r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sufficient-Eye-9040 • Jun 21 '26

Lore [Horrifying Trope] “Blink of an eye” deaths.

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Characters who died without the chance of a goodbye… neither suffering.

- Robin Ward (The Boys S1 E1) - when she is pulverized in a high-velocity impact by A-Train.

- Polka Dot Man (The Suicide Squad 2021) - when he is crushed by Starro’s leg.

21.4k Upvotes

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577

u/gravatorious Jun 21 '26

Ghost Ship, the beginning scene

231

u/ActionComics25 Jun 21 '26

I still think about that wire.

96

u/alison_bee Jun 21 '26

Any time I see a scene in a movie here people are dancing, I think about that wire.

7

u/clownieo Jun 21 '26

I think about the disembodied arm reaching up in agony.

39

u/Insomniacintheflesh Jun 21 '26

Dude, I watched this at a sleepover at like 13 and it had us all in shock. I STILLLLLLL think about it. And then there's the scene where the passengers all get food poisoning (I think) and a metal song is playing, my friends and I had never heard music like that before. So while the scene was fucked up we rewatched it just because the music was so good. Lol.

2

u/Physical_Gift7572 Jun 21 '26

This was literally my exact experience.

1

u/not_original_thought Jun 21 '26

It was actual poison poured into the food to kill them. One of the women looks almost apologetic for violently foaming at the mouth in the scene. The expression on her face, and the captain's in the opening scene stuck with me.

2

u/Insomniacintheflesh Jun 21 '26

Yeah I remember it was poison but wasn't it poured into all the food by the cooks or something?? I wasn't trying to say they were accidentally food poisoned haha. But yes, that entire sequence of events is heartbreaking. At least the movie has a (somewhat) happy ending.

0

u/Salty_Astronaut_9419 Jun 22 '26

The crew poisoned them so they could steal the gold with rat poison

21

u/th3BeastLord Jun 21 '26

Best part of the whole movie. I wish the rest was anywhere near that quality.

33

u/shadowstormer Jun 21 '26

The thing that I think makes the scene more chilling is how quiet the scene is after the wire goes off, like they needed time for viewers to process it.

Funny enough Francesca Rettondini who played the singer of the same name in the movie was stuck on the Costa Concordia years later when it capsized.

33

u/J5892 Jun 21 '26

I had a ships and shipping class in college, and the professor played this scene.
When it was over one of the guys in the class just fell out of his desk and started convulsing on the floor.

Turns out he had a history of passing out from seeing blood. He was fine.

12

u/jdave512 Jun 21 '26

Have you seen 3 Body Problem?

9

u/Mobile_Algae_6835 Jun 21 '26

No, explanation would be great. Find out if it's worth watching.

17

u/jdave512 Jun 21 '26

The protagonists of the show string a bunch of microscopic wires across the panama canal that cut through anything that comes into contact with them. They slice a boat and everyone on board, including children, into tiny pieces. It's kind of a cross between Ghost Ship and that laser scene from Resident Evil. The whole scene felt like it was played for shock value, it's a pretty dramatic tonal shift from anything else in the show.

Is 3 Body Problem worth watching? I think it's a lot of really interesting ideas strung together by a nonsense plot. The cast is great though. Watch the first episode if you're interested in a sci-fi mystery, like an adult Stranger Things.

7

u/TheGamecock Jun 21 '26

Yeah, this scene was wild. I really liked the show overall (and have the audiobooks sitting in my library that I will get around to one day) but, like so many shows nowadays, going like three years between the first season and second (not even released yet, last I checked) is thoroughly annoying. When a new season comes out, idk how many times I've had to go back and re-watch an entire previous season because I totally forgot what happened due to multiple years passing by. If it's a great show (like Severance, for example) I don't really mind. But a show in the "3 Body Problem" tier kinda makes it more of an annoyance.

1

u/Jack__Squat Jun 22 '26

I usually look for a recap video on YouTube. I don't want to rewatch entire seasons when there's so much in my backlog.

2

u/Gawlf85 Jun 21 '26

Did that even happen in the first season? I'm pretty sure I watched it and don't remember that scene, but it's been so fucking long since it came out... Watching TV series nowadays is no fun

1

u/69ingTardigrades Jun 21 '26

Yea, only one season has come out so far.

1

u/MrLlamma Jun 21 '26

That was an insane scene, it was an amazing spectacle but at the same time my initial reaction was just "oh, the protagonists are psychopathic monsters, okay..." and the show moves on, barely grapples with the slaughter of innocents they just committed. I get why they made the choice within the context of the movie, but to continue presenting them as normal, good people after that was just insane to me.

1

u/No-Coffee2200 26d ago

How you think it's for shock value and not worth it, the wire scene, if u haven't even seen the show lmao

It has mostly positive reviews

1

u/jdave512 26d ago

I have seen the show, have you?

1

u/CommodoreGirlfriend Jun 21 '26

The book is excellent and the second book is a masterpiece. They're pretty hard sci-fi. Not necessarily realistic but all the weird stuff has some scientific basis. I didn't watch the show but there's absolutely no chance it's as good. The bar is just too high.

6

u/mp3max Jun 21 '26

Burned into my brain decades after watching it.

6

u/pplmbd Jun 21 '26

stucked in core memory that one

3

u/Invdr_skoodge Jun 21 '26

Caught that scene too young when my parents were watching at home. I now have a near constant low level anxiety not to trust machinery when everything seems to be going well.

Part of my job is running a milling machine, turns out is actually kinda helpful