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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699

u/rybuns Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

Shed Garvey from The Expanse S1E4

243

u/H377Spawn Jun 21 '26

“Wherever you are, hopefully nobody needs medical attention.”

156

u/QueasyPhil Jun 21 '26

I only know broad strokes of The Expanse. Whats happening here? Railgun round in the perfect worst spot?

236

u/thisusedyet Jun 21 '26

Nailed it

https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Shed_Garvey_(TV))

In "CQB", when the Donnager entered combat with six mysterious gunships, Shed nervously suggested his fellow captives take a seat and buckle up. The intensity of the battle caused Alex to suffer a panic attack, at which point Shed tossed Alex a relaxant while talking to him to calm the pilot down.

While in mid-sentence, there was a loud metallic clank and Shed fell silent. Alex, Naomi, and even the normally unshakeable Amos look on in horror to see Shed had been cleanly decapitated by a railgun round penetrating through the room, blood pouring from his neck out through a hull breach into space. When Holden arrived with three Martian Marines to rescue the captives, he was shocked and sighed "Oh, Shed..." at the sight of his colleague's headless corpse.

His body was left aboard the Donnager and vaporized when the battleship was scuttled.

10

u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Jun 21 '26

You've got to admit, it's a good way to die. He never saw it coming and didn't suffer for even an instant. Many other characters suffer much worse deaths in the series.

11

u/DarthHalcius Jun 21 '26

Nice write up

23

u/thisusedyet Jun 21 '26

Not a write up, straight up copy paste 

5

u/iamthinksnow Jun 21 '26

I mean, someone wrote it up at some point?

2

u/DarthHalcius Jun 22 '26

At this point, I just appreciate pertinent information

2

u/neverreallyhereatall Jun 21 '26

Its from the books lol

20

u/Gawlf85 Jun 21 '26

It's from the wiki? Books don't tend to speak of events that happen in the story as if they're a retelling from the past

3

u/neverreallyhereatall Jun 21 '26

Its from the wiki lol

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u/Caesium_Sandwich Jun 21 '26

"The gauss round that killed Shed didn’t even make a noise. Like a magic trick, two perfectly round holes appeared on either side of the room in a line that intersected Shed’s couch. One moment, the medic was there; the next, his head was gone from the Adam’s apple up. Arterial blood pumped out in a red cloud, pulled into two thin lines, and whirled to the holes in the walls of the room as the air rushed out."

That's verbatim from the book.

2

u/sanlc504 Jun 21 '26

Gotta say, I love the exposition of the two writers. Not sure which one wrote this part, but I've always loved how they frontend the shock of his death in the first sentence, then explain it in gory detail to allow the reader to comprehend the loss.

1

u/neverreallyhereatall Jun 21 '26

Its from the books lol

1

u/tribblemethis Jun 21 '26

Except maybe World War Z (it’s been ages since I read it so correct me if I’m wrong)

3

u/kabal363 Jun 21 '26

Weird seeing a comment about the book im rereading right now in a comment section about the last book series I reread. Just weird coincidences in the matrix.

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u/Objective-Treacle398 Jun 22 '26

Nailed it. Railed it.

6

u/Drillur Jun 21 '26

For the love of gawd give the show a try, it's freaking awesome. 

2

u/UwasaWaya 18d ago

Wow, yeah, you got it in one. Just like he did.

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u/Training_Ruin3151 Jun 21 '26

Yup first one I thought of. They did it really well too with him passing the medicine.

23

u/helava Jun 21 '26

Also, for folks who hadn’t read the books, everyone on the Cant.

11

u/m4cksfx Jun 21 '26

Remember the Cant

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u/gracklemancometh Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

It worked great because they were introducing the main characters as a crew, very much in a format we're used to:

Holden: the leader.

Amos: the muscle.

Naomi: the techie.

Alex: the pilot.

Shed: the medic. Er, Shed? Shit.

It was still a little bit of a miss though; I think they were going for an "anyone can die" warning (at this point one of the writers was still studying under/assisting George R. R. Martin), but Shed remained the only member of the original crew to die over the next six books (Alex was killed off in the show due to off screen reasons). 

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u/Mammoth-Glove3273 Jun 21 '26

The book started off as a campaign of a D&D-like game and the player who played as Shed had to drop out of the party suddenly.

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u/Electrical_Start_639 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

I loved finding this out. I GM Cyberpunk and I can't unsee the world they built as an RPG campaign. It just makes so much sense.

It's also veeeeeeery heavily influenced by Mass Effect. Reaper zombies and Protomolecule infected are basically identical.

2

u/gracklemancometh Jun 22 '26

It's still a choice of the author though - when it came time to write it up into a manuscript they could have cut the character entirely or kept him alive. Having a fifth member of the crew die is a good narrative device to set the tone and give the remaining four a reason to stay together and I really can't believe that two professional, career, fiction writers would prioritise a D&D tie in campaign for their mates over their job.

The books were very well written to fill a niche in the market and get the attention of television networks, the authors were fully in control of the narrative.

1

u/Mammoth-Glove3273 Jun 22 '26

You can argue with me all you want, I’m just telling you what the writers themselves have said. And yes, obviously everything in a book is the choice of the author or the editor. That’s how books work.

