Outliving One's Offspring

Death of the Pharaoh's First Born Son by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

"No parent should have to bury their child."

— King Théoden, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Parents' worst fear is realized: their children have died. Whether it is from disease, murder, war, an accident, etc., their children are all dead and buried. At this point, the parents can fall into a deep depression or seek Revenge on whoever caused this situation. If they are lucky, they will have their spouse to help them through this situation but often they will be all alone to deal with their grief. Sometimes, the overwhelming grief spells the end of a marriage.

An even worse version of this trope can occur if the parents are immortal or The Ageless and cannot pass their immortality onto their offspring (provided they can actually have children). While they may have several generations of children, grandchildren, etc. they will be cursed with knowing they will outlive them all. This may cause them to choose not to have children to avoid this pain. A Supernaturally Young Parent can easily be accompanied by this trope.

This is very much Truth in Television. Historically it was unusual for a family not to lose at least one child before they reached age eighteen; the child mortality rate hovered at around 50% for most of recorded history. It's the most natural thing in the world to lose a child, which is why we’ve devised so many unnatural ways (from vaccines to car seats to kids' help lines) to keep them alive.

If the deceased offspring leaves behind a child of their own, it often leads to said child being Raised by Grandparents.

The Invocation of this trope is Offing the Offspring, where the parents deliberately outlive their offspring by killing them.

As a Death Trope, many if not all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

No Real Life Examples, Please! It happens often enough, there's no point getting into them unless they are referenced in media, in which case it should be filed there.

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Examples:

• Live-Action Films
• Literature
• Live-Action TV

Advertising

• Some PSAs from the Partnership for a Drug Free America focus on real and fictional parents who lost their child to drug addiction as a way of encouraging parent viewers to talk to their own children about the dangers of illicit drugs and thus avert the trope.
  • "Suzie", an ad from The '80s, goes into great detail about how much Suzie's parents taught her...except, they neglected to tell her that drugs can kill. This, combined with a broken crack pipe on the bathroom floor and an ambulance leaving the house with its sirens blaring, heavily implies that Suzie's parents' mistake cost their daughter her life.
  • "Graveyard" features a man talking to his son about how drugs are like poison and he should stay away from them. However, the ad takes a twist as the man tearfully says he never thought he would have to tell that to a thirteen year old, and the camera pulls back to reveal he is talking to his son's grave◊.
• In the TAC Public Service Announcement "Fireball" from The '90s, four young adults are killed in an accident when their car skids off the road and catches fire. The scene then cuts to a man named Jack, whose friend is talking to him about the accident. Jack initially believes that the victims were city kids who don't know the country roads...until his wife Gwen comes outside and tearfully tells him that their son Mark was in that accident. Gwen bawls "Why us?" as the ad ends on the message "Country people die on country roads".

Anime & Manga

• Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day has Meiko "Menma" Honma's parents, especially her mother Irene who pretty much locks herself at home and barely pays attention to her remaining child Satoshi.
• Astro Boy starts with the death of Dr. Tenma's son. He created Astro as a Replacement Goldfish but later abandoned him because he wasn't exactly like his son.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Armin's grandfather outlived his son and daughter-in-law hinted to be the couple in the hot balloon killed by the government, raising his young grandson.
  • After the massacre of the royal family, Rod Reiss only had one illegitimate daughter left, Historia, after the deaths of his three other daughters and two sons.
  • Petra is survived by her father.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Yeager, the parents to Grisha and the grandparents to Eren. Their daughter was killed at a young age in a violent fashion and later they could only helplessly watch as Grisha was sentenced to be Titanized due to treason, effectively a death sentence.
    • While Grisha does survive, as he is given the Attack Titan from Eren Kruger, he ultimately passes it on to his son, Eren, which at that point his parents are still alive.
    • At this point in time, they may also outlive both of their grandsons, Eren and Zeke. Though, the anime implies this isn’t the case by showing that they were arrested and trapped in their prison cell during the Rumbling.
  • Also happened to Sasha's parents, as Sasha was killed during the Liberio battle.
  • This is true for several parents whose children become titan shifters, as a shifter will die 13 years after inheriting their titan powers. Examples include Bertolt's father (who apparently died in his sleep sometime after Reiner returned home, although this may be a government coverup), Marcel Galliard's parents (who later lose their younger son Porco)... Some of the current titan shifters' parents may also fall victim to this trope (including Reiner's) but after the Titan shifters are freed from the Curse of Ymir, the trope seems to be averted.
• In Bakugan Battle Brawlers, Shun’s grandpa outlives his daughter Shiori (Shun’s mother) when she dies from an illness, with no explanation on what happened to his son-in-law (Shun’s father), implying that he died too. Being an abusive grandparent to Shun, however, he doesn’t care. However, this is only the case in the English dub, with the Japanese dub having him show concern for Shiori and calling Shun to let him know her condition is worsening so he can be by her side in her final moments, as well as explaining how she came across Skyress (whereas the English dub replaces this with him calling Shun about ninja training to hide the fact that Shiori was dying and leaves how she obtained Skyress unexplained).
• In both the anime and manga versions of Barefoot Gen, both Gen and his pregnant mother Kimie are forced to watch as Gen's father Daikichi, elder sister Eiko, and younger brother Shinji burn to death while trapped in the wreckage of their house following the dropping of Little Boy onto Hiroshima. Kimie soon after goes into labor and delivers a baby girl Tomoko, who ends up dying of starvation later on despite Gen and his mother's best efforts.
• Bokurano
  • Almost all of the pilots' parents end up having this happen to them- the only exceptions are those who die before their children (Kodama's father, Ushiro's mother, and Komo's father in the anime). In the manga, Kana's father takes the news of her being the next pilot (essentially a death sentence) especially hard and even asks if he can take Kana's place.
  • Also from the manga, Komo's opponent is a middle-aged man whose daughter was killed by the families of those who'd died in previous battles. His daughter's death sends him over the Despair Event Horizon and is implied to be why he doesn't want to win his battle.
  • In Kanji's arc of the manga, some of the soldiers who volunteer for the Suicide Mission to help him target Javelin's weak point have lost family in the attacks. As one older soldier talks about how he's been forced to confront the reality of losing loved ones, a panel shows a family portrait cracked and buried under rubble, implying that he lost his children.
• Many, many of the sympathetic murderers in Case Closed are mothers and fathers who kill the persons who directly or indirectly caused the death of their children.
• CLANNAD:
  • Subverted by Tomoya who is alive and in good health while he holds his daughter Ushio as she dies of the same illness that killed her mother, but he collapses and dies of despair (and hypothermia) mere seconds later.
  • Played straight by Nagisa's parents, who hold back on their grief to raise Ushio. In fact, a very poignant After Story scene takes place as Sanae talks to Tomoya about it and breaks down crying. And then, when their granddaughter dies from the same illness and their son-in-law freezes to death clutching her corpse....oh god..
• Code Geass:
  • During Shirley's funeral, her mother is seen crying over Shirley's grave. Easily one of the series' saddest moments, especially considering that said mother had been widowed a year earlier.
  • Apparently, one of the women sitting close to Prince Clovis' casket during his funeral is his mother, Lady Gabrielle.
    • Naturally, this also applies to Emperor Charles himself, who uses Clovis' death to rally the Britannian populace against the Japanese rebels. By the end of the first season, he's outlived Princess Euphemia as well (though he wasn't too broken up about that one).
• In all but one incarnation to date of the Death Note series, Light's mother Sachiko is still alive by the end of the series, when her son Light dies. Light's father Soichiro also outlives his son in the live-action films and musical. The trade-off is that he knows his son is Kira, though.
• Crayon Shin-chan, despite it's comedic nature, have moments like these:
  • When the Noharas have to move into the Matazuresou Apartments in one story arc, they're warned by the other residents that the apartment's landlady, Nushiyo Ooya, is a Child Hater and that the Noharas are the only occupants with children (Shin-chan himself and baby Himawari). But later on it's revealed that Ooya actually loves children, willingly comforting a crying Himawari, and it turns out she lose her then three-year-old daughter in an accident three decades ago, causing her to put on a Jerkass Façade because seeing other children will remind her of her deceased child.
  • Another story arc have Shin-Chan and his classmates befriending an elderly neighbour, a man in his sixties who lives alone in his house, who ends up saving the main characters from a burning forest fire. A later scene would reveal the man's past to be an ex-fireman; while on duty, his own home is ironically subjected to a fire that killed his young daughter, causing him to retire in disgrace.
• Death Parade:
  • Character of the Day Yousuke committed suicide in his mid-twenties, leaving his stepmother and father. He feels guilt-stricken about this and can't believe he committed suicide.
  • The amnesiac protagonist of the series, Chiyuki, killed herself after she could no longer ice-skate due to a knee fracture. In the final episode, she visits her mother, who is mourning Chiyuki's death three months later. Overcome by her mother's tears, Chiyuki breaks down and regrets her decision, which causes Decim to cry. It turns out the whole scene was an illusion created by him to help judge her soul and he feels bad about lying to her.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Mitsuri Kanroji's parents are one of the best shown in the series, and that's saying a lot since there are quite a lot of them, with the bad ones being the minority here. The manga had Mitsuri narrate how supportive her parents were but the anime went and showed it more instead. They also hold the unique fact that they are the only known complete living family over the course of the story; barring Mitsuri from suffering the same tragedy many other characters have gone through; such fact takes a rather sad turn after the final battle, Mitsuri is one of the several fallen against Muzan, the manga spares the readers from seeing her parents' reaction to the news on Mitsuri's death but knowing how much they loved their daughter, it must have pained them a lot.
• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Adventure, Koushiro/Izzy's adopted parents reveal that they lost a child in infancy.
  • Two cases in Digimon Adventure 02: Iori/Cody's father Hiroki was killed in London, survived by his father Chikara, and Ken Ichijoji's older brother Osamu/Sam was killed in a car accident, survived by their parents.
• In Dragon Ball Z, Vegeta winds up losing his son, Trunks, twice. First, after Trunks from the future was murdered by Cell, and second when Kid Buu destroyed the Earth (taking Goten, Gohan, and Piccolo with it, additionally affecting Goku since the former two are his sons). It hits harder watching this happen to Vegeta since we see his genuine response in witnessing Trunks' death both times—going ballistic, futilely attacking Cell despite him being much stronger than Vegeta, and chewing out Goku for opting to save Mr. Satan and Dende over their children instead. Though to be fair, Vegeta was dead himself when the younger Trunks died. And he'd already died once before Trunks had even been conceived.
  • Speaking of Mr. Satan, he's devastated to learn that Buu (whom he considered his friend) has killed/eaten his daughter Videl. She gets better.
  • In the bad future, as depicted in The History of Trunks, Chi-Chi ends up outliving Gohan when he's killed by No. 17 and No. 18, something that she was afraid of happening for years.
  • In the present timeline, Chi-Chi thinks this has happened to Gohan because for some reason, everyone but Videl were under the false assumption that Gohan was killed by Buu. She's afraid that Goten would be next, but Chi-Chi got killed by Buu before that could happen.
  • In Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', Freeza blows up the Earth, which leads to Trunks (Bulma's son), Marron (Krillin's daughter), Pan (Gohan's daughter) and Goten (Goku's second son) all dying. This tragic event is short-lived thanks to Whis reversing time for five minutes, which is more than enough time for Goku to prevent Freeza from destroying the Earth. Frankly enough, compared to the other parents, Goku isn't as sad about his kid's death...at least in this story. He does get very angry about the death of Goten in another timeline.
• The twist in the short manga Forever Honey is that the daughter had been killed in a car crash and what the reader had been seeing was her ghost.
• Fruits Basket: Tohru's father predeceased his father, Tohru's kind but powerless grandfather.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, this happens to a few people:
  • Pinako Rockbell's only son and daughter-in-law, Yuriy and Sara, were killed during the Ishvalan conflict, leaving her to raise her granddaughter Winry alone.
  • Sig and Izumi Curtis lost their only child at his birth. This led a desperate Izumi to break the taboo and try the forbidden human transmutation, contrasting with the Elrics who did the same thing to recreate their Missing Mom (and in fact, she empathizes strongly with them because of that). In the 2003 anime this child becomes Wrath.
  • General Grumman outlived his daughter, Riza Hawkeye's unnamed mother, although this relationship is confirmed only in the supplemental material.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Envy was created when Hohenheim and Dante tried to revive their son.
• Gakuen Babysitters: The chairwoman loses both her son and her daughter-in-law in the same plane crash as the Kashima brothers lost their parents. Their conjoint inability to accept their deaths is what prompts her to ask them to live with her. Later chapters show she still hasn't fully accepted his death, but the Kashima brothers' presence is helping.
• Michiru’s death serves as the catalyst for Professor Saotome’s actions in Getter Robo Armageddon.
• In Gintama, Gengai's son was killed in the Joui War and his severed head put on display at the end of the war. Takasugi attempts to use this to manipulate him into killing the Shogun.
• Gundam:
  • In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, by the time Degwin Zabi was offed by his eldest son Gihren, he had already outlasted his other three sons (Sasro was killed in a car bombing before the series began, Garma was tricked into an enemy ambush by Char Aznable and subsequently blasted to hell by White Base, and Dozle was slain by Amuro Ray at the Battle of Solomon). Garma’s death in particular more or less broke his spirit.
    • Meanwhile, in the novelization trilogy, Degwin is Spared by the Adaptation, merely being dethroned as Zeon’s ruler following the end of the One Year War. Thus, he outlives not only Gihren but also his daughter Kycillia.
  • This is also the case with Bright Noa by the end of Hathaway’s Flash. Made worse by the fact that he was the one who signed Hathaway’s death warrant, though he didn’t realize that his son and “Mafty Navue Erin” were one and the same until it was too late to rescind the order. He takes it about as well as you’d expect.
• In This Corner of the World: Harumi dies to a time-delayed bomb, leaving her mother Keiko behind to take her anger and grief out on Suzu.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Battle Tendency: Erina Pendleton-Joestar outlived her son George, an Ace Pilot from World War I, when he was murdered by one of Dio's last zombies. For a little while near the end of Part II, she believed that she outlived her grandson Joseph as well. It was fortunately averted with the comical reveal of Joseph's survival.
  • Stardust Crusaders: When Noriaki Kakyoin dies in the battle with Dio, among his many final thoughts are his still-alive parents back in Japan, before his mind drifts to the final question that puzzled him.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Yoshikage Kira murders Shigechi, a young middle schooler, for discovering his serial killer lifestyle, and due to the nature of Kira's murders, Shigechi's parents will never know what ever happened to their son.
  • Golden Wind:
    • Narancia's father ends up outliving his son, who was killed by Diavolo. Not that he would really care much, given how emotionally distant and neglectful he was towards him.
    • The epilogue has an elderly man going to Bucciaratti's gang and asking them to aid him in finding a sculpter who's suspected in murdering his daughter. It turns out that his daughter was beginning to contract a fatal disease which her father would die from as well, and Scolippi, the sculpter in question, used his stand to give her a Mercy Kill so she could donate her organs to her dad.
  • Stone Ocean:
    • Mrs. Bluemarine's son died only a few minutes after he was born. Out of sheer despair and desparation, she swapped him out with Pucci's brother Wes, just so she could have a child to raise.
    • Joseph ends up outliving his own grandson, who ends up getting killed by Enrico Pucci, and given that his mother is never stated to have died and ages extremely slowly, she may have still been alive herself. However, the universe reset triggered by Pucci's own death confirms that Jotaro is alive again, and has a much more stable relationship with his daughter.
  • JoJolion: Norisuke and Kaato Higashikata both outlive Jobin by the end of the story when he is killed by Wonder of U. Kaato, however, avenges her son, at the cost of her own life.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Precia Testarossa of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha outlives her daughter Alicia, but not Alicia's clone, Fate, whom Precia refuses to see as her offspring to the very end.
  • Due from StrikerS ends up being killed by Zest, being the only one of Jail Scaglietti's 12 combat cyborgs (who he treats as his daughters) to not survive to the end of the season. Unlike Precia, he isn't driven mad with grief, though he does ask for some wine to perform a Libation for the Dead when Ginga and Cinque consult him for help on a case three years later.
• Maria no Danzai: Poor Mari Nagare was just seconds away from watching her son’s brutal fall from a cliff, only for a truck to suddenly run over him and finally kill him off for good.
• A flashback at the beginning of chapter 108 of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid shows that Elma's great-great etc. grandmother Telne lost multiple descendants in the past (it's not actually stated if they were her children or somewhere further down the family line). This is especially tragic because she is unusually maternal for a species that tends to struggle with the concept of a parent/child bond.
• My Hero Academia: Masaru and Mitsuki Bakugo outlive their son Katsuki, as in Chapter 362 he is killed in battle against the Big Bad. Edgeshot attempts to revive him via a quick thinking Sacrificial Revival Spell, but Chapter 364 ends without revealing whether or not it worked.
• Naruto:
  • Chiyo outlived her son and daughter-in-law, who were killed by Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang of the Leaf. This left her to raise their son, Sasori.
  • In the flashbacks to the Warring States period, it is revealed that Hashirama and Tobirama Senju had two younger brothers, Itama and Kawarama, who both predeceased their father, Butsuma. Similarly, Madara and Izuna Uchiha had three other brothers who predeceased their father, Tajima.
• One Piece:
  • One of the worst acts of the World Government in the past is killing many newborns and kids under one year old in their search for the child of Gold D. Roger, meaning their parents outlived them.
  • In a grandparental version, Garp outlived his grandson Ace... who turned out to be the aforementioned child of Gold D. Roger since Roger entrusted Garp with the still unborn Ace's safety.
  • Two of Curly Dadan's three surrogate sons were dead by the time of tie Time Skip though Sabo turned out to still be alive.
  • The Dark and Troubled Past of Doflamingo's subordinate Senor Pink was kickstarted when his and his wife Russian's son, Gimlet, died of illness when he wasn't at home.
• Orange: In the original timeline, Kakeru Naruse's grandmother outlives her daughter and grandson, both of whom commit suicide. In the new timeline, her daughter still dies, but Kakeru decides against suicide thanks to the influence of his friends.
• Ōoku: The Inner Chambers:
  • The catalyst for all the chaos of Shogun Tsunayoshi's later reign is the death of her only daughter and heir, Matsu. Likewise, Shogun Ietsugu inherited the sickly nature of her mother, meaning her father Sakyo is in the unenviable position of seeing a successor to his own daughter take the throne. It's also mentioned that his son by his mother died of the Redface Pox sometime after he entered Ienobu's household.
  • Ieharu's children all died before her, leaving her with no heir and another succession crisis.
  • Tanuma Okitomo is assassinated in front of her mother Okitsugu out of revenge for Okitsugu's unpopular policies and the series of natural disasters that were blamed on her. To make matters worse, the assassin is regarded as a saint by the people.
  • A number of Ienari's children fall ill and die. One of the mothers figures out that their grandmother Harusada is poisoning them and trying to pit the mothers against each other. The worst part? It's implied Harusada's doing this because she's bored.
  • Tensho-in and Iesada were expecting their first child when Iesada suddenly died, taking their baby with her. Tensho-in suspected that she had been poisoned by Ii Naosuke so a more malleable Shogun can take her place. He only finds out in the final volume that Iesada's cause of death was jaundice aggravated by her pregnancy, and among her final words were a lament that her child would pass away with her.
• Dr. Fuji from Pokémon: The First Movie (who is a reference to Dr. Tenma from Astro Boy) lost his young daughter, Amber, when she was hit by a car. He tried to clone her; however, the clone ended up dying, too, because the cloning process was still developmental.
• Private Actress: At least two cases involve the protagonist, Shiho Kobayakawa, posing as girls whose deaths deeply traumatized their parents:
  • The first one has her "as" Miyu, a girl who was stabbed to death alongside her mother in London, but whose corpse never was found. Miyu's dad, the rich businessman Sendoh, is mortally ill and has never fully lost hope of seeing Miyu again, so Sendoh's secretary secretly hires Shiho (who looks a LOT like Miyu would look like, were she alive) to pose as Miyu and keep him company for his last weeks of life. Sendoh eventually noticed that Shiho wasn't Miyu due to a small detail that she couldn't "copy", but he still appreciated her effort and how she sincerely felt empathy for his plea; when he peacefully passed away, he left some of Miyu's actual belongings and a poetry book as a parting gift for Shiho.
  • The second case involves Shiho posing as the reincarnation of Miyuki, a little girl who was gruesomely murdered. Her father Shigehide has gone pretty much insane with grief, so his remaining daughter Kozue hires Shiho to pose as a reincarnated Miyuki; she reasons that if Miyuki was reincarnated right after her murder, she'd be around Shiho's age, so if Shiho (who, again, looks like the dead girl's aged-up version) "plays" the role of the new Miyuki well enough, Shigehide will finally be able to let go of his suffer and start properly living again. Not only Kozue and Shiho's plan turns out to be Crazy Enough to Work, but it leads Shiho and Shigehide to find the Serial Killer who victimised Miyuki and other people and help to catch him.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sayaka's parents are confirmed in Episode 11 to be alive, but have outlived their daughter, who became a witch in Episode 8. Even in the last episode, after the universe was rebooted, her parents still outlived her. She's back for good at the end of Rebellion, at least.
• The Quintessential Quintuplets: The mother of the Nakano sisters, Rena, died of an (unspecified) illness several years prior to the start of the series. Her father is shown still alive during the story, though he passes on of old age in the interlude between the manga's final two chapters.
• Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl: Mai Sakurajima's mother outlives her daughter after the latter is killed in a traffic accident. The whole mess is undone via Time Travel, but watching Mai's mother outright collapse in the hospital after being informed about her daughter's death is still painful to see.
• In Restaurant to Another World, one of the Four Legendary heroes Alexander, being a half-elf who can live for centuries, has already outlived his child Emperor Wilhelm, who is fully human and had lived a full life themselves.
• Rei's grandfather from Sailor Moon is still alive in the series while his daughter (Rei's mom) died years before the series begins. This is why Rei lives with him.
• Shi ni Aruki:
  • Before the start of the series, Takahito and Ayako lost their youngest son in an accident.
  • At the very end of the series, Tokiko's biological mother learns of her estranged daughter's death and has a breakdown over it.
• Midway through The Summer You Were There, it is revealed that Kaori is terminally ill, and while her mother is implied to be dead, her father is still alive. Kaori passes away in the penultimate chapter, leaving behind her father and younger sister.
• Lordgenome of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fame is quite accustomed to it. Nia is not the first child he conceived and outlasted during his long reign.
• Tokyo Magnitude 8.0:
  • Mari fears her four-year-old daughter and her mother have died due to the earthquake. In episode nine her fears seem to come to life, as supposedly they died in a fire, however, this is subverted as it's shown later that both survived. The bodies weren't theirs.
  • Mirai and Yuuki's parents were not so lucky. Two of their kids left to see a robot exhibit but only Mirai came back alive. Her kid brother ended up dying due to likely a cranial injury, combined with dehydration.
• Violet Evergarden: Poor, POOR Oscar Webster. As if being widowed thanks to losing his wife to terminal illness wasn’t bad enough, he had to watch their daughter Olivia slowly waste away from the same disease.
• Your Lie in April: Kaori ends up dying of her illness in the final chapter/episode, and her still-living parents are last seen onscreen passing Kousei a letter from her and thanking him for being in her life.
• Your Name: Mitsuha and Yotsuha's mother Futaba died of illness 6 years ago, leaving them in the care of their maternal grandmother Hitoha after their father Toshiki, having developed depression and irreconcilable differences with her, walked out on the family. For better or worse, the story never explores Hitoha's opinion on this.
• Yuki Yuna is a Hero: 11-year-old Gin dies roughly halfway through the prequel to the grief of her parents.

