Fiction writers are murderers: the Gods of our worlds, the dealers of death. We ultimately decide which of our characters live and which of them die. We kill them for many reasons.
This is a huge responsibility, and many fiction writers (for text, film, games, and more) have been criticized for their death-dealing methods, as fictional deaths, when done, er… indelicately, can perpetuate all sorts of harmful ideas.
Here are some of the fictional death-dealing categories I’ve noticed across media, along with the reasons writers might choose (consciously or unconsciously) to kill characters. Problems with certain fictional deaths are included. These categories are not clearly distinct or mutually exclusive. They can and do overlap. Some of them are subcategories of other categories. This list is not exhaustive.
Because films are typically accessed by a much wider audience than books, games, or other media, I will use films as examples to illustrate these categories in the hopes that more readers will be able to visualize them. Because I’m a sci-fi/fantasy junkie, most of these examples are sci-fi/fantasy examples. Because I just watched Pitch Black, multiple examples come from this film. #sorrynotsorry
***These examples reveal film deaths, and these revealed deaths are obviously spoilers. This serves as your spoiler warning for Pitch Black, The Mummy, Game of Thrones, Star Wars: Rebels, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Titanic, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Stranger Things Season 4, Troy, Inglorious Bastards, The Little Mermaid, and The Lion King.
If you haven’t seen these films and don’t mind spoilers, you’ll still find the information in this post useful!
Reality deaths
Death happens in the real world, and for fictional worlds to feel real, death must happen there, too (with some exceptions, including fantasy- and science-fiction-based exceptions, where death is thwarted for some magical or science-y reason). In some scenarios, deaths are almost obligatory.
For example, in Pitch Black, a group of people has crash landed on a planet filled with hungry, human-eating creatures and must traverse across the land to get to a ship they can use to escape. It would be highly unrealistic for every person to get off the planet alive. For the sake of reality, deaths had to happen in this movie.
When writers write reality deaths, they do so with the primary purpose of making the plot feel real.
Reality deaths can overlap with many of the categories below.
Morality-based deaths
You know when you’re watching a movie and a character does something ethically or morally reprehensible, and you say to yourself, “Oh, that person’s gonna die for sure.” It doesn’t even have to be all that reprehensible.
In Pitch Black, for example, one of the characters is excessively materialistic. Most viewers probably think that he should feel lucky to be alive after crash landing, but rather than showing any gratitude for his predicament, he is still obsessively worried about all his belongings. As viewers, we know we should view his lower-grade avarice as a sin, and that is what clues us in to the idea that he is going to die.
Because morals were once the defining feature of stories (and some might say they still are, as evidenced by continued use of the phrase, “and the moral of the story is…”), the trope of the sinful character being punished for their sin via death is an evolution of human storytelling. It provides a lesson for readers/listeners/viewers. Thus, when writers write morality-based deaths, they are often providing a lesson.
Problems can arise when certain actions are framed as sinful when they aren’t and when supposedly “sinful” characters are punished for such “sins” via death. See bias-based deaths, below, for more on this.
Poetic-justice deaths
Poetic-justice deaths are a subcategory of morality-based deaths in which the death is directly related to the character’s sin. Authors who deal out poetically justifiable deaths might be viewed as doling out ethically appropriate punishments for characters who sin.
Benny, a side character in The Mummy who is both selfish and traitorous, cares about treasure so much that he goes back into the temple for more treasure even though he’s already packed his camel with more than enough for himself. It is this sin—avarice (avarice, again?)—that results in him getting stuck in the temple with a hoard of treasure he can no longer use and becoming a feast for the flesh-eating scarabs.
Poetic-justice deaths reinforce ideas about morality and make the readers/viewers feel like justice has been served and served well. They can be problematic for the same reasons any morality-based deaths can (see above).
Stupidity-based deaths
Stupidity-based deaths are another subcategory of morality-based deaths, only these deaths aren’t driven by a character’s sins but rather by their stupidity.
One of the most common examples of these kinds of deaths occurs when one character is in a life-or-death situation. Another “smarter” character will give them specific instructions regarding their survival, the other character won’t listen, and their failure to listen—AKA their “stupidity”—will seem to be thing that ultimately kills them.
There are also those deaths where readers/viewers go, “No, don’t do that; you’re going to die!” right before the character dies.
