Profane Last Words

"In two hundred years, we've come from 'I regret that I have but one life to give for my country' to 'fuck you'?"

— Howard Payne, Speed

There are many ways of reacting to your imminent death. Some people whine, others smile, some others scream, others face it with grace and courage.

Then there's always the chance for one last curse word.

It can be a curse to your killer (which, depending on the work, will eventually strike them), or simply a dear old last profane insult before you go, caused by despair, rage, fear, or whatever else. If the dying character is prone to Cluster F-Bomb, then this is a must, but it doesn't stop well-mannered gentlemen from having one last Precision F-Strike before they go. Frequently used in a showcase of Defiant to the End, but not always; this can also happen after a Villainous Breakdown or any other kind of breakdown.

Related to See You in Hell; the trope can be used as this when used by a dying person. May involve Curse Cut Short due to being Killed Mid-Sentence. Being a Death Trope, there could be some unmarked spoilers ahead, so be careful. Compare Dying Curse when the curse words are actually a Curse rather than profanity. Compare also Dying Declaration of Hate.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In the fourth movie Bleach, Kokuto screams a loud "Kusooo" (Shit) as he's being dragged deeper into the pits of hell.
• Cyberpunk: Edgerunners: Rebecca and David's respective last words are:
  "We're having a moment here! FUCK YOU!"
  "Whatever, choom. Like I give a shit."
• In Genzo, Kurojishi use his last words before exploding to smithereens to curse Genzo. Loudly.
• Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters: "To Hell with this planet", courtesy of Leland, before getting blown away with an Atomic Breath. The Latin American translation is profane in a different direction; the rough translation of what he says (directed to Godzilla Filius) is "Fuck you, monster!".
• Mobile Suit Victory Gundam: When Fuala is sentenced to "exile in space" (read: being shot into the void to suffocate once her suit runs out of air), she tries to Face Death with Dignity. After crawling into a cramped tube, she breaks down and yells "Kuso! (Shit!)" the moment before being launched.
• Naruto: After being blown to pieces by Shikamaru, the ever-vulgar Hidan's head is Buried Alive while throwing a flow of insults at his opponent.

Comic Books

• In The Golden Age, Lance Gallant tells the spirit of his dead brother Michael (who constantly torments him to become Captain Triumph so he could live again) "go to hell and take this big metal bastard with you" before he and Robotman both die by electrocution.
• Preacher:
  • Herr Starr's last words, on having most of his head blown off: "Shit."
  • After being beaten to within an inch of his life by a vengeful Jesse, T.C. is left helpless on the ground as Tulip (who he only ever called "the cooze") puts a shotgun to his head. When she asks if he knows her name, his last words are a broken whimper of, "Fuckin' yesssssss..."

Fan Works

• In Despair's Last Resort, the second killer yells, "Screw all of you fuckers! I'll See You in Hell!" before being executed.
• As Cure Hendrix in Pretty Cure Heavy Metal dies after being shot in the chest by one of Lady Marilyn's Mooks, she gives these parting words to Cure Nirvana (while also referencing The End of Evangelion in her parting words):
  Cure Hendrix: So fucking what if I'm not you!? That doesn't give you the right to moan about your situation! Now go, and do me proud!
• Remnant Inferis: DOOM: When the Doom Slayer was about to kill Deag Nilox, Nilox used his final moments to call the Slayer's mother, Aelia, a whore.

Film — Animated

• Justice League Dark: Apokolips War:
  • Right before they die, King Shark drops the Pokémon Speak of "King Shark is a shark," and tells Captain Boomerang "It Has Been an Honor". Captain Boomerang's reaction to the fact that King Shark could say other words is an incredulous, "Are you shitting me?!"
  • Cyborg's last words are telling Darkseid and Trigon before all three are sucked into a Boom Tube, "Suck it, bitches."
• Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay:
  • Killer Frost: "Waller! I'll See You in Hell, you dirty cu!...[gets blown up]"
  • The last words Professor Zoom utters are "Fuck my life." Combined with Precision F-Strike as Thawne rarely, if ever, swore otherwise.
• The character Brutish from Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle after he is eaten alive by the Pygmy cannibals he says as he’s dying, “I'm so fucking fed up with the goddamn fucking insects in the goddamn fucking swamp, in the goddamn fucking rain in the goddamn fucking murderous sun, goddamnit!”