Art

• Marriage A-la-Mode: In "The Lady's Death", the alderman is still alive after his daughter has been Driven to Suicide, although he seems more interested in recovering what he can of the dowry by removing and selling her wedding ring than he does in mourning the fact that he has outlived his child.
• Michelangelo's Pietà depicts the Virgin Mary cradling the corpse of her son as if he was still her infant child. Many other artists have also depicted the same image in paintings and statues.

Comic Books

• Animal Man:
  • Grant Morrison's run has Buddy Baker outlive his children Cliff and Maxine when they and his wife Ellen are murdered. At the end of their run, Morrison's Author Avatar uses their Author Powers to resurrect Buddy's family after feeling they've made him suffer enough (and so that the next writer won't have to worry too much about where the series left off at the conclusion of their run).
  • Buddy Baker's son dies again in the New 52 series by Jeff Lemire, which stuck this time and was notably one of the few post-Flashpoint changes to the canon of the DCU to be retained after DC Rebirth in spite of the primary purpose of the Rebirth initiative being to restore the DC Universe to how it was prior to Flashpoint.
• Batman:
  • The relationship between Batman and Robin has always been a father-son one, and Bruce reacted in a highly similar fashion when Jason Todd was murdered by the Joker in the story A Death in the Family, a point explicitly stated by Devin Grayson in a retrospective Gotham Knights story.
  • This happens once more when Damian Wayne is killed by Talia in the New 52. Both Alfred, whom inadvertently caused Damian's death by allowing him to leave the Batcave when ordered not too and Bruce are crushed but they seem to be handling it about as well as can be expected. That is until Bruce finds a note from Damian telling him how he turned him into a hero and he loved him, sending him into a Berserker Rage and going through the 7 stages of grief that spans multiple comics. Alfred breaks when he enters a Virtual Reality Simulator and knocks Damian out to prevent him from leaving. He then tells him how proud he is and how he'll never forgive himself. He then exits the Simulator sobbing, not that anyone could blame him.
  • Alfred actually went through this twice when Bruce "died". When asked by Superman if he was alright he responded, "No sir, I am not. My son has died."
  • Alongside these, are two Alternate Universes in which Thomas Wayne becomes Batman after his son Bruce dies. In the Flashpoint AU, Bruce is shot in place of his parents that fateful night in Crime Alley and it also turns out that Martha Wayne became the Joker, having lost her sanity with her son's death. Earth 2, meanwhile, had Bruce Wayne go through the same beats as his standard depiction, becoming Batman after his parents were shot included, but Thomas Wayne was later revealed to have survived the shooting and faked his death in a misguided effort of protecting his son and ultimately becomes the new Batman after Bruce perishes while fighting Parademons.
• Batman Beyond (Rebirth): "The Long Payback" has Kenny Stanton's father Gray become the new Payback after his son the previous Payback committed suicide during his incarceration, wanting revenge because he holds Batman responsible for his son's death. Terry, of course, isn't having any of it and spells out to Gray that it's his own fault his son is dead because of how he neglected him before knocking him out cold.
• The Best We Could Do: Thi's oldest sister, Quyen, lived only a few months. Thi wonders if this caused her parents to look on their subsequent children as disappointments.
• Black Hammer: Madame Dragonfly became a witch through a Deal with the Devil to resurrect her infant son, who died under unspecified circumstances. Many years later she became pregnant with another child, only to suffer a miscarriage or a stillbirth soon after she arrived on the farm.
• Blood Syndicate: In the spinoff miniseries My Name is Holocaust, it is mentioned that John Tower has outlived his son Tommy.
• Crisis on Infinite Earths:
  • Lady Quark had to witness her own daughter's demise when her universe was wiped out.
  • Among the civilians experiencing the Crisis are an elderly couple who witness a phantom of an alternate universe counterpart to their deceased daughter.
• Doom Patrol: In Grant Morrison's run, Flex Mentallo's creator Wally Sage ends up dying, with a subsequent issue showing his mother in mourning.
• One Elfquest story recalls the life of an elf-adopted human child called Little Patch from infancy to his death of old age. Shuna, another human, was later adopted by the elves as well, although she's still alive in the current storyline, one can surmise that the long-lived elves will outlive her with ease.
• Figment: Subverted in the first series' final issue. Everyone else thinks this is the case for Mrs. Mercurial due to Blair/Dreamfinder (and Figment) disappearing through a portal after defeating the Singular; the readers find out that this is not true.
• Pre-Cosmic Retcon, it was established during the Cobalt Blue arc in The Flash that Henry and Nora Allen, Barry's parents, died shortly after his passing in Crisis on Infinite Earths, meaning there was a bit of time they had to deal with losing their son (with said Cosmic Retcon happening when Barry came back).
• G.I. Joe:
  • G.I. Joe (Devil's Due) ends with Destro seeing his son Alexander shot in front of him.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (IDW) :
    • Cobra Commander ends up outliving his son Billy when Billy is killed by the Blue Ninjas. The death of his son drives Cobra Commander to try and annihilate the Blue Ninjas to avenge Billy.
    • Issue 263 shows Doc's grave being visited by his surviving parents.
• Dr. Mist of the Global Guardians, once he achieved immortality in his origin story, found himself outliving all his offspring, as they didn't inherit immortality from their father.
• Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted: Raymond Martin's son was killed alongside his wife and parents by the MUTO female in his backstory, and it's 20% of the reason why Raymond is a psychopath thirsty for all monster life's blood to a point which goes into and beyond Van Helsing Hate Crimes.
• Green Lantern:
  • Atrocitus of the Red Lantern Corps outlived his children when his family was slaughtered by the Manhunters.
  • It is revealed in Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps that Blue Lantern Saint Walker went on a pilgrimage with his family to Mount Hellious where he was the only survivor. Aside from his father and his wife, the casualties also included his children.
• Justice League of America:
  • Justice League: Cry for Justice saw Roy Harper lose his daughter Lian during the destruction of Star City, which was brought about by Prometheus.
  • JLA: Earth-2: In Earth-2, Commissioner Thomas Wayne loses his son Bruce along with his wife Martha. This event is what causes Thomas Jr. to become Owlman.
• Kid Eternity: In the first story of the 1946 series' ninth issue, a reporter named Joe Hodges tries to bring a killer called the Beagle to justice after hearing from his doctor that he's dying of a heart condition, having earlier refused to hold the Beagle accountable due to the risk of getting killed by him. At one point, Hodges tries to get information on the Beagle from a woman named Mrs. Robicek, whose son was killed by the Beagle. Mrs. Robicek refuses to tell Hodges anything about the Beagle due to fearing for the lives of her remaining children, but is convinced to come forward anyway when Kid Eternity summons famed journalist Richard Harding Davis and has him address that by refusing to rat the Beagle out, she's enabling him to possibly murder other parents' children.
• Martian Manhunter: J'onn J'onzz outlived his daughter when she and his wife perished with the rest of the Martian race.
• Mother of Champions takes this to the extreme, as she can give birth to as many as 25 children in three days that all die in a week due to Rapid Aging or injuries suffered while they're used as disposable Super Soldiers. One comic has her standing before a graveyard filled with dozens if not hundreds of her children's bodies.
• The Punisher takes the revenge aspect of this trope and runs with it, with the death of his children and wife serving as his motive to kill all criminals.
• Samurai Grandpa: When Ojichan comes home in the first issue, he discovers his son, Kyo, has been murdered.
• The Sandman (1989): In the penultimate issue, "Exiles", the one-shot character Master Li mentions that he outlived his son, who was executed by the emperor for treason.
• Shade, the Changing Man:
  • The "Shade, the Changing Woman" arc of Peter Milligan's run had Senator Dooley outlive his deformed son William Dooley, Jr. after the latter was shot by a man who tried to kill Senator Dooley.
  • The "Life is Short" arc ends with Shade outliving his son George after the latter rapidly ages to death when barely older than a month.
• In Spider-Man storyline Spider-Geddon, it's heavily implied that the version of Uncle Ben who got spider powers thanks to a blood transfusion from his 13-year-old nephew is grieving over Peter's death during the event.
• Supergirl:
  • Zigzagged in "Supergirl's Big Brother". Before adopting Kara, Fred and Edna Danvers had a son called Jan who was killed on active duty as serving in the army. Then a man who looks like Jan appears on their doorstep, claiming he was wrongly reported to have died. Then Linda discovers that man is an inheritance-seeking crook called Biff Rigger, and the real Jan Danvers is indeed dead. However, Biff dies shortly after, and since he gets killed as saving her life, Kara does not tell her parents he was a conman. At the end, the Danvers are aware that their son is dead, but they are wrong about the circumstances.
  • Since the Danvers are still alive when Crisis on Infinite Earths breaks out and Supergirl gets killed by the Anti-Monitor, they also outlive their adoptive daughter.
• Superman:
  • New Krypton: Among the Kryptonians wishing for Reactron to be executed are a couple whose son was killed by Reactron.
  • The Superman Adventures: Issue 59 has an elderly sorcerer named Michael Nicodemus Widow attempt to use his magic to destroy Metropolis in retribution for his daughter Cora getting killed in an accident after moving there. It takes the intervention of Superman and Widow's granddaughter Cassie (who lives under the assumed name of Yvette Swanson) to convince him that destroying Metropolis isn't what his daughter would've wanted.
  • Superman & Batman: Generations: This continuity's Superman and Batman end up outliving their children, partly due to the former possessing longevity as a Kryptonian and the latter using the Lazarus pits to achieve immortality.
  • Superman: Space Age: The origin of this continuity's Joker involves his daughter Tabitha perishing in a fire that was caused under Maxwell Lord's ownership of Wayne Enterprises.
• Swamp Thing: In issue four of the original Len Wein series, the MacCobbs outlive their werewolf son Ian when he sacrifices himself to save his mother's life.
• Tangent Comics has it established that this universe's Atom is a Legacy Character, with the current of three Atoms being the son and grandson of the first two. The first Atom is said to have outlived his son the second Atom because the latter was murdered by the Fatal Five.
• The Walking Dead:
  • Hershel Greene is an extreme example, outliving six of his children, one of which is killed not very long before he dies. The only survivor of his children is Maggie.
  • Tyreese's daughter Julie is killed in a murder-suicide pact gone wrong, leading to him strangling Julie's boyfriend Chris to death for his part in her killing.
  • Morgan outlived his son Duane. This is brought over to the series.
  • As a part of her backstory, Michonne was a lawyer who ended her marriage and believes that her daughters were killed by the walkers.
  • Two minor characters named Jim and Brianna lost their entire families, including their children.
• Wolverine:
  • Wolverine was born in the mid-19th Century and is still alive and kicking in the 21st thanks to his Healing Factor. It's seldom touched on, but he has had many children over his lifetime (most of them illegitimate). Those not born mutants sharing his healing factor are very likely to die of old age or disease while he lives on. One story arc features a villain invoking this trope in the cruelest way possible: He gathers as many of Logan's illegitimate offspring as he can find, trains them, and sends them after him, knowing that Logan will make short work of them. And then not telling him until after the deed is done. The resulting guilt of having slaughtered his own children, along with the participation of his "daughter"/Opposite-Sex Clone, X-23, in X-Force is later a major contributing factor to his side of Schism.
  • Played straighter in the case of his son, Daken: Logan's pregnant wife Itsu was murdered by Winter Soldier in 1946, leading Logan to believe his son died with her. It's not until the present day that Logan learned Daken actually survived due to inheriting his mutant healing factor, and lived much of the past 6 decades (or at least, what he could remember of it) believing his son was dead.
• Wonder Girl: Donna Troy's step-child, biological child, and ex-husband all died in a car crash.
• Wonder Woman (1987): In the story "Chalk Drawings", Dr. and Mrs. Spears outlive their daughter Lucy when she commits suicide by locking herself in the garage and inhaling carbon monoxide from the family's car.
• Wonder Woman: Black and Gold: Cathy Perkins is a bit bitter that both of her parents are in good health while she herself is dying. Even her friendship with Wonder Woman does not give her access to anything that will cure her, and she ends up destroying the magic talisman she had been using to give herself a little more time since it was endangering people around her.
• X-Men: The Holocaust survivors Max Eisenhardt and Magda settled down together in Vinnitsa (in then-Soviet Ukraine) with their daughter, Anya. When Max briefly lost control of his mutant powers during a fight with his Bad Boss, an angry mob (including some KGB agents) burned down the inn where the family lived, which killed poor Anya. The rest is, well, history.
• X-O Manowar: This ends up happening to the main protagonist between publication volumes. After settling down with his wife and having a son together, the boy ends up developing leukemia due to exposure to radiation from his Powered Armor. He ends up dying and his marriage breaks down with his wife blaming him for their child's death. Since he can't simply get rid of the armor (it's bonded to him and it accepts no one else as its master), he departs from Earth in exile and becomes an aimless mercenary.

Comic Strips

• Safe Havens: Palmtop eventually reveals that she outlived all the puppies in her litter except for Deke, as they all chose to remain dogs while she and Deke now live as humans.

Fairy Tales

• "The Three Snake Leaves": The king outlives his daughter when she dies from sickness. Later she is brought back, but she is executed for murder.

