For me, it was always Optimus Prime from The Transformers movie.
Oh boy, I’ve cried a lot for Guido from La vita è bella, Setsuko+Seita from Hotaru no Haka, Chrono from Chrono Trigger, Ace from One Piece and after a time I just started thinking and talking with some friends or my sister about those movies/game/series.
The 10th Doctor.
I don’t want to go…
Optimus Prime was a real shock for sure. For me it’s any animal death.
- Artax from The Neverending Story
- The dogs from Where the Red Fern Grows
- There’s a scene in the Sci-fi novel Armor where a puppy falls in a well and its owner, a child, unable to rescue it ,has to kill it by dropping stones on it to spare it drowning. I read that a long time ago, probably in the 80s, and it still haunts me.
One of my teachers read Where the Red Fern Grows to my class at the pace of a chapter or two every couple days (spare time in the lesson plan). I was impatient, so I got my mom to drive me to the public library, checked it out and finished the book that night. Had to wait almost 2 whole weeks before the class got caught up. I also didn’t want to spoil the ending for my classmates, so I just had to kinda hold onto the knowledge of the events and deal with it by myself while all the other kids were oblivious. Out teacher had us start watching the movie towards the end of the book, she had it timed perfectly so that the class (other than me) had no ideas for the back to back double whammy of loss that they were about to experience.
I had already read that book prior to my teacher reading it aloud in class. She couldn’t read that chapter, so I volunteered to, having already had my trauma from the scene. We didn’t end up watching the movie, though.
Lessons in Chemistry.
As a kid the biggest one I can remember was Wolf, from the book The Talisman (King/Straub). Hurts to this day.
Jesus.
Storm light archive has a tough one.
Tap for spoiler
Teft
In a totally different vein, Grey’s anatomy has the worst one
Tap for spoiler
Dereks death was super heavy. But the COVID fever dreams were cathartic.
Companion cube
You monster
Just like Jesus, He didn’t even really die. He went away for a few days and on the third day he rose again so that all may follow him and enjoy everlasting life.
John Cofey in The Green Mile.
Richard Harrow in Boardwalk Empire. The episode was amazing and the send-off was beautifully written but, boy, was it sad.
Kamina and Yang Wen-li
“Dogmeat has died”.
Oh no he fucking has not. Reload.
Rob and Catelyn Stark in the Red Wedding. So traumatizing!