Film — Live-Action

• The Avengers (1998). Bailey is both The Voiceless and The Dragon. Just before his Disney Villain Death, he says "Oh fuck", his first (and last) words in the movie.
• Beverly Hills Cop III: Inspector Todd's last act after being shot by DeWald in the opening shootout is to looking at Axel Foley and say "Axel, are you on a coffee break? Go get that son of a bitch". Played for Laughs when Axel tries to comfort Todd's wife at the funeral by telling her that he said he loved her, and she instantly figures out that those weren't Todd's real last words.
  Axel: Hey.
  Mrs. Todd: I understand that you were with him at the end.
  Axel: Yeah, his last words were about you.
  Mrs. Todd: That does not sound like my Douglas, Axel. Try again.
  Axel: Actually his last words were 'Axel are you on a coffee break, go and get that son of a bitch.' Those were his last words.
  Mrs. Todd: (In tears, smiling) That sounds like my Douglas.
  Axel: Yeah, sounds like a good idea, too.
• Both heads of the Yakavetta mob from The Boondock Saints say "Vaffanculo" (Italian for "Fuck you") as their last words before the brothers execute them.
• From Breaker Morant during the execution in the final scenes: "Shoot straight, ya bastards. Don't make a mess of it!"
• In The Core, when Zimsky is stuck with the nuke, talking into his recorder, he wonders aloud what the fuck he's doing just before his death.
• At the end of The Departed, The Dragon, Mr. French, ends up being shot, suffering further injuries in a car crash, and certain to be arrested and prosecuted for a laundry list of offences if he survives. He mutters a defeated "fuck it", and shoots himself in the mouth.
• Deconstructed (as a method of being Defiant to the End) on The Devil's Rejects. As Otis Firefly tells his victim Adam before he kills him, telling him to go fuck himself doesn't make Adam any more of a badass nor any less of a victim, and it surely doesn't scare Oris (if anything, he ends up deciding to give Adam a more brutal death that he had planned originally, and Adam's true "final words" end up being some disturbingly agonized shrieking).
• Django Unchained: Before Stephen gets blown up along with Candyland, he spends his last minutes cursing at Django that he will be caught and killed for his crimes, ending with "Django! You uppity son of a—" before the explosion cuts him off.
• On Dog Soldiers, one of the SAS troopers (which is about to be eaten by the werewolves that are attacking them) only has this to say:

  "I hope I give you the shits, ya fucking wimp!"