Fan Works

• Adopted Displaced: At the beginning of "Heart of the Dragon General", General Iroh has outlived his son, Lu Ten. By the end of the story, Iroh's brother Ozai has outlived his daughter, Azula.
• In the Altered Destinies Fan Verse, in addition to Achika, Katsuhito’s son Ro Ghan and daughter Xan Pu both died in battle. Ranma-chan even looks like Xan Pu, though the only universe that confirms she drowned in Jusenkyo is Tenchi & Ranma - Together Forever.
  • Hiroshi/Clark's first-born son Jonathan Kent died fighting against a would-be conqueror from space named Holocaust.
• As N Approaches Infinity: Isshin is devastated by his daughters' deaths in the story's first timeline.
• Avengers of the Ring: In Methteilin, Queen Ramonda and Bilbo are both devastated to learn that T'Challa and Frodo were killed by the Snap.
• Code Prime: As of Chapter 19, Darlton has outlived all of his adoptive sons, who perished either at Narita or Port Yokosuka.
• In Dead or Alive 4: The Devil Factor, side character Yuri dies after taking a fatal blow for Ayane. Yuri's older brother had perished during the Mugen Tenshin's assault on the DOATEC Tri-towers, and their father had died years before that. Yuri's mother, having lost her entire family, is rendered near-catatonic.
• The Devil King of Remnant: While it's indeed been a whole century since leaving the Solar System and arriving at Remnant, Mikazuki is still downtrodden that both Atra and their son Akatsuki are long dead.
• In Fairytales, Cinderella's 17-year old daughter Lisette died of typhoid fever and her 11-year old son died soon afterwards. The deaths of two out of her three kids led Cinderella to grow distant from her husband. Subverted with her son, Henri, who wasn't killed by a monster like expected. He was the Beast itself.
• Harmony's Warriors: In the side story The Collective History of Asgard, this is what drove Luna's grandmother to her death.
• How the Light Gets In: Discussed, in that its mentioned Laurel's death was the third time her parents went through this. (Even if none of them stuck, and the first time Sara wasn't really dead). As a mother herself, Laurel has no idea how they survived it.
  • The Earth-2 versions of Laurel and Dean both lost their children to the particle accelerator explosion.
  • Edie's parents were thought to have gone through this, but it later turns out her mother knows she's still alive. Her father however genuinely believes her to be dead.
  • Earth-2 Sam drowned when he was little.
  • Matteo Moretti is killed by Earth-2Dean. His mother is soulless at the time, and (seemingly) can't show any emotion over it. His father knew it would happen and did nothing to prevent it.
• Kings and Khans: As per Tarzan canon, Sabor kills Kerchak and Kala's baby son. This proves to be a serious mistake.
• Moving Forward Towards Tomorrow: Revali is 118 years old when Link awakens, and has outlived all but one of his children. In fact, he's pretty sure that the only reason that he's still going despite Rito not being meant to live so long is because he's that determined not to let Link "beat" him.
• Stand on the Horizon: Suyin outlives Baatar, Jr. and Kuvira, who she raised, and Hiroshi outlives Asami.
• Unity: The reason Dr. Nefario went evil. Xerek kidnapped his son hoping he could force Nefario to work for him. The original Excelsior tried to rescue him, but apparently he was already dead when Excelsior got there. Embittered by Excelsior's failure, Nefario went after Xerek by himself and killed him along with most of his men by the time Excelsior caught up to him.
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing:
  • Flopsy and Benjamin lost one of their seven children to a heart problem. Barbie's little sister Kelly died similarly, though we see more of Barbie's reaction than the parents' reaction.
  • Tilly Green was murdered by Megan Parker, and the Greens aren't taking it well at all.
  • It's implied that Kocoum was Kekata's son here, and Kocoum's confirmed to be dead at the hands of GWF.
  • Shifu describes himself as Tai Lung's father, and side stories confirm Tai Lung is dead.
  • Malachite is Lapis and Jasper's daughter, and she died within a week of being born due to birth defects.
• Between The Crosses: Mrs. Blake outlives her sons Tom and Joseph due to both of them dying in World War I.
• To Lose Ourselves and Find Our Bones: Hari and Woojin's parents are devastated by their younger child's death.
• Washed Down The Drain: Seong-min thinks she's this. Dal-hoon actually does suffer from this after Ha-ri's death.
• Dæmorphing:
  • Elfangor had an Andalite wife and two children after he was taken away from Loren, who all died of a disease.
  • The Animorphs fake Tom's death in Abel or Cain, causing Jean and Steve to think this happened to them. The author has said in the comments that this will almost certainly happen for real later down the line; Hork-Bajir only live for about 20 years, so it's highly likely Tom will die before his still-human parents.
  • The Abyss begins with the Chapmans wondering what happened to Melissa, their daughter. She dies at the end of the chapter.
• In Eleutherophobia: Back to the Future, Aunt Ellen and Uncle Dan are having trouble coping with Saddler's and Rachel's deaths, respectively. At the dinner table, Jake references the story of Moses, where the blood of the firstborn was the price for freedom.
• The fanfic Ladybird, Ladybird is about a grief-stricken Jean unable to cope with the fact that her youngest son caused her eldest son's death.
• In What Tomorrow Brings, Cassie mentions that her parents outlived her in the original universe.
• We Are The Nine: Not uncommon among the Nine Noble Houses of the Eldian Empire, as some members of the family were allowed to grow old before inheriting the Titan, while other enthusiastic teenagers or desperate children took control when pressed.
  • Unless something changes, all the Warriors' parents will outlive them, save Zeke's.
• It's mentioned that Lady Delphine, in the Contractually Obligated Chaos series, had just one child who died as a baby.
• The Tears of T'Challa is an alternate universe of the final battle where Killmonger kills Shuri so Queen Ramonda outlives her.
• God's Humor: All the parents of the Hedone victims have to go through this. D sits next to Marcus’ mother during the funeral in the second chapter.
• In Digimon Adventure 02: The Story We Never Told, a darker retelling of the series, the Ichijouji parents, as in canon, lose their older son Osamu to a car accident. What makes it even worse than in canon is that younger brother Ken, unlike in canon where he had nothing to do with the accident, pushed Osamu in front of that car in a fit of jealousy and anger. And as of chapter 49, Ken himself is killed by Oikawa, so his parents now have no offspring left.
• Digimon Rewrite: In episode 3, Kaoru hears a broadcast of Michihiko's parents, desperate to find their son... But their son's long dead.
• Since the Doctor in The Road to Shalka treats his companion Jasmine as a daughter, her death hits him very, very hard - hard enough that he asks the Master to kill him. Later, when confronted with an Upper-Class Twit father who thinks he lost his son but the young man is really just enthralled by aliens and thinks this justifies his running around with a rifle, treating people like dirt, he's pissed off.
  The Doctor: Man up. It's the first fifty years that are the worst.
• In the one-shot Behind a Tree set shortly after Cora's miscarriage at the end of Series 1, Violet reveals that she and the late Earl (Robert's father) had a stillborn son named Edward before Robert was born.
• The Heiress: In a Plot-Triggering Death, Violet loses Robert to his burst ulcer years before the same incident in canon.
• Things Hidden: Cora and Robert lose Edith to Spanish flu.
• Fairest of Them All: It's revealed that Webby's mother was killed shortly after abandoning her daughter with Mrs. Beakley, who wasn't aware of that until the kids start investigating. The spoiler was later Outdated by Canon in the Series Finale.
• Forfeit: The Kankers' mom outlives all of her daughters due to them being killed in self-defense by the Eds.
• Replacement:
  • The Pérezs act like a sympathetic couple who tragically lost their only son. It's later revealed that Gloria actually killed him.
  • Pepa and Félix believe they outlived Camilo for two years after the story began. That is until Félix and Dolores find him in the woods.
• To Extinguish The Sun: Seńor Herrera outlives Mateo, who dies in the climax of the story.
• Abraxas: Empty Fullness "Sermones ad Mortuos": It's revealed that Rodan outlived his own children a long time ago, and he understands from such an experience that time alone isn't always enough to heal all bereavements.
• Halloween: Sins of a Father: Applied retroactively with the fused timelines, with Laurie Strode outliving her daughter Jamie before being killed by Michael.
• A More Perfect Union:
  • Alexander and Eliza Hamilton outlive their firstborn son, Philip, who dies after being shot in a duel.
  • John and Abigail Adams outlive their son Charles Adams, who drinks himself to death in the fic but likely didn't die that way in reality. Unfortunately, his parents did actually outlive him in real life.
• With a Key and a Kite: Eliza and Alexander Hamilton outlive their firstborn son, Phillip. Eliza also outlives the rest of her children and grandchildren, living to at least 2001.
• Arc of Sacrifices: Hawthorn outlives not only her husband, but Pansy as well.
• The Best Revenge: Since the Philosopher's Stone only works for its original creators, the Flamels end up outliving several generations of their descendants. After about two hundred years, they learned to stop getting attached, as their descendants now constituted most of wizarding England and France.
• Dangerverse: Remus not only outlives his wife and in-laws, he ends up outliving every single child in the Pride. Subverted by his daughter with Danger, who survives him.
• For Love of Magic: Narcissa after Draco dies trying to kill Harry.
• Kaleidoscopic Grangers: In the epilogue section of the story, Ron's worst fear is that Hermione will be an example of this for their werewolf daughter Persephone.
• What If Snape Died: Augusta Longbottom outlives her son Frank after he's murdered by Lucius Malfoy.
• In Holding On To Grace, this happens after a car crashes into several children, including Grace, killing one child and another child is taken off life support after being declared brain dead due to the crash.
• Owl's Hell That Ends Well: Marquis Phenex has lost all but one of his children, his daughter having been poisoned by her jealous siblings, whom he killed in retribution.
• Afterlife: Riley dies after she’s hit by a drunk driver. While the entire fic is from her and the emotions perspective in the afterlife, the characters discuss how Riley’s parents feel, and how their marriage is starting to fall apart after Riley’s death.
• In the fanfic Reconciliation, Hisao’s arrhythmic heart has given out for the final time. His parents are among the attendees at his funeral.
• The Outside: The ending implies this, as Ragyo and Ryuuko find out that Satsuki's life expectancy isn't long.
• Happens multiple times in Dead Man Switch as parents have to deal with their daughters being kidnapped and taken to Lorwardia to be executed, and being forced to watch them via recordings. Former cheerleader Liz mentions that's what happened to her niece.
• Klonoa: Lunatales: In "His Mother's Eyes", Elise outlives her daughter, Lorna. The former makes a point that she Never Got to Say Goodbye, and that no parent should ever have to go through this.
• In the spin-off to the fanfic My Inner Life "Bleeding Love," Link and Jenna outlive their firstborn, Link Jr., when he is tortured to death by Ganondorf. This is listed as one of the things that sends Link over the edge and leads him to committing suicide.
• From Behind Bars: Scar lost his son Mheetu.
• Pride Lands Generations: Mfalme and Malkia are quite shaken and overwhelmed by having to bury their youngest cub, Sulubu; the former is particularly left gaunt and sleepless, haunted by memories of carrying his son's body home on his back. It turns out he only outlives Sulubu by another three years, however.
• Chains of Reality: The Proto-Sisters wound up being the only survivors of the old reality, which was populated by their children with Proto-Lincoln, who was the one who destroyed it. As if their minds weren't broken enough already...
  • Clyde and Penelope, both in the Chains' dimension and the dimension where Calliope came from, outlive her when she's killed by Haiku in order to empower the Gashadokuro. This is then averted when Clyde takes her out of the skeleton and seemingly brings her back to life... somehow.
  • The Loud parents, Rita and Lynn Sr., can be added to the ranks as well, not only for temporarily outliving Lucy before she revived, but officially outliving Lynn when she dies at the end of the Proto-Lucy arc, with no known way to revive her at the moment.
• In Colossal Encounters, Lynn Sr. and Rita believe that this trope has happened to them. It's not true but they don't know that and considering their kids are only just finding out that they're not Sole Survivors, that doesn't lessen the heartbreak.
• In When October Goes (The Snow Begins to Fly), Victor passes away from cancer. His parents are both implied to outlive him.
• In the infamous fanfic ‘’Agony In Pink,’’ Kim is tortured to death. One of the rangers' first concerns is what they are going to tell Kim’s parents.
• Recklessness: The Dupain-Chengs get a nasty dose of this when they wake up to discover that Marinette has been murdered by an akumatized Adrien.
• In Heroic Sacrifce, Katie is killed in the final battle, meaning both Rick and Linda outlive her. Katie is hailed as a hero due to her sacrifice.
• #14: Izuku’s mother is still alive after her son’s suicide.
• Peace's Apprentice: Mamoru Mineta predeceases his parents by a few hours. Bakugou accidentally kills him during the USJ attack because his equipment was overclocked without his knowledge, and then Shigaraki kills his parents while throwing a tantrum over the attempt to lure All Might out being for nothing.
• To Depart and Remain:
  • Inko suffers this due to Izuku being killed by the Sludge Villain.
  • Mineta's parents also outlive him when he is killed in the USJ attack.
• The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle: Twilight’s parents, natch. Celestia, too, has outlived at least three.
• Beyond the Wall:
  • Blackberry and Strongoak's older daughter Whispersilk was eaten by forest monsters. Actually, not really. She managed to escape the village and they never saw her again.
  • Fairy Dust's parents are okay with her being killed so she can never leave the village, because as long as she stays in the village (even if it's her dead body), Gaea will love her forever.
• Equestria: Civil War: Thunderbolt's daughter was killed during the Changeling Invasion in "A Canterlot Wedding". This is why he refuses to believe that villains are capable of changing; even if they could, it would do nothing to bring his daughter back. The terrible event also caused the divorce between him and his then-wife, Wind Chime, because the two of them were too consumed with grief.
• Gods and Monsters: Thanks to their immortality Sunset and Twilight outlive both their daughters and one of their grandchildren by the time the main story kicks off.
• Human: First was Second's son, and Second ended up outliving him by over a thousand years.
• The Iron Horse: Everything's Better With Robots!: Cobbler Mustang is largely motivated by his grief upon losing his daughter, Georgia Peach.
• Popped: Pinkie's parents end up burying her in the end.
• The Power of the Equinox: After Dimmed Star kills a lot of royal guards under the Entity's influence, one of the most vocal ponies to convict her is Business Savvy whose only son is one of the casualties.
• The Royal Sketchbook: The immortal Celestia had children in the past, but none of her children are around several hundred years later.
• Whatever Way The Wind Takes You: Milkweed has, to her regret, achieved this by simply living a very long time.
• Why Am I Crying?: Filthy Rich loses his daughter Diamond Tiara in a carriage accident, and before that, his unborn son in the train accident that killed his wife.
• Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox: Yahiko experienced this as a result of the 365 days. As told to Naruto, "My children were supposed to bury me—not the other way around!"
• War of the Biju: Tsume Inuzuka, one of the surviving parents of the Konoha 12, who outlives both of her children. She remarks upon this, noting that while she is proud of both of them, that doesn't change the fact that she shouldn't have outlived them.
• Ghosts of Evangelion: After Asuka's death, Kyoko says that a woman shouldn't have to bury her own daughter.
• This happens to Alan in the story Don Eppes when Don dies after being taken off life support when he is fatally injured.
• Of Blond Hair and Blue Eyes: Vallo, Sanji, and Zoro feared this whenever something dangerous happened to their child. Ranport ended up outliving his son, but thankfully not his granddaughter.
• Discussed in the story I have my dead. The Investigation Team decide that each of them will write a letter for their families in case they die in the Mental World inside the TV. Aside from Teddie, every IT member has (grand)parents. It is only a discussed trope as no one in the IT has actually died, they merely hoped for the best but prepared for the worst, like soldiers going on deployment.
• In fan sequel, Harry outlives Tim when he’s killed in a robbery. It’s believed he could have survived the attack the same way his dad survived the car crash in the film; by switching places with the Pikachu. However, it was revealed to all be in Harry’s head.
• Ash's Coma: Happens to Delia Ketchum in the ending where Ash dies.
• Twice in Pokémpanions:
  • Long ago a Carnivine couple lost their daughter Camellia to a carriage accident (though her father didn't care nearly as much as her mother did).
  • Serperior lost her son when he looked under a Mimikyu's cloak when she wasn't looking, she was so distraught she sought to kill every Mimikyu she came across.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: While they are not mentioned in canon, in this story, both of Gary's parents are deceased, so this trope applies for Professor Oak.
• Ladder:
  • The Professor loses all three of The Powerpuff Girls, and the original character Ashley, over the course of a year. This is ultimately subverted though as he attempts, and (technically) succeeds, to revive them.
  • Princess is killed by a Serial Killer while having a sleepover with Bubbles. Her dad and Professor Utonium become friends due to understanding each other's pain.
  • Blossom created Ashley so, as her father puts it, she's as much her mother as she is her older sister. Ashley ends up Driven to Suicide under two days after her creation.
• Later, Traitor: As a part of Pepper Triggs' backstory, her daughter Sally drowned in a lake at a very young age.
• Ma Fille:
  • Louise and Henry outlived their daughter Heather, who died from childbirth complications, leaving her one-night stand partner Joe a single father to their daughter, Katrina (the titular "fille").
  • Miyoko outlived her daughter Akemi. Akemi's death circumstances are unknown, but her passing led to Miyoko raising her two children, Riki (a young Piston Hondo) and Natsumi.
• Ambition of the Red Princess: Aultcray's first daughter died during the war against Siltvelt.
• In International, Alice outlives Betty after she passes of an overdose right after being rescued from Human Traffickers.
• The Rugrats Theory: Almost all of the Rugrats' parents end up losing their children in some manner (especially Stu and Didi when their son Tommy is stillborn). Drew himself is hit particularly hard with this when he loses Angelica to a fatal overdose the same way he lost her mother.
• This is making a move:
  • Mr. and Mrs. Walker outlived their son Kris, leading to Charlie's adoption.
  • It's mentioned that Mr. Loomis and the Machers still live in Woodsboro after their sons were killed in the first film.
• World War Etheria: Averted in Book 7 What You Do With the Rest of Your Lives; immortal planetary defenders don't have to worry about this trope thanks to advanced medical technology.
• An Empire of Ice and Fire:
  • Olenna Tyrell outlives her son Mace and grandson Loras.
  • Catelyn Stark outlives Bran due to his death in the Final Battle.
  • By said final battle, Tommen is the only one of Jaime's children still alive thanks to Myrcella being burned alive and Joffrey's death when Jon and Daenerys took King's Landing.
  • Tywin Lannister outlives Cersei, Myrcella, and Joffrey.
  • As in the show, Howland Reed outlives his son Jojen after his death in the final battle.
• Be There Waiting Hoping Praying This Light Will Guide You Home: Since Ned, Catelyn, and Robb were brought back after Season 6, those who died before that point are still dead.
  • Robb's child with Talisa perished with her at the Red Wedding.
  • Rickon was killed by Ramsay Bolton as in canon.
• Bequeathed from Pale Estates: A few years before the main events of the books, The Plague hit every level of society. From the Lords Paramount alone:
  • Both Princes of Dorne lost a daughter to the plague; Doran lost Arianne and Oberyn lost his third daughter Tyene
  • Tommen and Myrcella Baratheon were both struck down by the plague, contributing to Cersei undergoing Sanity Slippage much earlier than in canon.
  • Jon Arryn lost his son Robert (Sweetrobin), triggering a Succession Crisis in the Vale bad enough that he has to resign as Hand of the King at the end of the first volume to settle things there.
  • Hoster Tully's daughter Lysa (Jon's wife) committed suicide when her son Sweetrobin died.
  • Alannys Greyjoy lost her two eldest sons to the Greyjoy Rebellion and her daughter Asha died of the plague, leaving only her youngest son Theon.
• Forum of Thrones:
  • King Argilac Durrandon has outlived his three eldest children, the first one died in the cradle, while his second and third son died on a shipwreck that also took the life of his beloved wife, leaving Argella, his daughter and only surviving child as the heir of his throne.
  • Lord Lucan Estermont has lived for so long he has already outlived all three of his children and his younger brother, forcing him to name his eldest grandson as heir.
  • Aylard Kawl has lost seven of his eight children, with his daughter Lunett being coldly murdered by Butterfly without him being able to do anything about it.
• knight of the dreadfort (the ballad of the red king):
  • Roose Bolton has lost all his legitimate children with the exception of Domeric. The two mentioned by name were Bertram (who was the same age as Ramsay) and Roger (the youngest who died of a fever during the Greyjoy Rebellion).
  • Kella Royce lost her infant daughter Danelle shortly before her own death of spring fever.
• A Squire: Raymun had a stillborn daughter named Mayella.
• Wife of the Wolf, Husband of the Sun:
  • Rickard reveals that he and Lyarra had a stillborn daughter between Brandon and Ned they named Arya.
  • Lady Mary Mertyns lost two of her sons when they rode with Robert to King's Landing.
• Switch!: Ted and Gram, McCoy's paternal grandparents, outlive both their sons.
• Bait and Switch (STO): Nalak Lane, the USS Bajor's answer to Guinan, is an elderly Cardassian who lived through the Dominion's attempt to exterminate his species in DS9: "What You Leave Behind". His first wife and his children didn't.
• Queens of Mewni:
  • Urania's second daughter, Jokinna, the Joy of the Kingdom, dies during her reign when she fell out of a window during an epileptic fit. (Although some people think it might have been murder instead.)
  • Eclipsa believed she outlived her daughter Luna, who she thought died in a fire in a foreign land. It's only after she runs away, and returns to Mewni to get revenge on them for kidnapping Meteora that she learns Luna is still alive. And technically speaking, since she was frozen for 300 years, long after Luna passed, she eventually plays the trope straight anyway.
  • Hesperia's youngest daughter Diurna drowned in a well at age seven. The stress of losing her youngest daughter proved to be too much for her, so she abdicated earlier than expected.
  • Sideria, living up to her sobriquet of "The Fortunate", had a much longer life than most Mewnians had, living to her nineties (most are lucky to make it to their seventies). Unfortunately, that meant she outlived all seven of her children.
• Jimmy's Visit With Dr. Franklin: Both of Jimmy's parents outlive another one of their sons, Johnny.
• Eyes on Me:
  • Whitney loses her only son John to brain cancer. She thinks she's outlived her daughter Petunia as well when the latter fakes her own suicide. However, Whitney doesn't find out about what actually happened to Petunia until many years later, long after Petunia's actual death from preeclampsia complications.
  • Warren outlived his only child Fern (Jasper's mother) years before the events of Thunderbird.
• In Gone Too Soon, Karen and Ted Wheeler decide to take their youngest, Holly, off of life support after she goes into a coma after a car accident.
• At the Edge of Lasg'len: Sharley had a daughter who died some years before the events of the fic. The girl’s death just about broke her, and eventually she moves her daughter’s ashes to the Elves’ forest, so that they could watch over her. Sharley doesn’t remember this, but her daughter was actually a Child by Rape who never should have existed in the first place. It’s why the girl was able to die, despite being the offspring of two Ainur. Much later, she and Maglor have a child whose spirit is that of her first daughter — Sharley went through so much shit on behalf of the Valar that Manwë made the unprecedented move of allowing someone to be born twice, rather than re-housed as adults are.
• Kili's Promise:
  • Lord Khîm lost his younger daughter to sickness when she was three.
  • Fíli outlives his daughter Aberfa, who died at the age of five.
• Sansûkh: One of the major sources of Dís's lingering grief, especially in the earlier chapters of the fic.
• Splint:
  • Rukhash lost her little daughter and infant son to Orc hunters four years before the start of the story. Her brother Thraangzi also lost his twin sons in similar circumstances nearly eight years ago.
  • Rukhash's mother Hegdash gave birth to more than a dozen children, but by the time she enters the story, she has only Rukhash, Bogdish, Botarg and Zarkug left. Rukhash's father Gijakzi also had another daughter who died in Barad-dûr.
  • Grazad used to have children before they died in Barad-dûr.
• We Were Young Once: Galadhmir and Gwaelin's son Celebrin dies in Mordor.
• Legacy:
  • Gwen's parents outlive their child due to the spoiler character being murdered.
  • Lindsay and Tyler's 7-week-old son dies of SIDS, destroying their marriage beyond hope of recovery.
• Throughout Gensokyo 20XX, Ran has outlived her children Yume and her siblings (first litter), Bi, Akira, Bunmei, Yume Ni, and Ikki (second litter), and An (third litter), along with having stillborns and the fact that An was Dead All Along.
• In Domino Effect, set after the movie, Ming and Jin outlive Mei after poachers attack her. They left her on life support for eight hours before pulling the plug. Miriam notes they closed down the family temple afterward.
• The Fire Has Burnt Out: Featherkit, Dappletail's son, snuck out of camp and was killed by a fox. His body was never found.
• Mementos: Sakura's parents are still around and have been to this day in grief of their daughter's death. The event was traumatic enough that they tend to avoid being home as it reminds them of the day she died on the street.
  “So are we supposed to just shut this down and hide in that house?”
  “I would call this more hiding from that house,” the husband remarked softly as he closed his laptop and massaged his temples, stress causing his head to throb in pain.
• Witching Hour: Despite his royal status, King Membrane is unable to save his daughter from being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.