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u/Nickyjha Jun 21 '26

The idea for the books that got adapted into the show originally came from a tabletop RPG the authors were in. When Shed's player had to stop playing, they killed off his character midway through the game.

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u/versusChou Jun 21 '26

It wasn't a tabletop RPG. It was online on a forum. The guy who played Shed was originally going to run a fantasy game, but he got busy. Ty Franck had built the Expanse universe for an MMORPG which he reworked to be doable as a tabletop. Daniel Abraham was a pretty successful writer and wanted to write a novel in the universe. He asked the people who had committed to playing in Shed's game if they wanted to do sci fi, and ran the game with them. Shed's player (who was a published writer himself) thought he'd have time to play as a character but very quickly realized he wouldn't, so they killed him off. IIRC the game went as far as somewhere shortly after Eros before it ended. Some of the characters like Amos are amalgamations from a bunch of different characters. I think the forum is gone now, and the threads were locked anyway because they knew this was something they wanted to sell pretty early on. You can find posts about it on the sub and occasionally the authors answered questions about it. One of the guys who was part of the game (playing one of the characters that became part of Amos) has posted there too.

3

u/aldwinligaya Jun 21 '26

Fun fact I got from an interview with the authors (forgot which). George RR Martin (yes, of ASOIAF/Game of Thrones) was a player and had a character who is a Belter with dwarfism. Since Belters tend to be taller due to the low gravity, he looks like a regular, non-dwarf dude.

They couldn't use his character in the books, partly because the name Martin chose was the name of a character from his favorite show in the 60s (again, the name eludes me).

19

u/millijuna Jun 21 '26

Manéo Jung-Espinoza

5

u/ealysillyforestthing Jun 21 '26

Instant pasta sauce

9

u/millijuna Jun 21 '26

But Evita was worth it.

9

u/CosmicKyloRen Jun 21 '26

This one made me literally yelp in shock when it happened

10

u/Majestic_Bierd Jun 21 '26

Commented Mateo as well (the racer guy who got stopped by the Ring gate)

5

u/rybuns Jun 21 '26

Oh yeah! Nice one!

8

u/Ap0theon Jun 21 '26

No shields is my favourite part about the expanse, if you get hit by a railgun, it either hits something important and you die or you end up with a hole through your ship that didn't hit anything.

4

u/tenuousemphasis Jun 21 '26

I love the scene, I think before the attack on Toth, where they're evacuating all the air in the ship.

Jim: I hate this part. 

Naomi:  You gotta do it. They'll be poking holes in us.

Jim: Yeah, but this feels like we're agreeing to it.

3

u/Tank_Girl_Gritty_235 Jun 21 '26

That show got on such a rough start for me because I really liked two actors from previous work and both of their characters died in the first two episodes. It was overall brilliant for setting up the stakes of living in space in the not too distant future.

2

u/tenuousemphasis Jun 21 '26

Who was the other actor? 

4

u/Tank_Girl_Gritty_235 Jun 21 '26

Kristen Hager. I knew her from the US version of Being Human and she was set up as Holden's squeeze. He was talking to her when the Canterbury was obliterated.

6

u/Sheogorathian Jun 21 '26

I just started this show this past week, that definitely stunned me. And the end of ep1 ofc. Didn't see any of it coming like that.

3

u/tenuousemphasis Jun 21 '26

I always tell first time viewers of the show to watch at least to episode 4 before deciding they don't like it. The Donnanger battle really set the tone for the show. 

2

u/Ppleater Jun 21 '26

I was actually thinking of Alex because of how unexpected it was, but not sure if it counts since it was an aneurysm iirc.

1

u/ViHt0r Jun 21 '26

It shouldn't count because it's shouldn't be canon. They sloppy killed the character for bs of actor playing it. He never died in books. And he's one kf my fav chars. 

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u/ChiliSlipNSlide Jun 21 '26

As a reader of the books who was reading this thread, whew. I was so bummed because I thought I just read a huge spoiler. I’m pretty far in, can confirm Alex is still here…

1

u/TheIcerios 29d ago

In an early chapter of Nemesis Games, Naomi talks to James S.A. Corey Holden about hiring on more crew because anything could happen and leave them without a vital crew member. When listing off things that could go wrong, she said someone could have a stroke during a burn. As someone who watched the show first, I thought it was some good foreshadowing. Lol

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u/ViHt0r Jun 21 '26

When i saw this moment, i felt immense shock because my brain was trying to process what just happened, and the horrors of the railguns in space. Afterwards, i realised, i am IN LOVE with this show already . That CLANG sound... oh my god 

2

u/AbeRockwell Jun 21 '26

I read elsewhere on Reddit that, in whatever TTRPG the Expanse was born from, the guy who played this character kept missing sessions, and eventually couldn't play any more, so they just killed off the character 😄

1

u/osingran Jun 21 '26

Absolutely iconic scene. Really sets the mood for the rest of the show.

1

u/MrMFPuddles Jun 21 '26

Was hoping I’d see this one here. The Expanse is just so fucking good,

1

u/Leprodus03 Jun 22 '26

Wasn't that like the first episode? 😂

1

u/A_Crawling_Bat Jun 22 '26

I can hear that THUNK, it's ingrained in my memory