• Dracula: Dead and Loving It: Dracula has escaped the vampire hunters, and is hiding in the rafters when Renfield throws open a trapdoor in the roof so his Master can escape. Only one problem: it was daylight. And there was nothing to block the full sun from hitting Drac, either.
  Dracula: screams in pain Renfield, you asshole!
• In the TV movie Ebenezer, a Wild West adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge's catchphrase has been changed from "Bah! Humbug" to "Hogwash" in keeping with the setting. In this version of the story, the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come shows Ebenezer his final moments, a shootout with a youth whose family he had cheated. After being shot, the future Scrooge's last utterance is "Hogwash". The present version, watching, seems more upset by his choice of final words than the nature of his demise.
• A similar example is found in Freaked, where Toad, the Big Bad's right-hand (toad)man, is silent for the whole movie but lets out a disappointed "Shiiiiiiiiiit." when the heroes blow him up by putting a lit dynamite stick on his prehensile tongue.
• The Heat:
  Mullins: Guess you and her are engaged now, huh?
  Mook: What?
  Ashburn: Well, 'cause... you just gave me a ring, motherFUCKER!
  Mook: Aw, shit.
• The Mice in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), after Arthur gets free of his restraints, manage to utter, "Oh, boll-"
• John Wick:
  • After Viggo is fatally wounded in their final confrontation and John is about to apply a Coup de Grâce, Viggo mutters out a Russian term roughly translated as "fuck your mother!" as his last words.
  • Viggo's son Iosef, the reason John is going through his Roaring Rampage of Revenge (he killed Wick's dog, you see), only manages to blurt out an "It was just a fucking-!" before John puts one through his skull. Too Dumb to Live to the end.
• In Juan of the Dead Badass Preacher Preacher Joe is just about to explain his grand plan to deal with the zombie invasion when he is interrupted by a harpoon to the chest. He manages a "Fuck" before collapsing.
• The theatrical ending to Little Shop of Horrors has Audrey II say "Oh...SHIT!" just before it explodes.
• Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, The Dragon's car crashes and explodes, the wreckage stirs, and the man uses his last strength to raise his middle finger.
• Two examples in The Magnificent Seven. After a group of young Mexican villagers say Bernardo's name as he dies from his wounds, he responds by saying, "That's damn right." The first casualty out of the Seven, Harry Luck, has this to say as he himself dies:
  Harry Luck: Well... I'll be damned. [dies]
  Chris Adams: Maybe you won't be.
• MonsterVerse: A Running Gag across all four movies is that once in every one, if you're looking out for it; someone either says "Oh, shit!" or starts to before being killed by the movie's kaiju Big Bad respectively.
• Planet of the Apes (2001). As General Thade's father is dying Thade promises him he'll capture the human rebel. Thade's father's last words: "Damn them...damn them all to hell." Doubles as a Mythology Gag since Thade's father is played by Charlton Heston.
• Norman Stansfield from The Professional. Also counts as an Oh, Crap! moment.
  Leon: Stansfield...
  Stansfield: At your service.
  Leon: This is...from...Mathilda...
  (Stansfield takes Leon's item, but upon opening his palms and looking at what appears to be a ring, he opens up Leon's jacket to find unpinned grenades strapped to his body)
  Stansfield: Shit.
• Scarface (1983): In addition to Tony's epic and profinity-laden end as he's riddled with bullets the movie has Dirty Cop Mel Bernstein say this before he's sent six feet under with a shot to the head
  Bernstein: "Fuck you!"
• A near identical situation happens with The Dragon in the James Bond film Spectre.
  Mr. Hinx: ...shit. (And then dies)
• Speed: Discussed by Howard Payne when he takes Harry hostage at the beginning and Harry tells him "fuck you". Payne laments that it's become a regular way to show defiance, seeing it as a devolution of American culture.
• In Strange Days this is lampshaded when the villain points out to Lenny that in fatal airplane crashes, the pilot's last words 90% of the time are some variant of "Oh Shit!" just as he's about to shoot Lenny.
• Transformers: After Frenzy accidentally rips half of his head off with one of his own shuriken, he mutters out "Oh, shi-!" before dropping dead.

Literature

• Doctor Syn ("The Scarecrow"): We're not told exactly what words Black Nick Tappitt used on the scaffold, but they were certainly profane.
• In the novel Expendable by James Alan Gardner, members of the Explorer Corp call dying in the line of duty "going oh shit", because the last words of an Explorer who is about to die is almost always some sort of profanity.
• At the end of The Fall Of Hyperion, when the Portal Network is destroyed, one rich woman is stuck on a skyscraper a few kilometers high. When she (misunderstanding the instructions of the people attempting to rescue her) turns off the force field windows, she gets blown out. The fall took four minutes, and the rescuers claimed she followed the trope all the way through.
• In the James Bond novel Goldfinger, when the villain has Bond in his interrogation room and he fully expects that he is going to die here, painfully for refusing to talk, he contemplates his last words, thinks that he has good thing with "You can't choose your birth but you can choose how you die", then, out loud, "very politely" says, transcribed, "You can go and —— yourself." Goldfinger answers that "even [he is] not capable of that," and proceeds to let Oddjob have at him.
• The angel Aziraphale, in Gaiman and Pratchett's novel Good Omens, faces bodily disincorporation (not death, though) with a muttered and furious "Oh Fuck!" Notable because he spent the entirety of the rest of the novel deliberately avoiding profanity.
• Lorien Legacies: Number One, being a Lady Swearsalot, promptly yells "FUCK!" when she realizes that aliens are appearing in Mongolia, wielding a glowing space sword and then gets killed.
• Moby-Dick. Captain Ahab's last words:
  "from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
• In Our Dumb Century, fugitive president Richard Nixon repeatedly yells "Fuckers!" at the FBI Agents who gun him down in a firefight in front of a Yuma, Arizona motel while denying all wrongdoing in the Watergate affair for which he was arrested and jailed.
• A Song of Ice and Fire. Tyrion Lannister ponders this trope while awaiting execution. Despite being The Snark Knight, he can't think of anything except "Bugger you all", which he decides won't earn him much fame in the history books.