Films — Animated

• Shown in Anastasia, in which the Dowager Empress Marie outlives her son, Czar Nicholas, and four of his five children. Truth in Television — the real-life Dowager Empress was in Paris at the time of the Russian Revolution, and thus survived it.
• Atlantis: The Lost Empire: It's implied that Thaddeus Thatch outlived his unnamed son, as well as his daughter-in-law, since he raised his grandson Milo.
• Batman: Under the Red Hood: Like in the comic it's based on, Bruce outlives his adopted son, Jason Todd, the second Robin, when he's beaten with a crowbar and blown up by the Joker. He is later revived by the Lazarus Pit.
• Big Hero 6:
  • Aunt Cass outlives her nephew Tadashi, whom she was raising alongside with his brother Hiro since their parents' deaths some years earlier.
  • Later, Professor Callaghan believes his daughter to be dead, which causes his villainy, only to later find out that she is in fact alive.
• Coco: For unknown reasons, the elderly Mamá Coco outlived her daughter Victoria, whom Miguel meets with the rest of his deceased relatives.
• In Finding Nemo, Nemo is Marlin's only surviving child out of hundreds, who were all eaten as eggs by a barracuda, along with their mother Coral. For some time later in the film, Marlin thinks Nemo is also dead, causing him to have a Heroic BSoD.
• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio opens with the death of Carlo, Gepetto's biological son and his only family left after his wife had died. His death drives Gepetto into a depression and eventually motivates him to build Pinocchio. Pinocchio himself dies in the climax but the Wood Sprite revives him, averting the trope.
• This is revealed to be part of Manny's backstory in Ice Age. His wife and child were killed by cavemen hunters, and that's why he's become so bitter and cynical.
• Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox: Bruce Wayne is killed instead of his parents in the Flashpoint timeline, causing Thomas Wayne to become Batman, and Martha to become the Joker.
• The Land Before Time
  • Littlefoot's grandparents outlive their daughter, who famously suffers a fatal injury protecting her son from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the sequels we see them filling the void by lovingly raising their grandson.
  • Heavily implied to be the case with Cera's father. Cera's clutch included three other hatchlings, and after the Great Earthshake, Cera makes a point of not needing the other children because she's going to find her sisters again. While Cera is reunited with her father at the end of the movie, Cera's mother and clutchmates are nowhere to be seen, and they never show up in the sequels.
• The Lion King:
  • Subverted in The Lion King, as Sarabi believes for a large portion of the movie that she has outlived her only child - but he's alive all along.
  • In The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, Nuka is killed by falling rocks and logs trying to impress Zira. Zira blames Kovu for his brother's death and banishes him from the pride. Zira herself ends up dying a few days later.
• In Pinocchio, Geppetto goes through this when Pinocchio is seemingly killed by Monstro the whale while pulling his father to safety. Fortunately, this is subverted as the Blue Fairy rewards Pinocchio's heroism by bringing him back to life as a real boy.
• In The Prince of Egypt, Rameses outlived his son when the final plague claimed the life of every firstborn child in Egypt, except on the homes painted with the lamb's blood.
• In The Secret of Kells, Abbot Cellach believes his orphaned nephew Brendan (whom he has raised since Brendan was a baby) is killed in a Viking attack (and worse, that it's his fault). He spends twenty years in mourning before he learns Brendan survived and they are reunited.
• In Shark Tale, Don Lino's firstborn son, Frankie, dies to an anchor (though he spends most of the film believing Oscar killed him). Even worse, he also thinks the 'Sharkslayer' killed Lenny as well until he accidentally reveals himself at the sit-down.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse:
  • Kingpin's wife and son ran out on him after discovering his criminal lifestyle, and were killed in a car wreck mere minutes afterwards. His main goal throughout the movie is to perfect the construction of the transdimensional collider to bring alternate versions of them to his universe.
  • May Parker outlives her nephew Peter, who meets his end from a combination of the first collider malfunctioning/exploding and Kingpin personally finishing him off.
• Kerchak and Kala's biological son is killed by Sabor at the beginning of Tarzan, as are baby Tarzan's parents, which leads to him being found and Happily Adopted by Kala.
• Wish (2023): Sabino has outlived his son/Asha's father, who died of an unspecified illness five years before the story.

Jokes

• A joke:
  An elderly couple walks into the office of a divorce lawyer. "We want a divorce," they tell him.
  Taken aback, the lawyer asks them how old they are. "I'm 87 and he's 92," the wife replies.
  "How long have you been married?" asks the lawyer. "Sixty-five years!" is the reply.
  "So why now do you want a divorce?" asks the lawyer.
  "We wanted to wait until all the kids were dead."
• A variation on the joke: the husband and wife are both over 100.

Music

• Luis Alberto Spinetta's song "Era en Abril" ("It happened in April") is from the perspective of a couple struggling to deal with the miscarriage of their son.
• Padruig Mór MacCrimmon composed "Cumhadh na Cloinne" (Lament for the Children) in the early 1650s. The song is believed to be based on the loss of seven of his eight sons to an unknown illness, possibly brought to the Isle of Skye by a trading vessel, although it could also refer to the slaughter of the MacLeods fighting Cromwell's forces at the Battle of Worcester. It may have been inspired by both. The lyrics alone are deeply poignant: "Lad of the black hair, I gave you love,/Lad of the black hair, I gave you affection,/I gave you love and I gave you affection,/I gave you love that I did not give the others,/Lad of the black hair, I gave you affection."
• Eric Clapton made the song "Tears in Heaven" in memory of his four-year-old son Connor Clapton, who fell to his death off the window of the 53rd floor of an apartment building.
• "Ronan" by Taylor Swift is sung from the perspective of a grieving mother- and in fact, it was written using phrases from a grieving mother's blog.

Mythology and Religion

• The "Real Prosperity" Zen Koan:
  A rich man asked Sengai to write something for the continued prosperity of his family so that it might be treasured from generation to generation.
  Sengai obtained a large sheet of paper and wrote: "Father dies, son dies, grandson dies."
  The rich man became angry. "I asked you to write something for the happiness of my family! Why do you make such a joke as this?"
  "No joke is intended," explained Sengai. "If before you yourself die your son should die, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would be broken-hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the order I have named, it will be the natural course of life. I call this real prosperity."
• The Bible:
  • In the Book of Exodus, the final plague on Egypt is the death of all of Egypt's firstborn children, including Pharaoh's. His grief and anger over this leads him to tell Moses and the Israelites to Get Out!, and then to muster his army and pursue them, only to be destroyed when the Red Sea swallows them up. This comes after the Egyptians threw an untold number of Hebrew newborns into the Nile, which also qualifies.
  • In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve outlive their son Abel after their other son Cain kills him. Jacob also spends twenty years thinking his favorite son Joseph was killed by a wild animal, though really Joseph's jealous brothers sold him into slavery and faked his death, and eventually father and son are reunited.
    • Jacob's son Judah, incidentally, outlives his own first two sons. He was the brother whose idea it was to sell Joseph – one can only imagine how he took Jacob's attempts to console him at Er's funeral and then Onan's.
  • In the Book of Ruth, Naomi survives all of her sons. However, her daughter-in-law Ruth pledges to remain by her side. For what it's worth, Jewish tradition also identifies Boaz with Ibzan, but says that the sixty children that he had before meeting Ruth all predeceased him.
  • King David outlives three of his sons: his firstborn Amnon is murdered by half-brother Absalom in revenge for him raping their sister Tamar; Absalom himself revolts against David and is killed by the latter's soldiers (albeit against the orders of David, who grieves deeply at the news); and his first son by Bathsheba dies in infancy as punishment for the circumstances of the baby's conception.
  • As part of Job's suffering, all ten of his children are crushed to death when a windstorm collapses the house where they're dining. However, some scholars, uncomfortable with the thought of God letting innocent young people die just to test their father's faith, have taken the words "He also had seven sons and three daughters" in the epilogue to mean that Job's children actually survived the accident and reunited with him later. The more traditional interpretation is that ten new children were born after God restored Job's health and riches.
  • The Virgin Mary sees her son Jesus crucified. The image of her cradling his body is one of the most famous motifs in all of Western art, La Pietà.
• In Islam, The Prophet Muhammad outlived all of his children except his daughter Fatima.
• Classical Mythology:
  • King Aeëtes of Colchis outlived his son, Absyrtus, who was killed by his daughter Medea when he tried to capture her following her escape with Jason. She deliberately dismembered him so Aeëtes would be forced to collect the remains, delaying him long enough for the couple to escape.
  • Niobe, after boasting that her fourteen children were superior to Leto's twins Artemis and Apollo, was forced to watch each and every one of them butchered by the twins.
  • Lamia, the Queen of Libya, had an affair with Zeus and conceived several children, only to see them being killed by Zeus' legendarily jealous wife Hera. The grief turned the formerly beautiful queen into a snake monster who kidnapped, killed, and devoured any child she could find.
• Norse Mythology:
  • Odin and Frigg outlived their son Baldr, whom Loki conspired to kill with the unwitting assistance of his blind brother, Höðr. Höðr would in turn be killed by Váli, a son Odin sired with the jötunn Rindr.
  • Following the Baldr incident, the gods captured Loki, turned one of his sons, also named Váli, into a wolf, and let him to maul another son, Narfi, whose entrails are then used to chain Loki into a rock.
• Mahabharata:
  • Satyavati outlived her sons Chitrangada and Vichitravirya, plus a grandson, Pandu. Her eldest son, Vyasa, told her the terrible things that would happen to her family in the future, and she decided to become a hermit with Vichitravirya's widowed wives, preventing her from having to witness any more of her family dying during the Kurukshetra War.
  • Dhritarashtra and Gandhari outlived all of their children in the Kurukshetra War, save a son (Yuyutsu) who defected early in the war, and a daughter (Duhsala) who did not participate at all. Dhritarashtra was warned what the war would bring to his family, but chose to carry on with it because it was too late to stop it.
  • Kunti outlived her eldest son, Karna.
  • All of the Pandavas' children who fought in the Kurukshetra War predeceased their parents. Ghatotkacha (son of Bhima), and Iravan and Abhimanyu (sons of Arjuna) died in battle, while the five Upapandavas (the Pandavas' sons with Draupadi) were assassinated in their sleep on the last day of the war.
  • The Pandavas falsely told Drona that his son, Ashwatthama, had died, to make him lose interest in the war. It worked a little too well; Drona let his guard down and was eventually slain by Dhrishtadyumna, but this led Ashwatthama to develop a grudge against the Pandavas, causing him to kill their children, the aforementioned Upapandavas.