For a death to qualify as a stupidity-based death, it must be framed in some way by as stupidity-driven by the writer. The writer will draw attention to the stupidity of the character and its role in the character’s death.
In Pitch Black, Riddick and one of the Muslim boys are confronted by one of the planet’s deadly creatures. Riddick tells the boy not to run, and what does the boy do? He runs. Because Riddick is framed as the smart, survivalist-type character, we know that his instructions—to not run—are the “smart” instructions. And when the boy does not listen, we know he’s going to die. (And he does.)
Stupidity-based deaths can be problematic. Depending on the framing, these deaths can demonize a lack of intelligence by making readers/viewers feel that the deceased “deserved” their fate because they weren’t intelligent even to deserve life. In other words: intelligence is framed as good and moral, while a lack of intelligence is framed as bad and immoral.
(Some of these deaths certainly qualify as the Too Stupid to Live trope.)
Bias-based deaths
Some authors kill characters because of their own biases. Authors can deal these deaths unconsciously. They to reinforce who is worthy versus who is not by killing off the unworthy.
This death category has probably undergone the some of the most scrutiny from readers/viewers, especially since so many comprise tropes. For example, the Bury Your Gays trope has resulted in a pattern of authors killing off gay characters that spans across various media. (Game of Thrones is an example of a show that has been accused of never letting its gay characters have happy endings.)
You might notice that these deaths heavily overlap with morality-based deaths. For example, in many horror films (especially older ones), there is almost always the promiscuous girl who is killed off after having sex in scene. Not only does this frame her promiscuity as a “sin”; it exposes the bias (in this case, the sexism) of the author: why is it the woman—and not the man—who is punished for having sex via gory death?
Morality-based deaths can exposethe biases of the writers who dish those deaths out, which is why writers must think hard about why they want to kill certain characters!
Nameless/faceless/unrelatable deaths
When authors don’t want deaths to have too much of an emotional impact on readers, or when they just need some characters to kill while retaining their main characters, they kill off characters who won’t mean much to their readers. Usually, the characters who suffer these deaths are faceless or nameless (e.g., stormtroopers in Star Wars: Rebels), or they are written in a way that makes them completely unrelatable to the target audience.
In Pitch Black, for example, there is the group of Muslims on the ship traveling to New Mecca. While one of these characters does survive and appear in the next movie as a main character, the three young boys accompanying him do not. None of these boys speaks English (and subtitles aren’t offered), so the mainstream English-speaking audience will immediately find them unrelatable. They appear as a homogenous group (there are hardly any distinguish features between each of the boys’ dialogue and actions), so even though we do hear their names occasionally (mostly when one of them has disappeared and the other characters are trying to find him), we don’t remember those names.
There are many problematic aspects of nameless-/faceless-/unrelatable-character deaths. First, as you might be able to tell with the Pitch Black example, these deaths can overlap with bias-based deaths by exposing potential writer bias and making it seem like killed-off characters are “unworthy” and therefore more deserving of death. This movie might be accused of treating Muslims as disposable. In fact, many viewers of the film might accurately predict that the Muslim characters will die before witnessing these deaths on screen, as their unrelatability makes them easy targets for the writers (in other words, their unrelatability to the mainstream audience makes them disposable).
Also: if the characters who suffer these deaths are murdered by other characters, the murdering characters—AKA murderers—are often framed as less culpable. Sometimes, we don’t even view them as murderers! For example, in Star Wars: Rebels, viewers might see the rebel/Jedi Ezra Bridger use the force to push storm troopers out of a moving aircraft, which most likely kills them, but we don’t ever think of Ezra as being a murderer. These kinds of murders expose more problems with nameless-/faceless-/unrelatable-character deaths, as they perpetuate the idea that the killed characters’ lives don’t have meaning (and that the characters, themselves, aren’t worthy of life / are worthless). It makes it easier for readers/viewers to devalue those characters’ lives and to think of their murderers as not being murderers.
Plot-device deaths
There are also the deaths that serve as plot devices, intended to move the plot and/or another character’s arc (or characters’ arcs) forward.
These deaths do receive scrutiny, but they aren’t problematic in and of themselves. Deaths in the real world certainly change lives, and so not having a main character’s death impact the main story and the other characters’ lives wouldn’t make sense.