Live-Action TV

• In the final episode of Battlestar Galactica (2003), the Big Bad John Cavill, on suffering a serious reverse, blurts out "Oh, frack!" and shoots himself through the mouth.
• In Better Call Saul, Nacho caps off a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech delivered in his final moments by calling Hector Salamanca a "twisted fuck".
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • In "Doppelgangland", Willow's vampire Evil Twin dies saying "Fuck".
  • Played With with the Mayor, who goes with a much more tame, "Well gosh."
• Dead Like Me. George gets out a last "Oh Shit" before being vaporized by a toilet that broke off the de-orbiting Mir space station. When her Psychopomp crew is assigned to update the files on people's last thoughts, she learns that this trope is a fairly common occurrence.
• Doctor Who combines this with Curse Cut Short in World War Three. The Slitheen leader only gets out his first syllable "bol-" before exploding.
• Discussed in Game of Thrones when Sandor Clegane kills a bunch of ruffians that have murdered his friends, when he asks the last survivor where are the others, he tells "Fuck you" to Sandor, who rhetorically asks "Are these really your last words? 'Fuck you'?". The ruffian then calls him "cunt" and an exasperated Sandor says he is "really shit at dying" before finishing him off. In fairness, Clegane had just axed him in the groin, so he was in too much pain for eloquence.
• Milder example (depending on your locale), in Good Omens (2019); Witchfinder Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer gets an Oh, Crap! moment when he sees that the witch he is about to burn, Agnes Nutter appears to have gunpowder spilling from her petticoats. Right before he and a couple dozen villagers get blown to pieces, he manages to mutter "Oh, bugger."
  • Zigzagged with the angel Aziraphale when he accidentally steps into the portal to Heaven without preparing first. For the first time in 6000 years, he says, "Oh, fuck!" before ascending. While he isn't dead, his physical body is vaporized, and he has to find alternative means to get back to Earth.
• One episode of Nash Bridges has the Villain of the Week hire assassins to kill Nash. One of them is a bomber who plants a bomb in the car Nash is borrowing. Unfortunately (for the bomber), he accidentally sets it off. His last words: "Oh sh..!"
• Subverted in Orphan Black, where Siobhan gasps "Shite" in shock after Ferdinand shoots her in the chest, but survives long enough for a few more sentences.
• In Star Trek: Picard, the last words of Changeling Vadic before getting forcibly thrown into space from the Bridge of the USS Titan-A: "Fucking solids."
• In The Walking Dead (2010), Abraham's last words before being beaten to death by Negan are "Suck my nuts."
• Watchmen (2019) sees Lady Trieu, the true Big Bad of the series utter "Motherfucker" in Vietnamese before getting crushed by her own device.