Theatre

• In Dear Evan Hansen, the events of the plot are kicked off when Cynthia and Larry Murphy's son, Connor, commits suicide.
• In The Curious Savage, Florence, one of the inmates of the sanatorium, has a doll she thinks is her son, John Thomas, who died when he was an infant.
• In Hamilton the title character and his wife Eliza lose their son Philip in a duel, as they did in real life.
• I and You: Caroline is horrified when she learns that the parents of the teenage boy who died at the basketball game were there and probably saw their son suddenly collapse and die, unable to help him.
• A Shakespearean example is King Lear, who's unable to prevent Cordelia from being hanged. He also outlives his other daughters, but given the kind of people they were, it's understandable he'd be more concerned about Cordelia.
• In Les Misérables, the Thénardiers outlive their daughter Éponine, who is killed at the barricade (as well as Gavroche, who in the novel is their son, though he's never identified as such in the musical). Neither of them seems to particularly care. In the novel, only Monsieur Thénardier outlives their offspring, but the musical has Madame Thénardier Spared by the Adaptation.
• Poor Macduff, whose children and wife are all murdered.
• Ride the Cyclone: With the exception of Jane Doe, whose parents are unknown, it’s implied all the Saint Casian Chamber choir’s members had parents who out live them after the roller coaster accident.
• Romeo and Juliet: Lord and Lady Capulet and Lord Montague all outlive their star-crossed children. (Lady Montague had already died of grief after Romeo was banished.) In the end, this mutual loss leads the Feuding Families to finally make peace. Juliet's Nurse also mentions her daughter Susan who died in infancy, which led to her becoming Juliet's wet nurse and Parental Substitute - and she outlives Juliet too.
• The tragic ending of Rigoletto has the title character's daughter Gilda die in her father's arms after making a Heroic Sacrifice to save the Duke.
• In The Ring of the Nibelung, Wotan is forced to let his son Siegmund be killed as punishment for the latter's Twincest with his sister Sieglinde, and later outlives Sieglinde when she suffers Death by Childbirth. He also outlives his grandson Siegfried, though not for very long.
• At the end of Salome Herodias is still alive, while her daughter Salome is executed at stepfather Herod's command. Whether or not Herodias is onstage to witness this, and if she is, whether she responds with horror and anguish or with glee that her rival for her husband's attention is gone depends on the production.
• In Suddenly, Last Summer, Mrs. Venable reflects on how there is no one word (like "orphan" or "widow") to describe her condition as the mother of a dead son.
• The Winter's Tale: Leontes and Hermione's son Mamillius dies of grief after his father wrongly imprisons his mother for infidelity. In the end, the repentant Leontes happily reunites with Hermione and their daughter Perdita, but the fact that Mamillius is Killed Off for Real adds a distinctly bittersweet note to the ending.
• As in real life, the titular Elisabeth of Austria and her husband Franz Joseph outlived their eldest daughter Sophie (who died at two years old from an unspecified illness that her younger sister Gisela barely survived), and only son Rudolf (who killed himself and his mistress Mary Vetsera in the Mayerling Affair, though Mary is very often Adapted Out).
• In the musical A Tale of Cinderella, Cinderella's fairy godmother La Stella is also her grandmother, who has outlived her daughter Giametta, Cinderella's Missing Mom.

Theme Parks

• In 1979, Kings Island built The Beast, which was the longest wooden roller coaster in the world. In 2000, as part of an expansion of the new Action Zone, the park built Son of Beast, which was the world's first wooden hypercoaster and first wooden roller coaster with an inversion. It was the tallest and fastest wooden roller coaster in the world, and second-longest behind only its "father" coaster. Unfortunately, unlike the father Beast, the Son of Beast was plagued with design problems caused by subpar construction material, closed in 2009, and demolished in 2012 to be replaced with an inverted coaster known as Banshee, while the "father" Beast remains operating to this day.