The problem exists when the character seems to serve only as a plot device and nothing more, and the heavy criticism of this phenomenon has been reserved for underrepresented and “othered” characters who seem to exist solely as plot-devices for the (usually) more advantaged characters. Because of this, these deaths can overlap with biased-based deaths, as the “worthier” characters live while the “less-worthy” characters die serving them in some way.
An example would be Bubble’s death in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. This death of this character (a blue, shape-shifting alien who can assume the form of a black woman) is meant to serve Valerian’s (a white man’s) character growth. Bubble probably shows Valerian what it means to potentially sacrifice oneself to help a stranger (which is something he does later in the film, though he doesn’t die).
Many of these deaths (like Bubble’s) feel like pointless deaths (see below).
Pointless deaths
Pointless deaths are just that…deaths that seem to have no point beyond writing a character off, eliciting emotions from readers/viewers, or serving some other character’s arc. You might say, “But death happens!” Ah, but you are talking about truth, and I am talking about fiction, and truth is stranger than fiction. Which is basically a confusing way of saying that the knowledge that fiction is birthed from another human’s mind is always evident and used as a framework for critiquing fiction (which can certainly feel unfair in certain cases). Ultimately, pointless deaths make readers/viewers angry. (Just think of the fierce debate around Jack’s death in Titanic.)
The pointless deaths are probably the most aggravating when they are sacrificial/suicidal. When a character sacrifices themself for something and kills themself in the process, and it seems like their sacrifice had no actual bearing on the thing for which they did it, readers/viewers feel aggravated. For me, some of these deaths seem to make light of suicide, which I hate and find highly problematic: suicide is not something to take lightly. (Please understand that I do not consider all sacrificial suicides in stories to be pointless deaths…I only find them pointless when it seems the character could have retained their life and the end result would be the same or similar or when I wonder, “Why did the writers have to write it that way? What did that even do for the story?”)
I do understand that people just die sometimes, and this is certainly the response of some writers who receive criticism for such deaths. Which character deaths can be considered “pointless” is subjective, and people will disagree.
When I find deaths to be pointless, I find that the deaths pull me out of the story and draw my attention to the writers. I find myself asking what the writer was trying to achieve through the death: were they trying to write a character off or to get some huge emotional reaction out of me? Usually, because I am pulled out of the story, I have little emotional reaction, and when I do have an emotional reaction, it’s usually frustration or anger at the writer(s). This is how I felt during Bubble’s death (mentioned above), Val’s death in Solo: A Star Wars Story (discussed below), and Eddie Munson’s death in season 4 of Stranger Things.
Ultimately, these deaths devalue life, especially when the character who dies appeared to be pretty blasé about living before their death (Val, who sacrifices herself so the rest of her criminal group can successfully complete the train heist, seems very blasé about living, like death is NBD. Her death bothers many viewers, including the actress who portrays her, Thandiwe Newton.) The devaluation of life and living is the primary factor making these deaths problematic.
Blaze-of-glory deaths
Blaze-of-glory deaths are almost always dealt to male characters, and they are usually done as a final affirmation of the character’s valiance (or, more accurately, of their masculinity). The deaths are pretty self-explanatory: the male goes down in a blaze of glory, usually taking down as many combatants / causing as much damage as possible. The reason these deaths are almost always dealt to men is because our society creates strong links between masculinity, violence, and sacrifice. (However, there are women who suffer blaze-of-glory deaths, like Val in Solo: A Star Wars Story.)
These deaths may seem harmless. In fact, they often seem, as the name suggests, glorious, because they are framed as being glorious (in movies, the cues for blaze-of-glory deaths are clear: slow motion film, glorious music, etc.). Many viewers get a rush watching their favorite male heroes, antiheroes, and villains going down in a blaze of glory. Indeed, I am one of them. Watching Hector and Achilles die in Troy gives me a mad rush. For the moments following each death, I truly believe that they are both heading to Elysium in reward for their valiant efforts. They went down fighting, I think, and I feel in awe.
But collectively, these character deaths and the cultural constructs inspiring them may be causing great harm. First and foremost, they reinforce the idea that men should be willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the moment. (Which is an idea militaries rely on for recruitments or even drafts.) These deaths might also be linked to real-world violence, including mass violence. Just think about how many real-life perpetrators of violence are 1) men and 2) demonstrating struggles with some aspects of masculinity. What better final way to prove one’s valiance/dominance/masculinity than to go down in a hail of gunfire?