Video Games

• Angel's last words in Borderlands 2 were "Dad...I have something to tell you. You're an asshole." Notable in that this is the only time she ever curses, seemingly taught not to curse by her father, making this double as Calling the Old Man Out.
• Count Batula in Conker's Bad Fur Day lets out a "Shit" while falling in his own meat grinder.
• Played Straight initially but then subverted later in the prologue of Fire Emblem: Awakening. When defeated by Chrom and The Avatar/Robin, Validar shouts: "This isn't over..DAMN YOU BOTH!". It's subverted because later when you get to the actual level, he's revealed to survive the attack and afterwards is fought for real. When he is finally beaten, he expresses surprise at fate being averted.
  • Fire Emblem Echoes, however, plays it straight with the Bandit Mooks sometimes saying "DAMN YOU!" as they die.
• In the Apple Macintosh Galaxian clone Solarian, the default "PG-13" Game Over sound is a voice saying, "Damn!" The options offer several alternatives for this.
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories: During the final mission, Diego Mendez tells Martinez "Vete a la mierda", which literally means in Spanish "go to the shit". Since Victor kills both of them immediately afterwards without a chance to say anything else, those end up being Mendez's last words.
• Oh Shit! is this trope in video game form. It's a Pac-Man clone wherein upon dying, the player character screams "OH SHIT!"
• In Rogue Legacy, if your character has the Coprolalia trait, if they die, they let out a long string of Symbol Swearing.
• Subverted in StarCraft: Brood War. What Vadm. Alexei Stukov meant as his last words to his killer Samir Duran, "To Hell with you!" ended up not being such: he lingered on for about a minute, long enough to reveal to the UED that Duran had been working with the Zerg the whole time.
• In StarCraft II, Terran Marines sometimes yell "Motherf--" when they're killed.
• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: If Rocket Raccoon is defeated, he'll shout this:
  I'LL KILL YOU, YOU SON OF A—!
• In Styx: Master of Shadows, if you accidentally cause Styx to fall to his death, one of the things he can yell while falling is "FUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUU!".
• If you don't do a certain side mission in Mass Effect 3, the Dark Action Girl Jack, one of your squadmates from part two, is captured by Cerberus, tortured, and has her personality effectively erased to convert her into a Phantom. You later discover a video log of her final hours (as herself), showing her dropping F-bombs all the way.

Webcomics

• Homestuck. The Sufferer's last word, uttered during his execution, is known as the Vast Expletive. Given who he's related to, there's one good guess which one it was.
• The Order of the Stick: Lirian's last words before her death and zombification are a mild swear.
  "Crap."

Web Original

• In Artificial Ace Attorney, during "The Children's Turnabout," an aged-up Pearl Fey, of all people, gets in on this trope. As she's dying of cancer on death row, her last words are recorded as, "You can all kiss my ass."
• In Community Channel, Natalie muses that despite most characters having dramatic secrets to reveal (e.g. "Agatha's not dead...!), her last words would most likely be something like "....fucking....... hurts..."
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged: The last thing Cell says (out loud) when he realizes he's just lost his Beam-O-War with Gohan is "Oh, shit... OH, SHIT!"
  • Before Cell gets blown up by Vegeta's Final Flash, he says "Aww, how cute! He named it- OH, SHIT!"
• Deconstructed in EverymanHybrid. When HABIT kidnaps Jeff in order to torture him to death, all Jeff can do before the torture begins is to tell HABIT is to go fuck himself. His response?
  HABIT: Fuck you, fuck you. Do you even know "why" you said that? No, no idea? Was it anger? Was it trying to get footing, trying to get leverage in this situation, trying to make me think? See, I've interrogated a lot of people, I've hurt lots of people, tortured a lot of people, I've done lots of terrible fucking things to people. I've had thousands of people, millions, billions across my tables. And you'd be surprised how many do that. One time, I had a guy's legs off, right? Hanging in front of him, and I was making them dance. And he said "Fuck you." He said "Go to Hell, and fuck you." You know why? 'Cause he felt "Got him! There's one punch I can throw, and that's it, a spit in the eye, a curse to the Heavens! Fuck that little bitch!" You know how little it matters? The last curses, the last desperate calls, an insult to me? When a pig squeals before it's slaughtered, do the butchers care? No. Some of them even relish. So thanks.
• Serina: Brighteye's last words to the Observer, a Sufficiently Advanced Alien with godlike abilities who manipulated Brighteye into triggering a mass extinction? "Fuck you."
• The series of "WTF BOOM!!" videos on YouTube depicts someone screaming "what the fuck" before a big explosion occurs (and the sound of Evil Laugh in the background).