Toys

• In Teddy Scares, Rita Mortis's original backstory mentioned that her parents spat on her grave after she died.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: In the Mysterious Console DLC, Noni is revealed to have died of chronic disease years ago, and her parents, unable to cope with their loss, requested aid from an Anonymous Benefactor to use a device to create a digital copy of her.
• There are a few examples in the Assassin's Creed franchise:
  • In Assassin's Creed II Ezio's mother Maria goes mute after witnessing the deaths of her husband and two of her sons and being abused by the city guards.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Revelations, one of Altaïr's sons were executed when Altaïr's rival seized control of the Assassins while Altaïr was away. To make things worse, the guy who killed him taunted Altaïr when he revealed that he lied to Altaïr's son that he was being executed on Altaïr's orders. And then framed Altaïr's best friend Malik as the one who ordered Sef's execution before eventually killing him as well. Upon learning that his son died believing Altaïr had betrayed him, Altaïr immediately uses the Apple to Mind Rape the executioner—which leads directly to the death of Altaïr's wife, too. Well, it was actually the executioner being a sadistic SOB that leads to Maria's death. Maria stopped Altaïr from killing the executioner. So, "in gratitude", the executioner stabs Maria In the Back, so, naturally, Altaïr returns the favor and kills the guy.
  • Desmond's death in Assassin's Creed III sends William Miles into a Heroic BSoD and causes him to leave the Assassin Brotherhood.
  • In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Ah Tabai, the mentor of the West Indies Assassins, had only one son who died before the age of ten. Anne Bonny's child dies shortly after being born.
  • In Assassin's Creed Origins, Bayek is forced by the Order of the Ancients to run his son through with a knife. Later in the game, the daughter of two of Bayek's associates is drowned by members of the Order looking for information.
• AI: The Somnium Files has this happen twice in the Annihilation Route (with both characters dying in the same scene, even!) — Hitomi ends up outliving her daughter Iris, while Mayumi ends up outliving her son Ota. Mayumi takes it especially hard.
• In Borderlands 3, the final planet reveals that Greater-Scope Paragon Typhon DeLeon's son has predeceased him. Troy Calypso is the son in question, and he was slain in combat by you. For his part, Typhon grieves his son, but acknowledges that he was a psychopath and that you did what had to be done.
• In Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, you play as two brothers going on an epic journey to retrieve magical water with healing powers to save their ill father. Near the end of their journey, Older Brother is fatally wounded. Despite Younger Brother's attempt to save him with the healing water, it's too late since the water cannot revive the dead. The Younger Brother manages to continue the journey home alone with the water and saves their father. The game ends with them visiting the grave markers for the man's wife and the Older Brother. The father collapses to his knees sobbing in grief having now lost his wife and a child.
• Crusader Kings: Due to the infant mortality rates, disease, and nobles being expected to lead armies, it is very easy for your characters to lose their children, and especially their heirs. The Reaper's Due DLC added a series of events specifically for parents with dead children, which can range in responses based on the importance of the child in the line of succession and how well-liked they were by the character.
  • The Reaper's Due DLC for Crusader Kings 2 adds the "Immortal" trait, which characters can obtain in an event chain that can start only if the "Supernatural Events" game rule is turned on. While the characters with that trait can still die a violent death, such as in combat or assassination, they can no longer experience natural death due to old age or illness. As a consequence, such a character can easily see the death of not only their children but also their grandchildren if not even more, provided of course that one of their vassals doesn't get suspicious of their liege's strange longevity and start asking inconvenient questions.
• Danganronpa: In the first game, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Kiyotaka Ishimaru is one of the murder victims. In the Spin-Off game Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, it is revealed that his father Takaaki is still alive half a year after that. Same goes for Chihiro Fujisaki's father Taichi, though he dies unaware of his child's death.
• Seen in a few of the Dark Tales games:
  • In the bonus chapter of The Tell-Tale Heart, business mogul Felix Ledler is accused of murdering his wife and young daughter. He didn't.
  • In The Bells, it's a plot point that a young woman recently died of fright after apparently seeing a ghost, and her grieving father is determined to find out who's really responsible for her death.
• In a game where life and death are major themes, it's no surprise this shows up in Death Stranding.
  • Part of Sam's backstory is that he lost his pregnant wife and their unborn baby. Said child was going to be named "Lou", which is the same name Sam eventually gives to his new Bridge Baby, to Deathman's surprise (in both cases, it turns out to be short for "Louise" since both babies were girls, though it's kept a secret until the end for plot reasons). To twist the knife, Bridge Baby "Lou" also faces death at the end of the game. Her tiny body starts to necrotize in Sam's hands, who frantically attempts to revive her after taking her out of her pod. In the end, it all turns out fine.
  • Heartman's wife and young daughter were caught in a voidout retrieving some of his personal belongings from their home to celebrate his upcoming release from the hospital ICU. Heartman blames himself and his heart condition for their deaths as a result. He spends the three minutes of death that follow when his heart stops every 21 minutes on the Beach searching for his family so that he can rejoin them with no success so far.
  • Målingen aka "Mama" lost her unborn child after she was trapped under rubble. To make things more painful, she's still connected to the child since the baby became a Beached Thing. To make things even more painful, the baby isn't actually her child. Instead, she was acting as a surrogate mother for her twin sister Lockne, which makes her an example of this as well.
• Party members Knut and Solveig from Dead In Vinland have lost all of their children in early childhood due to illness except for their youngest baby, Thormod. Knut has emotionally disengaged from his children, and at one point goes into a rage because he's sure that he'll never make Thormod a warrior since "all he does is cry," even though Thormod is too young to walk. Solveig has always adored all of her children, and dreamed of being the mother of a large family since early childhood.
• Doom Eternal: Valen's son was killed in battle. Distraught, he made a Deal with the Devil. In exchange for his son being resurrected, he betrayed his people by giving Deag Grav access to the Wraiths, sealing Hell's victory over Argent D'Nur. However, he was cheated when Grav used his son's corpse as a vessel for the Icon of Sin. Valen exiled himself in shame, becoming known as the Betrayer.
• Dragon Age has plenty of this.
  • Dragon Age: Origins:
    • This happens to Fergus Cousland, the older brother of the Human Noble Warden; his wife and young son are slain during Arl Howe's coup in their origin. As Fergus has already left for Ostagar, his sibling is left with the sad duty of breaking the news to him, only to be prevented from doing so as he goes missing in action shortly before the battle. The Warden finally reunites with him at the end of the game, when Fergus is revealed to have survived the battle, but spent several months recuperating from his wounds. By that time, he's already heard about the massacre of his family, and is just grateful that his little brother/sister is still alive.
    • Tragically, this also applies to Fergus and the Human Noble's parents; they only perish at the end of the prologue, meaning that they briefly outlive their own grandson. After discovering her grandson slain, Teyrna Eleanor Cousland's reaction is to pick up a weapon and proceed to get very, very angry.
    • The City Elf Warden's father, Cyrion, or the Dwarf Commoner Warden's mother, Kalah, can also fall victim to this if the PC chooses to perform the Ultimate Sacrifice. Cyrion and Kalah are also implied to suffer this if the City Elf and the Dwarf Commoner are not selected as the Player Character.
    • Endrin, the Dwarf Noble Warden's father, outlives at least one of his three children. If the Dwarf Noble is not selected as the Player Character, he outlives two of them. Either way, he dies of grief, or maybe poison, not long afterward.
    • This is also a potential result of the Redcliffe quest arc; depending on player choices, Arl Eamon and Arlessa Isolde's son Connor may be killed rather than saved from demonic possession.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • The game starts with the Hawke family on the run from the first game's Blight. One of the twin siblings Bethany and Carver dies (which one depends on the main character's class), and their mother spends years recovering from it. If you take the surviving sibling into the Deep Roads without Anders, you'll have to break the news of their death to her as well.
    • This is a potential outcome of one early quest, as you can choose to murder the Serial Killer son of a local magistrate who does not take it well.
    • You have to kill Ser Thrask's demon-possessed daughter shortly after meeting him.
    • The Viscount's son is murdered near the climax of Act 2, regardless of Hawke's efforts to rescue him.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition:
    • This is what Anti-Villain Alexius is hellbent on avoiding. Unfortunately, he can't - his son has the darkspawn taint, and without any Wardens nearby...
    • This is also part of the backstory of the Orlesian civil war, which is taking place during Inquisition. Judicael II outlived his twin sons and left the throne to his younger brother Florian, who outlived his baby daughter; all three children perished in a plague called the Hundred Days' Cough. This had a direct impact on the way the current ruler, Empress Celene, was able to take the throne.
    • Also related to Celene taking the throne, party member Vivienne's lover Bastien was the father of Grand Duke Gaspard's wife Calienne, who was murdered at the beginning of Celene's reign.
    • There's also a possible example of this depending on the player's choices; if Alistair is a Warden and is left in the Fade during "Here Lies the Abyss," or if the game is played in a world state where he had sacrificed himself to kill the Archdemon or be executed by Anora during the Landsmeet in Origins, this trope happens to his mother. However, she's the only one who actually knows it.
• Rab from Dragon Quest XI lost his only daughter and his son-in-law during the fall of Dundrasil. His grandson, the Luminary, survived, but he wouldn't find that out for another 16 years.
• Exit Limbo: Opening has Master Sekuru's backstory, which you found out after befriending his daughter Vivian. Turns out Sekuru had an older son - Vivian's brother - who, years ago, leads a band of warriors into the outskirts to investigate the mutagen leak, only to be infected and turned into one of the rampaging monsters outside the village and forced to be put down.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim usually averts this, because children cannot be killed in the game proper, but there are some exceptions:
  • In Morthal, the wife and daughter of a man named Hroggar perished in a fire. His neighbors are suspicious of him because he immediately hooked up with another woman named Alva and shows no apparent signs of grief over his loss. Hroggar is innocent. He is merely the charmed thrall of Alva, who is a vampire; she was the one who ordered another vampire to kill Hroggar's family.
  • Another Daedric quest is triggered by the funeral of a young girl in Falkreath, who was brutally murdered by a werewolf. In a weird case of Mood Whiplash, you can talk to her obviously grieving father about the situation, then sell vegetables to him; he speaks with all the cheerful tones of any other merchant. Once the transaction concludes, he goes back to grieving.
  • In Windhelm, Torbjorn and Tova Shatter-Shield are mourning the death of their daughter, Friga. She was one of the victims of the local Serial Killer.
    • You can actually make this worse if you follow the Dark Brotherhood questline; one of the clients, Muiri, is a former friend of the Shatter-Shield family. (After Friga's murder, she came to condole with them and they initially took her in as her family, but she was swindled by a bandit who stole a valuable heirloom from them. They blamed and rejected her, and she left Windhelm and moved to Markarth. Her contract calls for killing the bandit, but she'll pay extra if you also kill Nilsine, Friga's twin sister and the only surviving Shatter-Shield child. If you do, Tova will commit suicide in grief over losing both her children.
  • In Markarth, should the player end up in Cidhna Mine prison as part of one quest chain, they will encounter a fellow prisoner whose young daughter was murdered in front of him right before he was thrown into the mine. Another fellow prisoner is also a victim of this trope, although he doesn't know it; the Dragonborn has to kill his (adult) daughter as part of the series of events that leads to their own incarceration. Thankfully, there's no opportunity to inform him of this.
  • In Solitude, the player can meet Angeline, the proprietor of the local herbalism shop, who can task them with convincing Captain Aldis to reveal the whereabouts of her daughter Fura. Fura, as the player discovers if they succeed in the objective, was an Imperial soldier who was killed in battle.
  • Sybille, the court mage in Solitude, was not the mother of the late King Torygg; however, she joined his father's court when he was very young and helped to raise him, so his murder hit her with an honorary form of this trope.
• In Fallout 4, this will inevitably happen to the Player Character when they find out their son is an old man (having been taken out of cryogenic suspension sixty years before the player character)... and the leader of the Institute. Even if the player doesn't kill him personally, he's dying of a terminal cancer even the Institute can't cure.
• Far Cry:
  • In Far Cry 3, it's mentioned that this is the cause of Dr. Earnhardt's addiction, as he lost his three-year-old daughter when she fell to her death from his ten-story apartment.
  • In Far Cry 4, we eventually learn that Pagan Min had a romantic relationship with Ajay Ghale's mother Ishwari, which lead to the birth of their daughter Lakshmana. Sadly, Mohan (Ishwari's husband and Ajay's father) shot Lakshmana dead in a moment of jealousy-induced anger. After that, Ishwari killed her husband and fled to America with the infant Ajay, while Pagan Min Took a Level in Jerkass and began subjecting the people of Kyrat to even more atrocities than he already was. Additionally, when Dr. Noore Najjar recruits Ajay to kidnap Paul "De Pleur" Harmon, whom she believes is holding her husband and two sons captive, Paul smugly reveals that he killed Noore's family years ago, and lied to her about it. If Noore learns this from Ajay afterwards, she has a Villainous BSoD and kills herself.
  • In Far Cry Primal, we meet Karoosh the Wenja warrior, a Boisterous Bruiser whose only sore spot is the murder of his son at the hands of Mog of the Udam tribe (who also scratched out Karoosh's eye). Thankfully, Karoosh avenges his son early on after meeting Takkar.
  • In Far Cry 5, we learn that Big Bad Joseph Seed had a pregnant wife. After they were both in a car crash that killed his wife, his infant daughter was put on life support, and Joseph, supposedly on God's orders, but more implicitly because he feared being his daughter would give the girl a dangerous life, decided to smother her. Sadly, in Far Cry: New Dawn, History Repeats Itself, and the Captain kills Joseph's bastard son Ethan right in front of him, though the Captain can grant Joseph's pleas for death a little while later if the player decides. We also learn that the Highwaymen's co-leaders, Mickey and Lou, have a mother living back east for whom they still care, and if the Captain spares Mickey by the end of the game, she decides to return home in search of her mother, and presumably she'll have to tell her that her younger daughter died at the Captain's hands.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Tellah in Final Fantasy IV goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Golbez when the latter causes the death of Tellah's daughter Anna. Tragically, Tellah joins his daughter not too long afterward.
  • Final Fantasy VI: Cyan Garamonde loses his wife and son when Doma Castle is poisoned. The last he sees of them is his son's spirit saying goodbye on the Ghost Train.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • While at Gongaga, Cloud Strife meets with the parents of Zack Fair, who are wondering why he has yet to write them for years. In reality, Zack died shortly before the game began.
    • Elmyra Gainsborough outlives her adoptive daughter, Aerith.
  • In the Final Fantasy XIV expansion Heavensward, Count Edmond de Fortemps outlives his son Haurchefant, who ends up Taking the Bullet for the Warrior of Light. Upon the Warrior of Light trying to break the bad news, Edmond eventually drops his cane and falls to his knees, whispering "My son..." as he does before breaking down crying.
• In the Fire Emblem series:
  • In the backstory of Fire Emblem Gaiden, nearly all of Zofian king Lima IV's biological children were murdered by his Evil Chancellor Desaix, with only protagonist Celica and (in Echoes: Shadows of Valentia) Conrad surviving. This was about 17 years before Lima IV's own death, which kickstarts the plot.
