Really Dead Montage

"''"I crushed his head ''A few times Memories like nursery rhymes...""

- Dr. Forrester, Mystery Science Theater 3000, "Who Will I Kill?"

Oh no! They killed off your favorite character! It's all right — this is a TV show, he'll be back next week, right?

Not if the victim was the subject of a Really Dead Montage, he won't. Not if somewhere between the Famous Last Words, the anguished shouts of How Dare You Die on Me! and the uncontrollable sobbing while holding the body, a sad rock or Celtic ballad and two minutes of happy scenes from past episodes starts playing. A Really Dead Montage can kill a character far more effectively than the shot to the chest, drop off a cliff, or, in extreme cases, graphic decapitation could ever hope to do. You can Retcon, Hand Wave, Reset Button, or All Just a Dream a character out of just about any kind of messy end, but the Really Dead Montage means Killed Off for Real, no coming back. Especially if they play Kansas' "Dust In The Wind" as it rolls.

Also available in Permanently Put on a Bus flavor, when the character doesn't die but is really, really gone.

For subtlety, this can take the form of a Happier Home Movie, usually filmed up close at an angle for extra creepiness.

The only thing that can override a Really Dead Montage is the First Law of Resurrection—however, considering the authors went to all the trouble of planning a Really Dead Montage in the first place, they probably don't want to invoke the First Law of Resurrection later. If the character returns nonetheless, the Really Dead Montage itself qualifies as a particularly conspicuous Premature Eulogy.

