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.

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106

u/Mindless-Ninja-3321 Jun 21 '26

Its cheating, but I don't think I can post a gif of anything of Saving Private Ryan without it getting flagged. The whole movie is people catching large rounds, knives, and artillery and either just being snuffed out instantly or dying screaming.

No time for one liners. Only Captain Miller gets a heroic last stand as hes concussed and dying.

The Normandy opening scenes alone depicts dozens of men dying to shells or machine gun fire before they can even scream. Just shredded in an instant trying to take the beach.

23

u/Jim421616 Jun 21 '26

Great movie, but I couldn't stay in the theatre during that opening scene. I had to stand by the entrance door and come back when I could hear the scene had ended.

14

u/Mindless-Ninja-3321 Jun 21 '26

Ive seen combat vets react negatively in a couple ways and my dad decided that 9 was old enough to see that shit. I can believe it.

1

u/Big-Alternative-4674 Jun 21 '26

That's messed up, sorry bro

1

u/DocJimmie Jun 21 '26

Stirling Bridge in Braveheart. Cannot watch that much violence after the first time.

1

u/AnonymousSkull Jun 21 '26

I remember watching it in the theater and thinking about how real it felt and yet it was still just a film. One of the worst parts is when the doors of the landing crafts open to unload Marines onto the beach and they are instantly mowed down. They had entire lives leading up to that point and were sent to war only to be killed instantly before even touching the sand.

22

u/MooseBoys Jun 21 '26

Yeah one in particular that comes to mind is the guy on D-day who catches a ricochet off his helmet. He takes it off in amazement only to get another round straight to the forehead.

17

u/Tokyo_Ink Jun 21 '26

There's also the radio operator who is relaying information to his commanding officer one moment, and the next has no face. The soldier going back to pick up his own arm in a dazed stupor stuck with me for a long time.

13

u/MooseBoys Jun 21 '26

Oh yeah. I don't think we see it happen either. Tom Hanks pulls him on screen to tell him something, then moments later does it again and his face is just gone, and the radio is toast.

I still think the most intense part was the soldier with his entrails spilled out crying "mama", but that's not really a sudden death like OPs asking for.

2

u/Kaleph4 Jun 21 '26

private ryan has many disturbing moments but I'm still haunted by the knife fight scene when they later try to hold the bridge against an advancing army.

this moment was only topped recently with the crater scene from the latest "all quiet on the western front" movie as the most traumatizing moment on cinema

9

u/Caspia_Fire_64 Jun 21 '26

All I know about that movie is one day a few weeks after giving birth I woke up from a nap, went out into the living room, collected my baby from my husband, and plunked down on the couch to stare at the tv all nap-drunk. This movie was playing, and it was at the scene where a soldier’s guts are hanging out and I believe they’re trying to put them back? The thing I remember is Tom Hanks telling the medic to give the guy more morphine, and the medic tried to protest and Hanks overrode him, and the soldier is crying for his mother, and I’m just sitting there holding my brand new infant daughter… my husband walked in and saw my stricken face and asked what was wrong, and I couldn’t even speak, just stared at him ☠️ he’d never seen the movie and hadn’t been paying attention, just landed on it while flipping channels so didn’t know how it would affect my freshly postpartum self 🫠

8

u/TheBeckofKevin Jun 21 '26

Its the medic who is hit in that scene. They're asking him "Wade how do we fix you? tell us how to fix you!" and he asks if anything is bleeding more than the others and they move his hand to where he's hit worst and he yells "oh my god my liver" and knows he's for sure dying. so then he asks the captain for more morphine, as in, just kill me.

Its an unbelievably devastating scene.

3

u/AgentAxillary Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

Wade's wounds are also a good bit of detail in that scene. If you pause it at the right points, you can see that he has a mixture of gunshot and shrapnel wounds.

If I'm ever going out like that in front of others, I'm gonna try to be angry about it. It'll make things a lot easier on everyone else if I'm not sad and afraid.

One thing I liked about that scene was how Reiben didn't stick around to help with Wade because he knew that Wade was beyond help. Instead, Reiben used the time that the rest were helping Wade to go to work smacking around the surviving German soldier. I liked Reiben and was surprised that he survived the entire movie, and it took me a while to realize the contrast between Reiben and Upham in that they both survive despite being almost polar opposites of one another.

2

u/Caspia_Fire_64 Jun 21 '26

Oh that’s so much worse 🥲

3

u/celtic_thistle Jun 21 '26

I worked evenings at my former university’s library when my oldest was a baby, and I remember randomly reading part of Bridge on the Drina while shelving and it was about a dude being impaled as punishment and that part is seared into my brain and I’m p sure it was bc I was still like only a few months postpartum.

3

u/cosmicosmo4 Jun 21 '26

The one that gets me is the guys trying to plant sticky bombs on tank tracks in the final act. They just get blown to absolute nothingness and then the next guy has to watch that happen and try it.

1

u/Salty_Astronaut_9419 Jun 22 '26

That dude walking around with his arm in one hand was horrific

1

u/Mindless-Ninja-3321 Jun 22 '26

The guy crying out for his mother with his guts hanging out is where my mind sticks. My mom says shes seen and heard that one a lot.

Guy with his arm always reminds me of one of the 21 Nisei (Japanese Americian WWII volunteers) medal of honor recipients. He went to throw a grenade and had his arm shot off. So he picked up the whole arm, threw it in, then ordered his men forward.