  • In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Bloom and Hilda both outlive their son Ishtore, a minor boss in Chapter 7.
  • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade:
    • Igrene had a daughter who died of unknown causes sometime after her husband Gorlois disappeared when he left to fight off a horde of bandits. As for her husband, the trope applies for him as well, and now goes by the name Astolfo.
    • Niime is also stated to have outlived one of her sons, whom we learn in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade was Canas. He had a son, Hugh, whom Niime had to raise by herself after his and his wife's death.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Garcia discusses the trope with his son Ross in their A Support, saying, "There's no greater tragedy than when a parent must bury his child."
  • In Fire Emblem Fates:
    • In the backstory, King Garon of Nohr was a bit of a womanizer and amassed a large harem of concubines. The concubines jockeyed with each other for power and status, and eventually resorted to murdering each other and their children in the hopes of reaching the throne; by the end of it all, Garon outlived all but four of his biological children. The trauma of this is attributed to be the reason he's a Tin Tyrant today.
    • In the Birthright route proper, Garon outlives his eldest child Xander and his youngest daughter Elise. It's complicated by revelations in the Conquest and Revelation routes which reveal his soul is long dead, having been consumed by the Greater-Scope Villain Anankos, and his body is merely a puppet used as an extension of his will, meaning the real Garon technically can be considered to have died before Xander and Elise.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • This already affects Duke Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, as his elder son Glenn was killed during the Tragedy of Duscur alongside the previous King, Lambert. Depending on the route you play, it can get even worse for him if you recruit his younger surviving son, Felix, to the Adrestian Empire on the Crimson Flower route - during the assault of Arianrhod, either Rodrigue can kill Felix himself for betraying the Kingdom of Faerghus, or Felix can kill Rodrigue, effectively depriving him of his only remaining family. Of course, if you don't recruit Felix, you can downplay this, since Felix is a required kill on the same map as Rodrigue. And all of this is assuming you don't get Felix killed in conventional combat as a playable character.
    • This can potentially affect Gilbert Prosnirav, or rather Gustave Eddie Dominic, the father of Annette, if you do not recruit her and kill her first on the Crimson Flower route, or if you allow her to die as a playable character.
    • On the Crimson Flower route, this can apply to Claude, the lord of the Golden Deer, if you kill him, as unlike Edelgard, Dimitri, and Byleth, his parents are mentioned to still be alive.
• This is taken up to eleven in Ghost of Tsushima with Masako. She not only outlived her husband and sons who were killed at Komoda Beach but she also lost her daughter in laws and grandchildren in an attack on their estate.
• In God of War:
  • Tragically, Kratos was tricked by Ares into accidentally murdering his beloved daughter Calliope along with his wife.
  • In God of War (PS4), Freya received a prophecy in which their son would die a needless death. Terrified for their son, Freya does everything possible to prevent this and is even willing to let her own son Baldur kill them, but Kratos intervenes and kills their son instead.
    • After Magni was killed by Kratos, their father Thor was furious, assuming that his brother Modi had abandoned the former to death. By the end of the game, Thor has now outlived both his sons, because Atreus knifed Modi to death in a moment of anger.
• Grand Theft Auto IV:
  • Poor, poor Maureen McReary loses one of her sons, either Derrick or Francis, depending on which one Niko chooses to kill. Then, in one ending of the game, she also loses her only daughter, Kate, only a little while later when she's gunned down in a drive-by shooting meant for Kate's boyfriend. Also, if Derrick is the one who initially survived, her youngest son Packie implies in the next game that he died not too much later anyway, presumably of a drug overdose.
  • Milica Bellic outlived one of her sons, as Niko mentions he had a brother who died.
• In Halo, Miranda Keyes is revealed to be Halsey's daughter but they had a very strained relationship as Halsey has been absent from her daughter's life and she was mostly raised by her father as Halsey felt she was never cut out to be a mother. However, hearing of Miranda's death did shake Halsey up and it could contribute to the reason why Halsey begged for Locke to bring the missing John back alive to her.
• In Harvest Moon 64 Elli's grandmother, Ellen from SNES, lost her child and their spouse in a storm. The same happens in Harvest Moon: Back to Nature but this time Elli has a little brother and the parents cause of death isn't stated. Gotz also lost his wife and daughter in a terrible storm as well. This also happened to Lumina's grandmother. Romana in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, thus leading Romana to raise the young Lumina on her own.
• This is what starts the plot in Heavy Rain. Then Ethan Mars will be challenged to avoid it with his youngest son.
• Hero Bank 2 reveals that Sumimori Adachi had a son who died young and Sekito was modeled after the boy.
• Hunt Down the Freeman: Boris ends up losing his daughter, Sasha, as she's killed just before she can reveal details about the "deals" with G-Man.
• I'm O.K: The plot of the game is that a man named Osaki Kim goes on a violent rampage against the video game industry after losing his son to a shooting.
• Inazuma Eleven: In the second game, it's revealed Kira Seijirou lost his older child (younger in the anime) Hiroto in what was deemed as an accidental death involving the son of a politician.
• In the prologue of The Last of Us, Joel's daughter Sarah is killed by a soldier ordered to shoot them. The experience (as well as two decades of surviving the zombie apocalypse) has hardened him into a rather bitter and cynical person by the start of the game.
• In The Legend of Dragoon Haschel is looking for his missing daughter, who is heavily implied to be the the mother of Dart, and that happens to be an issue because Dart's mom is dead.
• The Legend of Zelda has a few examples:
  • The father of the Flute Boy in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past mentions that his son disappeared a long time ago, and is most likely dead. He's actually trapped in the Dark World, though for all intents and purposes that kind of amounts to the same thing. Fortunately, by winning the game, Link and the player can reunite them.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the Deku Butler misses his son and wonders where he is. It turns out that his son was the sad twisted tree you encounter in the prologue, with his soul having been used by the Skull Kid to curse you into the form of a Deku Scrub. During the end credits cutscenes, the Deku Butler finds what's left of his son and falls to his knees sobbing.
  • Implied in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Since Link and his sister Aryll have been raised by their grandmother, it most likely means that their parents are dead, so Granny outlived whichever of their parents was her child.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Zora King Dorephan experienced the death of his beloved daughter Mipha at the hands of Calamity Ganon's forces; even a hundred years later, he still mourns her death.
• In Loopmancer, the protagonist Xiang Zixu lose his daughter in an accident five years prior, one staged by his enemies meant to claim his life. He gets her back after resetting the loop in the best ending.
• In Lost Odyssey, this has happened several times to the immortal characters, particularly Kaim Argonar and Sarah Sisulart. At the end of disc one, you find their daughter dying, but Kaim is able to say goodbye to her and become the guardian of his grandchildren, Mack and Cooke.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor:
  • The game opens up with the protagonist's son Dirhael being ritually sacrificed by the Black Hand of Sauron. His mother Ioreth downplays this by outliving him by about 20 seconds, while his father Talion (the aforementioned protagonist) plays this straight by being brought Back from the Dead by the Wraith to exact his revenge.
  • The Wraith himself was forced to watch Sauron bash his daughter's skull in right before his own death.
• In Octopath Traveler II, Osvald's story begins with him getting shipped off to prison after he was accused of killing his wife and daughter. However, his daughter is eventually revealed to still be alive, making this a subversion.
  • Emerald, who features as a Guest-Star Party Member in Osvald's first two chapters, is also stated to have outlived his wife and daughter. The fact that he ends up dying in Osvald's second chapter also means that his mother, Ruby, qualifies, too. She appears in a late-game town for a sidequest.
• Persona 4:
  • Saki's parents have a hard time coping with their daughter's death. They don't want to talk about her but their son reveals that they've been crying over Saki every night.
  • In the worst possible ending, Nanako is killed. Dojima is forced to move on with his life after losing the only family he had left.
• Part of the backstory for the enigmatic ancient king, Od Nua, in Pillars of Eternity. Originally a respected and wise leader, Nua had a beloved son named Manos. Manos was, by all means, a very unremarkable prince and an Inadequate Inheritor in the making, but Nua loved him all the same. To prove his worth and make his father proud, Manos became a soldier, but this career path ended with him dying on a battlefield. His son's death drove Nua mad with grief, and he became obsessed with finding a way of calling his son's soul back from the aether and resurrecting it, turning into The Caligula in the process, as he killed hundreds of his own subjects in horrific experiments to achieve this.
• The backstory of Artificer in Rain World has her losing her two young slugpups to the Scavengers, all because one of them took a shiny pearl from a Scavenger pile out of simple curiosity. In her (playable) nightmares, she has to relive watching one pup die and the other being unable to escape the Scavs. Losing her babies has driven her to waging a one-sided genocidal war against the Scavengers in revenge... and she's winning.
• In Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, Professor Sycamore mentions in passing that his daughter would be about the same age as one villager if she were still alive. Although given that Sycamore is really Descole, this backstory is best taken with a grain of salt.
• Given that the games take place from 1899-1914, there are several instances from both Red Dead Redemption and its prequel Red Dead Redemption 2:
  • John Marston and his wife Abigail had a daughter who died of a fever some time in the gap between the first and second games.
  • Bonnie is one of two of her parents’ seven children alive. Her living brother is a banker in New York, so that’s why she stays at the ranch with her dad. It also explains why she’s unmarried at the then ancient age of 29 in the main game. She’s married by the epilogue.
  • Rains Falls, the chief the gang meets, lost his older son in the fight between the tribe and the Army and his younger son meets the same fate in the game itself.
  • Arthur Morgan had a son named Isaac who died as a victim of a robbery at some unspecified point before the game. He's only ever brought up twice in the game, once to Rains Falls in an optional mission and once to either Sister Calderon or Reverend Swanson at the end of a mandatory mission, so the details are vague.
• In Ryse: Son of Rome, Player Character Marius Titus' father Leontius finds that a horde of barbaric Britons have killed his wife and Marius' sister, though he ends up joining them shortly afterwards. Marius himself makes sure to kill both of Nero's sons before he kills the Emperor himself- he stabs Basilius to death in his private chambers, before filling the head of a gigantic marble sculpture of Nero with his blood, and he cuts off Commodus' head right in front of his father in the colosseum.
• In Saints Row 2, Kazuo Akuji ends up outliving his son, Shogo, after the latter attempts a suicidal attack on the Boss and Johnny that ends with him getting Buried Alive. Kazuo is later fought as the final boss of the Ronin storyline, but he doesn't seem all that bothered by his son's death.
• Silent Hill:
  • In Silent Hill 4, it's mentioned that superintendent Frank Sunderland has not been in correspondence with his son, James, for a while. One ending in Silent Hill 2 shows James dying, others show him living, but what is certain is that his fate is left ambiguous by the creators.
  • The plot of Silent Hill: Downpour starts with Murphy Pendleton losing his son, Charlie. In the worst ending, it's revealed that it was because of Offing the Offspring.
• Spirit Hunter: NG:
  • Ban lost his son to a spirit, which is what motivated him to face off against the supernatural and expose the seedy underbelly of the world.
  • The Killer Peach's husband and son were killed in the fire started by the son of Sumii Group's president, hence why she seeks revenge against them. She also does so while emulating Momotaro, in accordance with a drawing that her child drew for her.
• In Stasis, John Maracheck spends most of the game trying to reunite with his wife Ellen and his daughter Rebecca. Then he is captured by Doctor Malan, and Forced to Watch as Malan releases a monster into the room where Rebecca is playing. John can do nothing but scream and pound on the glass as Malan's monster rips his daughter to shreds.
• Sweet Home (1989) features a Permadeath mechanic in which Anyone Can Die. If you're not careful, it is entirely possible for Kazuo to end up outliving his daughter Emi.
• Triangle Strategy:
  • During one of her Character Stories, the barkeeper Hossabara reveals to Erador that she had a son named Theo who perished in the war.
  • Svarog outlives his son, Dragan, after the latter is assassinated in Chapter IV. In the Golden Ending, Svarog gets to avenge him by killing Gustadolph, the one who had him killed.
  • King Regna outlives Frani, who dies trying to protect Roland and Serenoa from Avlora during Aesfrost's invasion. Downplayed, as Regna himself is executed a few days later.
• This is one of the driving forces of the true plot of Undertale. King Asgore Dreemurr started his quest to destroy the barrier and wage war on humanity because of a tragedy that resulted in the death of both his biological son Asriel and his adopted child the "fallen human" you named at the beginning of the game, who isn't the Player Character. His wife Toriel refused to go along with this plan and left him to live in the Ruins, on the far opposite side of the Underground. It's also mentioned in the Golden Ending that their particular species of monster only ages while they have a biological child, so if Toriel and/or Asgore were to adopt the Player Character as they had offered to earlier in the game, this would happen again. ^note Theoretically they could avert this fate by having another biological child, but this is highly unlikely, as Toriel denies the possibility of even being Just Friends with Asgore after what he did.
• In Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, the death of Reinhilde and Auguste's son Nicolas is a major driving force for the family as a whole — both parents originally put a lot of weight into their family's honor and noble status, but now just wants to see their children grow up in peace (whether they want to or not). Even worse, if you ended up on the C route, they will also outlive their middle child Phiona, with their oldest child Valmur completely losing his mind from her death.
• This has happened a distressing number of times in the Warcraft universe. Varok Saurfang, Eitrigg, Tirion Fordring, Genn Greymane, Fandral Staghelm, and many others all lost sons in the many wars and conflicts that plague Azeroth and broke them all to greater or lesser degrees.
• In What Remains of Edith Finch, this seems to be part of the Finch family death curse (assuming it exists and the family isn't just super reckless and unlucky): all members of a particular generation will die in their childhood except for one, who will then have and subsequently outlive all but one of the next generation. Odin outlived his young son; Edie outlived all her children, all but one of her grandchildren, and most of her great-grandchildren; Sam outlived his sons Gus and Gregory; and Dawn definitely outlived her son Lewis and maybe her younger son Milton (he vanished one day and the case was never solved). In fact, the only Finch known to have kids and not outlive any is Edith herself, who dies giving birth to her son Christopher.
• In the World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King, Dranosh Saurfang ("Saurfang the Younger") perishes at the battle of Angrathar the Wrathgate, killed in a single strike by the Lich King. His father Varok ("Saurfang the Elder") leads the Horde armies into the Lich King's lair, Icecrown Citadel. At some point, Dranosh reappears in it, having been raised as a Death Knight. He has to be killed a second time, then his father comes to reclaim his body in order to give him a funeral on their birth world of Draenor (now Outland).
• Yes, Your Grace:
  • Bad choices can result in the Player Character outliving his own children and one will die regardless of route.
  • One of the early requests is to help with a Lord's kidnapped daughter. If no help is provided, a conversation with the same Lord a few weeks later will reveal that the daughter has died.
  • A wedding that can be arranged eventually gets called off because the groom overdoses on the setting's Fantastic Drug. The would-be groom's mother is the one who breaks the news.