Anime and Manga

 * Subverted in Stellvia of the Universe, where the Humongous Mecha piloted by Shima Katase (incidentally, the main heroine) gets hit with an Earth-shattering (literally, as if the phenomenon reaches the Earth it will cease to exist) wave and seemingly ceases to exist in the penultimate episode - then we are treated to a standard next episode trailer narrated by the sad best friend of the said heroine - and she in nowhere to be seen. The next, final episode starts with a Really Dead Montage lasting several minutes - and yet, right after the opening modified to also be a Really Dead Montage she turns out to be alive (and her Mech unharmed) within the next fifteen seconds.
 * Episode 17 of Mai-Otome has one for The Mole.
 * And in the episode immediately afterward, one for, right before.
 * Fushigi Yuugi not only has one of these for, it also precedes the death with a montage of him imagining a happy alternative future with Miaka. Then later, there's another for
 * Amusingly,
 * Kanon Kanon, or at least the 2006 remake, offers a subversion:
 * In the original Visual Novel she gets the same after/as part of a damned depressing reveal
 * Parodied in an episode of Animal Yokocho—after Iyo accidentally bisects Kenta while attempting the old sawing-a-protesting-friend-in-half magic trick, she sits reflectively looking out the window and watches an entire Really Dead Montage go by before Kenta has a chance to protest and demand to be put back together.
 * in Fate/stay night. There's another one for  in the finale.
 * After  in Death Note, the series mourns by spending half an episode reviewing everything that's happened so far. (This is right before a Time Skip, so it was also a very convenient time for a recap.) There's another lingering, montage-y death in the finale.
 * Carnival Phantasm shows a montage of Lancer and Berserker after the latter throws his as a weapon, which he lampshades while he's flying through the air; "WAIT, WAIT WAIT WAIT, WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!"
 * Oddly enough, in an episode of Pokémon titled "Pikachu's Goodbye?" Ash tries to leave his Pikachu behind with a community of wild Pikachu, thinking it's what's best for him. The show goes into a montage complete with sad music. Obviously, despite what looks just like a Really Gone Montage, Pikachu refuses to be left behind and they are back together immediately after the montage ends. Either a pointless waste of time or a touching testament to their friendship, you make the call.
 * This also happens in later seasons, where the female sidekick for the region Ash is visiting is Put on a Bus. These tend to be real Tear Jerker moments - especially in the case of Misty and Dawn.
 * And this is also subverted by Ash's . Though that pokemon does not appear in future episodes, he is given a notably depressing montage featuring when Ash captures him. However, the subversion comes when it was revealed that the falling rock didn't crush him as thought, but he burrowed underground.
 * The sixth season episode where Ash catches his Treecko features a Really Dead Montage...for a tree. This is doubly weird because Ash sees it.
 * Welcome to The NHK has the Put on a Bus version of this when Yamazaki leaves. He's still a pretty major character for the remaining episodes though, he's just not living next to Satou anymore.
 * The ninja robot Volfogg from King of Braves GaoGaiGar gets one after his fight with Penchinon, then
 * has one in Grave of the Fireflies.
 * By GOD does  have one... unlike many of the others on this list, it'll be the VIEWER exhibiting the uncontrollable sobbing instead of the characters. Saddest. Scene. Ever.
 * In the 2003 anime adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist,
 * Even more epitomizing this trope, however, is the death of
 * And you can't forget
 * gets one in the penultimate episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
 * Strangely, Usopp from One Piece gets one of these montages during the Water 7 arc after, despite not only being alive, but also having been confirmed as such by one of the main characters.
 * got a montage set to one of the ending themes as the.
 * Chapter 574: and is rewarded with one of these as
 * The AIR TV series offers a twist. The flashbacks from the show itself occur during . After she dies there is a montage of past events that did not actually happen, such as, things that . Cue "Aozora" playing in the background and you get one of the saddest moments in anime ever.
 * got one before his death in Mobile Suit Gundam 00, which undermined the impact of the death a bit.
 * Played around with in Macross Frontier, with the episode "Goodbye, Sister." Basically, the entire episode consisted of Hot-Blooded, definitely-set-to-die-hot-bloodedly big-brother type Ozma Lee surviving multiple cliched death lead-ups and situations, including fond memories of his adopted younger sister, reconciling with his ex-girlfriend, various musical interludes by the band Fire Bomber, sneaking off to the suspicious enemy base by himself, leading the battle against the Alien Invasion with risky maneuvers and hot-blooded speeches, attending his younger sister's first concert while heavily injured, and even a Shout-Out to a character death in the first Macross series (pineapple cake, anyone?)...and then ending up in the hospital, recuperating but safe.
 * It's later played straight with a small twist in Episode 20:
 * Basically, these two characters were created with the intention of using the viewer's knowledge of tropes against them; Ozma is the hotshot big brother-type who tends to die about halfway through this type of story (he very intentionally conjures up the memory of a character who did die in the original Maccross) whereas Mikhail is the type of character whose function isn't to die, but to go from a stuck-up jerk to a nice guy thanks to the influence of his True Companions and the love of a good woman. So after leading us by the hand and playing these tropes perfectly straight, the writers
 * in Code Geass gets one during the clown shooing.
 * Then,
 * One of the He's Just Hiding responses is that . Oh, and there is also the argument that.
 * Naruto has two of these in quick succession with when they were nearing the end of Part 1. Somehow they got better. The same goes for.
 * Played straight with.
 * Sonic X gives Mecha-Mooks Decoe and Bocoe one in Episode 48. Subverted of course in that the death in question was a Robot Disney Death. 4Kids, of course, cut out the montage along with everything else mourning the two.
 * got one too at the end of episode 77.
 * Tenchi in Tokyo has one in the end credits for, including a song sung by Mayumi Iizuka,.
 * Like Volfogg above, in Godannar, resident hot pilot Shizuru Fujimura is shown to be really dead, with Goh crying and mourning for her. And then the first season ends.
 * Clannad: After Story:
 * And her Hot Shounen Mom as well.
 * After in Rideback, the show's next "On the Next..." segment is turned into a Really Dead Montage instead of containing its usual wacky shenanigans. This only helps to double the Mood Whiplash caused by the calm ending tune which is sandwiched between the two events.
 * Played straight in the Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro manga, where
 * The Fist of the North Star episode where Rei dies was an entire Really Dead Montage, being a Clip Show.
 * Parodied in Those Who Hunt Elves, where the tank gets one when it runs out of gas. It largely consists of shooting things.
 * Subversion: Starscream in Transformers Armada gets one of these after he is vaporized by Unicron's lightning, but he comes Back from the Dead in Transformers Energon.
 * Shown during the credits of Dragon Ball GT's Distant Finale.
 * gets one in episode 12 Mawaru Penguindrum.
 * Parodied in Those Who Hunt Elves, where the tank gets one when it runs out of gas. It largely consists of shooting things.
 * Subversion: Starscream in Transformers Armada gets one of these after he is vaporized by Unicron's lightning, but he comes Back from the Dead in Transformers Energon.
 * Shown during the credits of Dragon Ball GT's Distant Finale.
 * gets one in episode 12 Mawaru Penguindrum.

