I love movies. Who doesn't right? Movies make history. They act as bookmarks for our lives. We'll always remember where we were the first time we saw a particular film. And we carry the characters with us. That's why movie deaths can be so visceral.
Who hasn't openly sobbed amongst strangers when a certain character's life is snuffed out? I believe the earliest movie death people recall being traumatized by is Bambi's mom, and it's downhill from there.
Let's grab some tissues and be traumatized together.
Redditoru/gambit_-wanted to compare notes on which character endings in film we'll never be able to forget, by asking:
What movie death scene is burned into your memory?
I still get choked up when I think about Jack's death in "Titanic." Although part of that death is fury. Why in the world didn't let him on the board with her? She didn't deserve him! We'll never let go Leo.
Heartless
indy jones favourite part ever GIF by hoppipGiphy"That poor guy who gets his heart ripped out by Thugees and sent into lava in Temple of Doom always got me as a kid. Still pretty memorable."
Flushed
"The toilet guy in Jurassic Park 1."
"That really messed me up when I saw it at 8 years old. Meanwhile, we decided to show it my 5 year old recently and he laughed and had almost no reaction. My 4 year old brother saw it in the theatre with my family and he also had basically no reaction."
- spaketto
Goo Away
"When the bad guy kills the shoe by dipping it into the goo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit."
"That one is so freaking terrible, man. If you think about it those toons don't even have the notion of what death is. When a toon is shot in the face they just get real dirty or, worst case scenario, turn into a cartoon angel only to come back to normal by next week. Not that shoe, though. The shoe is gone forever. It's the first and only one of their kind to ever meet total oblivion and just die for good. That's gotta be a doozy."
Too Heavy
"The freaking baby in Trainspotting. Jesus freaking Christ."
- CSWoods9
"Something I read on Reddit in a similar thread, that I refuse to fact check because it makes me feel better, is that every single actor on set played with that baby every time the camera cut because it was such a heavy scene. Apparently the baby was just super stoked to get all the attention and it helped the actors and crew deal with it."
"Edit: I took a risk and googled it and it's true! According to the twins who played the baby! "We weren't on the set a lot but, when we were, apparently everyone was a bit more relaxed and all doing baby stuff with us. So it helped to take away a lot of the tension from filming such hard scenes."
Daddy
Run Away The Princess Bride GIF by Disney+Giphy"The six fingered man in The Princess Bride. "I want my father back you son of a b**ch."
I LOOOOVE Roger Rabbit! Such a classic. That death is funny and haunting. I think it's that psychotic voice. I hear it in nightmares. Ad watching "Trainspotting" once, was more than enough.
of mice and men GIF"It was so much worse in the book though! In the movie he pulls the gun and BAM, it's done. In the book he has the gun out and aimed with his finger on the trigger, just agonizing over it for so long before he can bring himself to do it."
Not so Lovely...
"Some times I think about the Lovely Bones, especially when I talk to strangers. That movie upped my paranoia when I was a kid."
- mcdadais
"I'm not even a parent and that movie still got to me. Just seeing how the parents dealt with her death... How they kept her room exactly the same...The book was really good, too."
"I will always thank my dad for raising me the way he did - don't be polite. Don't be afraid to make a scene. Be prepared to be embarrassed later if you're wrong - that's better than being a statistic. He raised me to stand up for myself and not be polite to my own detriment."
VALID!
"The scene from The Brave Little Toaster where the air conditioner goes off the deep end and explodes himself: I'M NOT AN INVALID! I LIKE BEING STUCK IN THIS WALL! IT'S MY FUNCTION! Update: I had no idea this movie was so influential to other people too. I'm glad I'm not alone because I don't know many people who've even heard of it!"
- Aksfsc
Flies
"Grave of the fireflies That scene is "burned" into my memory."
"I think the beginning scene where he's just lying there, waiting to die along with the other forgotten people is really profound alone. Then the movie goes into his life and what a loving and vibrant child he was and ends with the scene of him dying there, and nobody caring at all until his sister comes to get him. Ugh. So heart-wrenching."
Neverending...
my little pony 3d GIFGiphy"Artax, please. You're letting the sadness of the swamps get to you. You have to try. You have to care." 😭
"The Neverending Story" is neverending trauma. I can't with that movie. All this gloom, some deaths can be funny as well. I love every death in Clue. They never get old.