Western Animation

• Castlevania (2017): In the final season, when Carmilla finds herself overwhelmed by Isaac and his Night Creatures, she delivers a Final Speech capped off with some choice words before taking her own life:
  I am Carmilla of Styria, and FUCK YOU! I win!
• Family Guy:
  • In one episode, Peter accidentally murders his Jerkass step-dad, Francis. On his death bed, Francis tells Peter that he’s a "fat, stinking drunk" before dropping dead. These last words take their toll on Peter for a while.
  • One episode has Peter accidentally running down Oscar the Grouch. As Peter holds him in his arms, Oscar asks him to tell his ex-wife to go fuck herself before dying.
  Peter: Very on brand, right up to the end.
• At the end of the second Star Wars special for Robot Chicken, which "chronicles" Emperor Palpatine's life, he falls through the second Death Star's vents, gets hit by the Millennium Falcon, and is left naked in space while the Death Star is destroyed. Before the explosion takes him out, he gathers strength to do this:
  Palpatine: Anyway, if you've stuck around this long, you'd probably want some final words of wisdom, so listen close:
  (Palpatine turns around, flipping the audience, while the Death Star explodes behind him and Also Sprach Zarathustra plays in the background)
  Palpatine: FUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOU!!!
• The Simpsons: In the "Treehouse of Horror XV" segment "The Ned Zone", Ned Flanders has a vision that Homer will destroy Springfield by pressing a button in the nuclear power plant. Ned shoots Homer to stop him from pressing the button, and Homer ends up dying next to the button... only for his tongue to end up pressing it.
  Ned: Oh, you stupid, son of a-
  (city explodes)

Real Life

• According to the officer that arrived on the scene of Tupac Shakur's drive-by shooting, his last words were "fuck you" when asked who had shot him.
• Cozy Powell was apparently speaking to his girlfriend on his cellphone when he uttered "Oh shit!" before losing control and crashing his Saab 9000 going 104 MPH without a seat belt.
• George V of Britain made public last words of "The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close." Instead, his nurse administered a sedative, making his actual last words, "God damn you!" A pervasive rumor holds that, after being told he could recuperate in the seaside town of Bognor Regis, the king’s last words were “Bugger Bognor.”
• As Roald Dahl's life neared its end, in a hospital, surrounded by family, he reassured everyone, sweetly, that he wasn't afraid of death. “It's just that I will miss you all so much,” he said—the perfect final words. Then, as everyone sat quietly around him, a nurse pricked him with a needle, and he said his actual last words: “Ow, fuck!".
• One legend has it that when the last square of Napoleon's Old Guard were surrounded at Waterloo, they were invited to surrender rather than be annihilated, but their commander, the tough career soldier General Count Etienne Cambronne, shouted back, "La Garde meurt, elle ne se rend pas!" - "The Guard dies, it does not surrender!". However, the alternative legend says that he actual shouted "Merde!" - "Shit!", about as vulgar as "Fuck Off!" in modern terms.
  A third version says that he was actually captured, more or less accidentally, before the guard were finally crushed. And in any case, the heroism of the story is a bit diminished by the fact that Cambronne certainly survived the battle, albeit wounded. Still, "merde" is sometimes euphemistically known as "the word of Cambronne" in France.
• Transcripts of airplane black box recordings have plenty of these; here. NOTE: Some people may find these disturbing!
• Before being executed, John Wayne Gacy nonchalantly told his executioners "Kiss my ass".
• The last words before being hanged of serial killer Carl Panzram, one of the biggest Card Carrying Villains in real-world history, were allegedly "Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill a dozen men while you're screwing around!".
• Alexander Griboyedov, Russian diplomat to Persia in 1829, was murdered by an angry mob when rising tensions between Russia and Persia exploded. His last words were allegedly "Fuck it! Fuck it" in French no less due to Russian nobles speaking this language since native Russian was considered too barbaric.
• Although no one was there to know what Kenneth Williams said before his death by overdose, the last thing he wrote in his diary was, "Oh, what's the bloody point?"
• EVE Online legend Sean "Vile Rat" Smith's last recorded words were "Fuck, gunfire!" on Eve comms. He was soon confirmed as killed in the terrorist attack on the American embassy in Benghazi.
• Richard Belzer's last words were reportedly "Fuck you, motherfucker."

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