake of Metal Gear fame trying to escape them by slipping under a cardboard box, and Palutena as she appears in Kid Icarus: Uprising trying to reflect it. Not this time!
• Until Dawn ends with a short montage of any characters you lost during your run, including a brief clip of their final moments, alongside their time of death in chronological order.
• The "That October Holiday" update for Monster Prom features one of these in the new secret ending: after Z'gord succeeds in her bid to destroy the world, the game's usual closing montage (featuring Polaroids of the main characters hanging out and having fun) is tweaked slightly, with the pictures instead showing their final moments. These include: Damien and Miranda leading their armies in a (doomed) bid to defeat Z'gord; Vera carrying a badly injured (possibly already dead) Valerie into their family's nuclear bunker; the Coven fighting back: Faith holding an unconscious or dying Hope, while Joy attempts to cast an incantation; the Slayer and Dahlia both fighting Z'gord one-on-one; and an infected Liam writing his final message in the dirt, reading: "This is the darkest timeline."

Web Animation

• 50 Ways to Die in Minecraft A bit self explanatory. Each episode is a prolonged montage of nonstop deaths, ranging from comedic, to realistic, to surprisingly dark, and much more.
• Season 9 of Red vs. Blue has a non-fatal example, showing York and the Freelancer's numerous "deaths" in a training match against Tex.
• The final part of the original Natraps X video, "Rockmad," shows Rockman losing all his numerous lives to Sylvia, Princess Peach and other video game characters. The deaths continue in the sequel video, "Silvia ga Taosenai."
• In The Demented Cartoon Movie, not only do the characters' successive attempts at "discover the meaning of the Zeeky words" result in the destruction of both the rocket and themselves, Takes Four, Five, Nine and Ten also end with the earth either exploding or crashing into the sun.

Web Comics

• Girl Genius: Colette killing Beausoleil's many bodies about Paris is shown in a one page montage. And it's not in succession; the deaths of Beausoliel's many bodies is happening all at once.
• In The Order of the Stick, Vaarsuvius uses the Familicide spell to kill a lot of dragons. The deaths of said dragons is shown in a full-page-long montage with panels of gradually decreasing size. It's probably just a tiny portion of all the dragons killed on that day.

Web Videos

• Many challenge Let's Players tend to tack on at the end of their successful run videos a bunch of outtakes or deaths, usually in a montage like fashion. Some examples include Roahm Mythril, Pink Kitty Rose and Retro Challenge Gamer.
• This trope is the whole point of movie death-montage video series like "Kill Count" or "All The Deaths".
• SF Debris makes a montage in his review of ''Scorpion'' of Harry Kim remembering the good times. It's entirely made of all the times he was killed on the show. To the music of Enya's "Only Time".

Western Animation

• The Venture Bros. has one when it is revealed that the boys are clones, and have died over a dozen times before. Humorously, one of the deaths was a gas leak that hit while they were asleep, which is neither exciting to look at or interesting to hear about.
• Transformers: Animated has one when Starscream discovers he is immortal and attempts to overthrow Megatron...only to fail repeatedly, and this Megatron has no patience for traitors.
• Poor Batman suffers through this in Batman: The Brave and the Bold's Lighter and Softer Animated Adaptation of Emperor Joker. Throughout this montage he gets crushed by a giant hammer, dropped into the Acid Pool, incinerated to ashes by a flamethrower, Chained to a Railway and run over by a train, guillotined, Eaten Alive by a Threatening Shark, etc. And at each painful, comedic death he goes through, The Joker brings him back to life only to kill him again. It is not until the Dark Knight gets worn out from all the deaths he endured that the new Clown Emperor decides not to kill him again, as his repeated killings start getting rather boring.
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • The trope image above is of Anton. He's a living piece of toast, who gets subjected to a death montage in "The Recipe" when Gumball and Darwin repeatedly kill him to figure out how he keeps coming back. According to Gumball, they "iced him 50 times in a row."
  • They do another one in "The Origins" as we see all of the ways that the previous Darwins (all just regular goldfish) got axed off before they meet the current one.
• The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror
  • From XXVI, the segment "Wanted: Dead, Then Alive": A few weeks after Sideshow Bob, Bart Simpson's Arch-Enemy, has killed him with a Harpoon Gun, the villain realizes that it's not Bart's death that makes him happy, and that he would be truly happy if he kills Bart again. To remedy this, he creates a Reanimator machine and uses it to bring his longtime Arch-Enemy Back from the Dead so he can kill him again, and again, and again, and again, in a manner worthy of the aforementioned Emperor Joker adaptation. And all of his methods are: whacking him with a sledgehammer not once but many times in the manner of Monty Python and the Holy Grail; blowing his head clean off, feeding him to a lion; squashing him flat with a steamroller, then folding him into a paper plane and throwing him into a Deadly Rotary Fan, then picking up his pieces and tossing them into a cremation furnace; handing him a shockingly expensive electric bill for the Reanimator that induces a Hollywood Heart Attack; liquefying him into juice (which has happened offscreen); and hacking him into pieces with an axe (also happened offscreen). And all of this is set to Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen".
  • From XXXI, the segment "Be Nine, Rewind" has a smaller one. Lisa Simpson and Nelson Muntz are stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop that has both of them dying. After deciding to team up to break the loop, there's a montage of them trying to survive blowing out the candles of Lisa's birthday cake, with either both of them dying, or Nelson dying and killing Lisa in the process so the next loop can start early. First attempt, Lisa sets Nelson's hair on fire, and he runs into her while still aflame. Second attempt, a gust of wind blows the table over with a knife landing in Nelson's head, which he throws at Lisa's head. Third attempt, they're crushed by a falling air conditioner that Homer forgot to properly screw in.
  • Treehouse of Horror XXXIII has Lisa gain a magic Death Note, and decides to kill off the executives of the GloboWarm corporation that want to accelerate global warming. The "Death Tome" can't do the same death more than once, and there is a huge number of executives, so there's a montage of them dying in increasingly ridiculous ways.
• Steven Universe: In "Future Vision", Steven has a Fantasy Sequence where he imagines a long series of ways he could die in his everyday life. The sequence is completely imaginary and Played for Laughs, complete with jaunty tune, but its effect on his mental state...isn't.
• Milo Murphy's Law shows us a mere handful of the many deaths of Cavendish. His partner Dakota travels back in time to prevent each one, creating multiple time duplicates of himself in the process.

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