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- People Share The Films That Are Genuinely Traumatic - George Takei ›
- Film Buffs Share Their All-Time Favorite Movie Endings - George Takei ›
- People Break Down The Most F**ked Up Movie Or TV Show They've Seen - George Takei ›
- People Explain How They Really Feel About Death - George Takei ›
- People Divulge What They Think Happens After We Die - George Takei ›
Redditor BarooTangClan wanted to compare notes on all the entertainment we've said "that's enough" to.
"What will make you instantly stop watching a movie or show and why?"
I hate bad acting, writing, storytelling... I hate bad anything.
Stop Jumping
Fight Scene GIF by Operation FortuneGiphy"Fight scenes with a million visual cuts. Gives me motion sickness. Contrast the absolutely masterful work in John Wick. long cuts, realistic use of weapons (mostly), 100% skill."
StabbyPants
Louder
"When the actors whisper the whole movie and you have to crank the volume to hear what's being said - but the soundtrack or some other misc noise starts blaring at a higher volume directly after."
Blaze*itch
"I basically had to watch Stranger Things up in my attic with the windows and doors closed. I was worried the neighbors would think something was wrong or be annoyed if I watched it downstairs in my single family home. It was ridiculous."
ForecastForFourCats
"spice things up"
"Love triangles out of no where in a second or third season to 'spice things up' because studio writers are hacks and their idea of relationship drama is 'potential infidelity' at all times. It's the most tired trope on the go**amn planet and the second I see it rear its head I dip right the hell out."
amalgamas
"The whole concept of a love triangle to begin with an incredibly juvenile. Any healthy functioning adult who found themselves in a love triangle would soon choose to find themselves single."
Ouch_i_fell_down
Save your lips...
"When couples in a movie/show have a fight and one of them instantly goes to a friend and end up kissing her/him after talking for 5 minutes. I cringe so hard i turn it off and never watch it again."
Dry-Mycologist3966
"This pissed me off so much in Manifest. Girl is desperate to get back her ex-fiancé, he finally breaks up with his wife to get back with her and she's like 'nah, it's not fair to your wife, let me do this other dude I just met through a calling and be pissed at you for being jealous.' Michaela was the worst and everyone acted as if she were a saint the entire time."
gingerisla
Talk to Me
In Love Flirt GIF by OriginalsGiphy"Shows where a single polite conversation could fix everything."
Horror_Librarian_133
We are going overboard with the witty repartee. Talk normal...
Shut Up
Scared Home Alone GIF by FreeformGiphy"Annoying main character, especially if it's a kid."
abananation
"Kids who have a quippy, sassy retort to everything, and everyone just kind of crumbles before their wit."
CarpetPure7924
Speak Good
"Shows where kids in high school talk like they are 30 years olds who have done everything, been everywhere, know it all and use a ridiculously flowery and extensive vocabulary in every conversation. Like, have any of these writers ever been to high school? Literally no one talks like that. Even worse is when, in addition to this, all the adults talk normal or are just plain stupid, like so weird parallel universe."
StretchArmstrong74
Nonsense
"If the movie is too dark. Not graphic, just literally dark. I lose all sense of intensity in dark scenes and I'm not straining my damn eyes trying to figure out what the hell is going on."
TheShadowOfKaos
"I've seen about 10 percent of all DC movies recently. I've seen all of the individual films in full, just actually saw 10% of each of them."
Mortlach78
"Movies in the late 80s had a lot of dark but you could see the depth because of different shooting techniques. Now you cant see crap because its a CGI fest drowned in black color so you can't see crap because you have no depth in a scene. Compare night scenes in dark alleys in 80's movies and movies now. Utter crap show in the new ones."
Bombzey
Pay Attention Storytellers
"Bad editing would be a big one. A lot of modern horror movies can't help but edit the movies like they're trailers, with added noises to scare the audience because they are afraid the script alone isn't enough to keep people watching."
ThisIsCreation
"I remember this is where the first transformers movie lost me. When the transformers are fighting at the end, it's all a big, jumbled mess of metal and I can barely tell what's going on or who is who."