Visual Novels

• No Case Should Remain Unsolved: Kim Seowon died when she was just a baby, and her mother suffered a mental breakdown. Her father handled it better, but he's still grieving.

Web Comics

• Africa:
  • Giza lost all her cubs before Africa was born
  • Africa discovers Binti dead on pg. 190
• Bob and George: Dr. Light in the Cataclysm videos has to watch his robot children Roll and Mega Man fall to Zero. His eldest, Proto Man, arrives on the scene right after Dr. Light is fatally wounded; Dr. Light tells Proto Man that he's happy that at least one of his children outlives him. Averted in the strip proper, where everyone faked their deaths.
• Doc Rat: This is a fact of life, as "civil hunting" is legal, even if some groups have begun ending the practice. Daniella Hood-Rat (rat), Jazmyn Jaegermind (rabbit), and Shirley Dryandra-Katanning (numbat) have all lost children to predation.
• Drowtales:
  • In addition to the fact that they live in Crapsack World with a high mortality rate in general, fae can live for upwards of a thousand years, so many older dark elves and drow have experienced this and handle it in varying ways. The thousand-plus years old Diva'ratrika notes with sadness that she has had multiple generations of grandchildren who have died without ever meeting her. Sil'lice suffers a Heroic BSoD after she loses a number of adult children and grandchildren during the Nidraa'chal War, and as of chapter 46 her youngest daughter Shala - who, for added pathos, is named after another dead child, Kau'Shala, and was killed by the exact same person. Later, in chapter 50, Quain'tana briefly outlives her own grandson, Vene, when he's killed by traitors to the clan which contributes to her Unstoppable Rage.
  • Earlier in the story, it's noted that Quain'tana also outlived her second daughter (and favorite child) Laele'aell.
  • Zala'ess Vel'Sharen also notably outlived one of her children. Yaeminira, previously known as Vy'chriel, who died at the hands of her adopted sister/bodyguard, who took her name upon Vy'chriel's death.
• Dumbing of Age: The Time Skip revealed Mike subcumbed to his injuries. The last time his parents were seen was at his bedside, with his father murmuring that he knew Mike was a good boy.
• El Goonish Shive: Raven unknowingly fathered children in the distant past, which means he has outlived countless descendants without knowing it.
• Girl Genius: The attack on Castle Heterodyne that occurred in the backstory claimed the lives of two sons who were outlived by their fathers. Bill Heterodyne lost his infant son and nearly went mad with grief (even worse since it's strongly implied that his wife and the mother of the boy, Lucrezia, was responsible for the attack). Former seneschal Carson Von Mekhan had retired just three days before the attack. When he gathered the townsfolk to respond to the attack, he then discovered the body of the new seneschal — his own son. It was cold comfort for him to learn that his son died trying to save Bill's son.
• Harbourmaster: Partasah dies young of a degenerative illness, leaving his estranged birth parent Zefonith to collect his body. To rub salt in the wound, Zefonith is a good enough doctor to have saved his life, but their feud caused Partasah to refuse his help.
• Homestuck:
  • The Dolorosa, the Sufferer's adoptive mother, lived on as a slave for an unspecified amount of time after the failure of their rebellion and his execution by the highbloods.
  • Pyralspite, a dragon lusus, outlived his charge Redglare by centuries due to her untimely death.
  • John's grandmother, after being resurrected as a sprite, ends up outliving her son due to Jack Noir killing him, and is shown to grieve and miss him after this happens.
• Kevin & Kell: This is largely averted, with the civil predation largely Played for Laughs compared to Doc Rat. The only known death of an offspring would be Danielle Kindle, who was murdered as opposed to being eaten. In her case, she was outlived by both her parents, as well as brother Kevin Dewclaw and a good number of known living siblings.^note This discounts that a Doppelgänger came through a portal and assumed her life. Best to read the comic's page if you want to know more about that.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: The Ageless God-Emperor Solomon David appoints his sons as councilors of his multiverse-spanning empire, but after having outlived twenty-five generations of them, he's rather jaded about the whole arrangement.
• Mom, I'm Sorry: Henry gives up 44 years of his lifespan so his dying mother can live a full life. This leaves him with roughly a year, which he spends helping his mother live out her dream while hiding the fact that he will die soon and eventually attempting to erase her memories of him. Her memories come back an hour before he dies, and she finds him just in time to watch him die.
• My Daughter Is A Zombie: Bamsoon lost her daughter Jeonghye to a car accident with a speeding driver. By the end of the story, she loses her son Jeonghwan when he is caught harboring his zombie daughter, lets her bite him, and is shot by the soldiers.
• Sleepless Domain:
  • The parents of Gwen, Sylvia, and Sally all lost their respective daughters when an attack on Team Alchemical turned tragic. What's worse for Sylvia's mom, Sylvia was the breadwinner of the family.
  • Cassidy dies fighting Goops, and because of how she died she didn't even leave a body for anyone to find, meaning her parents aren't even aware she's dead, just missing.
• In Something*Positive, Fred Macintire outlived his first wife and their child. His second wife Faye also dies in her sleep relatively young and is outlived by her own elderly mother.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: Ensi Hotakainen is implied to not be outright dead in the present at the end of the flashback giving her A Day in the Limelight, while the graves of both her sons have been shown on-panel.
• Unsounded: Rahm and Iiori's son Dani was killed demonstrating a flight pymaric Dani and Rahm created. His death drove Rahm to join the Black Tongues and both his parents have been unable to move on.

Web Original

• Animation vs. Minecraft: King's main motive for his villainy. His child, Gold, gets swept up in a Minecraft simulation that Goes Horribly Wrong, so King sets out to destroy the entirety of Minecraft as a whole in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Fallen Kingdom: By the end of the series, the King has outlived both his wife and son.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: Hop Pop is raising his grandchildren Sprig and Polly due to the loss of his son and daughter-in-law in a heron attack.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Before the start of the series, Iroh's son, Lu Ten, died in the siege of Ba Sing Se. Iroh took his death so hard that he abandoned the siege and retired from the Fire Nation army. Incidentally, this event led to his Heel–Face Turn in his backstory.
  • The Northern Water Tribe's Chief Arnook is still alive in the second season after his daughter Yue sacrifices herself to restore the Moon.
• Batman: The Animated Series: In the two-part episode "Heart of Steel", it is heavily implied that Karl Rossum's daughter died in an accident years before the episode's events.
• BoJack Horseman:
  • Joseph and Honey Sugarman's firstborn and only son, CrackerJack, died in WWII, and that fact had a major role in shaping the lives of their daughter and grandson.
  • Sarah Lynn's Stage Mom outlives her daughter, who dies from a drug overdose.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: In "Mind Pollution", Linka goes to visit her Uncle Dmitri and her cousin Boris. It soon turns out that Boris is addicted to a powerful drug, and he eventually dies of overdose, while his father is implied to be still alive, given that at the end, Linka only mourns Boris, and not both of them.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: Eustace’s brother Horst died some time earlier, but their mother is still alive.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • By the time the story starts, Fergus and Downy McDuck have long outlived their middle child Hortense. Since Scrooge accidentally made them immortal with the druid stones he used to rebuild the family's ancestral home, it's likely that they'll also outlive him (though not his sister Matilda, who lives with them and is affected by the stones' power).
  • Scrooge himself was subjected to this in the backstory, as he took custody of the young twins Donald and Della after Hortense's death. Della's disappearance was devastating for him not just because he essentially lost a daughter, but also the fact that the circumstances behind it led him and Donald to be estranged for a decade. Fortunately, the season one finale reveals that Della is still alive on the moon, and the two reunite partway through season two.
  • It's explained in "The Last Adventure!" that Mrs. Beakley lost both her daughter and son-in-law in unspecified circumstances, explaining how she ended up becoming her granddaughter's legal guardian. Then again, considering the fact that Webby is actually an Opposite-Sex Clone of Scrooge that she adopted, it's entirely possible that she never had a daughter to begin with.
• Final Space: "The Ventrexian" reveals how Avocato first met the Lord Commander — Avocato's flashbacks reveal that he had another son before Little Cato who died, and the impact made Avocato a Death Seeker on his home planet's battlefield until the Lord Commander convinced him that they could end the planet's Forever War.
• Futurama has a variation: Fry disappeared and his family never saw him again, but because his disappearance was a case of accidental cryogenic freezing that landed him in the year 3000, he still outlived them all. The trope is played straight in the case of Fry's father, Yancy Fry Sr., who thanks to time-travel shenanigans is technically also Fry's son.
• Macbeth in Gargoyles. The scene in "City of Stone" where his son Luach's fate is revealed is one of the most tear-jerking scenes in the series.
• Harley’s parents in Harley Quinn (2019) outlived their son (and Harley’s brother) Barry, who didn’t survive past his teens. Later, they attempt to kill their supervillain daughter for a bounty.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: "The Perfect Pear" introduces Grand Pear, the estranged father of Applejack's late mother Buttercup (née Pear Butter), who seems ashamed that he disowned his daughter for marrying a member of their rivals the Apple clan and never got the chance to make amends. Series regular Granny Smith has also outlived her son Bright Mac, Buttercup's husband.
• In the finale of Regular Show, Pops performs a Heroic Sacrifice by tackling his brother into the sun. His adopted father Mr. Maellard was still alive, and the Grumpy Old Man is (for once) visibly and understandably saddened, and he dies an unspecified but relatively small number of years later.
• Inverted in The Simpsons episode "The Great Louse Detective"
  Bart: Dad, I'm really glad you're still alive.
  Homer: Yeah, it's every parent's dream to outlive their children. Good night, son.
  • Also in "Kill the Alligator and Run", after believing he'll only live to be 42.
    Homer: I won't even live to see my children die!
  • Spoofed in "Homer's Triple Bypass" when the family is saying their goodbyes to Homer in case he doesn't survive his surgery.
    Abe: They say the greatest tragedy is when a father outlives his son. I have never fully understood why. Frankly, I can see an upside to it!
• South Park: Kenny McCormick's parents. Over and over and over again.

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