These deaths certainly overlap with pointless deaths (think: Eddie Munson and Val), but not always. Sometimes, the sacrifice is framed as necessary.
I’m would never say men sacrificing themselves to save others—including women and children—is wrong. In many of the situations depicted in literature, film, and video games, this kind of sacrifice is framed as necessary for saving all the others, and from an ethical perspective, sacrificing one or a few to save many can be seen as justifiable. But the predominance of this messaging throughout media can be damaging, especially for the pressures it places on boys and mend, and especially when the sacrifice is coupled with the expression of extreme violence. Maybe the best solution is for writers to treat these deaths with more care and to try to shake up the blaze-of-glory formula rather than resorting to it as a staple of good storytelling.
Deaths that shock / subvert expectations
Deaths have also been a way for writers to subverting reader/viewer expectations, as readers/viewers expect main characters to live through their stories. One of the best examples of this is A Game of Thrones, during which one of the main characters, Ned Stark, is beheaded (in fact, George R. R. Martin assassinates many of his characters in A Song of Ice and Fire unexpectedly, and the Game of Thrones TV series follows that tradition).
I think Pitch Black contains one of my favorite examples of an expectation-subverting death. Right at the end of the movie, the creatures kill the captain, Caroline Fry, as she attempts to save Riddick, and up until that point, viewers see her (and not Riddick) as the main character. This death is emotionally wrenching and complicates our thoughts about heroism and survival, as Caroline could have (and maybe should have) left Riddick for dead, especially since he was going to leave her and the others just moments prior.
These deaths can feel like plot devices intended to add drama; they can also feel like pointless deaths if it seems the writer is only going for shock value. But when they are doled out in a way that doesn’t make them feel solely like plot devices, particularly pointless-death plot devices, they can often elicit strong emotional responses.
I find these deaths refreshing because I can usually easily predict deaths simply by using the categories above; when deaths truly subvert my expectations, they have defied my predictions. This doesn’t mean that every writer’s future goal should be to make their writing as unpredictable as possible, though, because this kind of writing could lead to other problems.
Brutal deaths
Brutal deaths objectify dying and dead bodies and make them an object of reader/viewer fascination or terror, usually by showcasing the action and/or aftermath of the defilement of the body, and usually in a very gory manner.
Sometimes, these deaths can be fun. Many people get a thrill out of watching shooters riddle Hitler’s body with bullet holes in Inglorious Bastards, for example. (That’s one way to serve up a morality-based death!)
But recall the discussion of violence from earlier: how does feeding people’s fascinations with violence through brutally depicted deaths harm our society? What does writing communicate when only certain characters (e.g., women, characters of color) suffer brutal deaths in scene, while other characters don’t die, die far-less brutal deaths, or die out of scene? What if brutal deaths form patterns (such as the pattern of women dying brutal, sexualized deaths in slasher films)? What do such patterns communicate (what biases do they perpetuate and what other messages do they embody)?
Writers should carefully consider why they want to depict brutal deaths by considering whose dead body/ies they are objectifying and what they want their readers/viewers to get out of viewing this/these death(s). In my opinion, these deaths should be used very sparingly, and writers should have a good reason for using them.
Kid-friendly deaths
Kid-friendly deaths are the kinds of deaths you see in more kid-friendly media. These are almost always morality-based deaths served up to evil or at least immoral characters (think: Ursula in The Little Mermaid). Other kid-friendly deaths are the nameless/faceless/unrelatable character deaths, which are intended to distance children from the deaths. There are certainly kid-friendly reality deaths, which are shown off-screen or, in the chance they are shown on-screen, aren’t portrayed as gruesome. Kid-friendly reality deaths help children to understand death. Such deaths include Mufasa’s death in The Lion King.
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Fiction writers are murderers, and they bear a heavy responsibility with regards to their death-dealing methods. The best deaths often keep readers immersed in the story without drawing their attention to the writer’s hands on the story’s puppet strings. They don’t perpetuate harmful ideas.
Writers should strive to promote the sanctity and value of life in most cases (not necessarily in a religious sense). (The exception is when the story’s messaging counters messages about the sanctity of life. Think H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmicism, in which human lives are portrayed as insignificant in the grand scheme of things. In my opinion, such explorations are warranted [who doesn’t love Cthulhu?], but humanity deserves more stores that promote the value of living.)
What do you think? Have you thought of any other fictional death categories that this list missing? Drop a comment below!