1840_NO
Drama
will devry soap opera GIF by General HospitalGiphy"When they go straight to relationship drama right away when it wasn't the selling point of the show."
LightInthewater
Do better, Hollywood. It's not that hard.
RedditorCallMehRiverwanted to hear about all the ways none of us what to leave this life.
"What Do You Think Would Be The Worst Death Imaginable?"
My list of the worst deaths is long. My imagination runs amok.
Trapped
season 6 friends GIFGiphy"For me? Being trapped in a small tube or cave (like the ones you have to wiggle through) and getting stuck to where you can’t move your arms. And all you can do is wait to die. I’m getting chills just thinking about it."
Stuck
"The more I hear about cavers that get stuck, the more I think that's a crap way to go."
- braydenmaine
"There’s a great YouTube channel called Ask a Mortician and this was her #1 worse way to die. I can’t remember the exact details or their names, but two well-known divers went into an underwater cave."
"One of them became entangled and died. Years later, his friend dives back down there to try and retrieve his body, the body itself is rotten and his head comes off and the other guy also becomes tangled and dies. Really sad."
- melancholybuzzard
A Long Process
"Believed to be in a coma but coherent through the whole 20 year process until they pull the plug."
weebeardedman
"Oh man this just reminded me of a story I read on here about a guy who lost the ability to move and speak but was completely conscious. Had to just lay there and be awake but trapped in a useless body. His family thought he was brain dead or something and he couldn’t communicate to them that he was 'all there.' Crazy"
habeeb51
Slow & Steady
"Being slowly impaled by a growing bamboo. It was a form of torture probably used by the japanese during WW2 against Allied prisoners."
JazzySocrate
"My uncle who served back in the day said that people would have the bamboo slipped under their fingernails because it would continue to grow still. It would just continue growing into the body."
Payness0826
Excruciating
"Rabies."
Santolmo
"The scariest part is that once you have symptoms, you 100% will die. A 100% mortality rate has to be a psychological torture in itself."
RonaldRawdog
"Not only that, you feel irrational fear. Your brain is literally being eaten apart by the virus and it fu*ks up everything on it. You can't drink water because it hurts you. You feel dizzy, present a fever, excessively salivate, everything hurts and it only gets worse. I'd rather take a bullet and die when the symptoms are still tolerable."
Santolmo
Why can't we all just go engulfed in calm and quiet?
Suspended
"Some pulpy sci-fi book I read a while back had one of the best deaths of this real piece of crap bad guy. Left to die in a drowning sea lab under the Antarctic ice, he freezes himself in a state of the art suspended animation pod with some kind cold fusion power source that would keep it running for millions of years."
"But he forgot to inject himself with the drug that would put him to sleep. So basically he is in suspended animation at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean while his mind is perfectly awake and conscious in a near unbreakable machine that won't run out of power for millions of years and nobody knows about it."
DubiousAlibi
No Cure
"As an RN I have always thought that the worst way to die (natural process) is ALS. Lou Gehrig's Disease."
randymn1963
"My mom and grandmother have Huntington's disease, which is essentially ALS, Alzheimer's, and Dementia combined into one really messed up genetic disease. I have a 50% chance of inheriting it and if I hit 40 and there's still no cure I can't promise I'll feel like continuing on with my life because that disease is absolutely freaking miserable."
DevTheDummy
Agony...
"Radiation poisoning."
binhan123ad
"The fact your chromosomes can be so destroyed your body basically lost it's genetic code and with it the ability to make any new cells. It's literally a 'dead man walking' and you slowly rot away in agony. Stuff is so unimaginably f**ked up."
yea_nah448
"What's also bad about radiation is that it affects your nerves and brain cells last, so you have everything in place to feel all the pain of the rest of your cells being destroyed."
nosmelc
Goo
Not Listening Season 2 GIF by The Fresh Prince of Bel-AirGiphy"I want to believe anything that slowly kills you painfully to be the worst. Such as slowly being crushed or something where the pain is beyond compare and yet not enough to throw you into shock or unconsciousness."
Beardless_Man
"Alternatively, being rapidly crushed into goo would probably be the least painful. I'm talking one of those massive industrial hammers they use for large steel work. Basically smooshed before the nerve signals make it to the brain."
Bannon9k
Now I'll never sleep again without nightmares of death.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