Comic Books

 * Happened in the last episode of Cybersix, complete with an Imaginary Ghost Sitting At Your Table...
 * The death of Phoenix in the original Dark Phoenix Saga in X-Men, which at the time was supposed to be a real death was immediately followed by an issue giving a montage of the X-Men's entire history. (However, the montage issue was going to have been released even with the original ending where she stays alive.)
 * The Death of Superman concluded with one of these in the form of an in-universe issue of a Newsweek equivalent.
 * Subverted in X-Men when suffocates in orbit above the Breakworld. He's really dead, so we get a montage of some of his early memories of the Academy - but because he's resurrected at the beginning of the next issue, it's a very short montage.
 * , who gets Put on a Bus to Hell at the end of the arc, also has a quick flashback montage...at the very beginning of the arc.
 * 's death in Cerebus the Aardvark

Fan Works

 * Subverted in Pretty Cure Heavy Metal, when all die in the final fight at the end of the penultimate episode. The next episode starts with a montage of all four of them from previous episodes. Of course, then they come back to life at the end of the episode. All of them.
 * During an absolutely HEARTBREAKING moment in the Tamers Forever Series:

Film

 * Philadelphia has a particularly heartrending example in the final few minutes. The entire movie focuses on the main character's declining health and eventual death from AIDS, and after the funeral a montage of home movies of him as a kid is shown right before the credits roll.
 * Rocky IV features a montage-to-song when Apollo dies after his fight with Drago.
 * In Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet, after the main characters die there is a montage of their happiest moments together, complete with tragic background music. However pretty much everyone was aware this was how things would turn out...
 * The movie version of Pet Sematary gives us a variation. After  dies, Creed gives a Big No as photos of   were shown.
 * When Harry Stamper is about to push the button to detonate the nuke in Armageddon, we are shown a short montage of his memories of his daughter.
 * In Jimmy Cagney's Man of a Thousand Faces, a heavily fictionalized biopic of Lon Chaney's life, the camera pans over the walls of his house showing posters for all his movie roles, for an overall effect like a death montage, before focusing out the window.

Literature

 * After Heroic Sacrifice in Vector Prime, Han's Heroic BSOD begins with the literary equivalent of a Really Dead Montage, as he goes through a collection of keepsakes.

Live-Action TV
"Doyle: Is that it? Am I done?"
 * on Lost was the only one in the series to get one. This troper considers that fitting because, although several other main characters really die throughout the series, this character is the only one we never see again in flashbacks/time travel events/flashforward to the afterlife.
 * Highlander. When Tessa dies, we're treated to enough clips to span the entirety of "Dust in the Wind." When Richie eventually dies as well, the exercise is repeated. Other major (good) Immortals, most notably Darius, tend to get montages to the tune of Who Wants To Live Forever.
 * Of course this was done in the first film, where we get the montage of Conner's life with Heather to Who Wants To Live Forever.
 * There's an episode of BeastMaster consisting mostly of Flashbacks of a certain character after she falls into the water during a battle scene at the start of the ep.
 * One appears for  in the last episode of LA Ink, shown between him deciding to quit the shop and his final confrontation with Kat. In this case, it's more like a "Really Gone Montage" since on one actually dies, but the effect is the same. Between the nostalgic music and the clips of hugging, "birthday" cake, and the first time he saw Kat's shop, it's pretty clear that he won't be coming back.
 * The Angel episode "Shells" ends with one of these for Fred.
 * When Doyle dies in the first season, you get the home movie version, with the cast watching a commercial Doyle had filmed for Angel's detective agency before dying. His uncertainly in reading his scripted lines for the commercial makes his recorded dialogue extra poignant when played back posthumously.


 * When Kensington dies in the War of the Worlds episode "Amongst the Philistines", we are treated to a series of stills of him, mostly from that very episode, as he was a minor character who had a grand total of maybe thirty seconds of screen time in the rest of the series.
 * 's death at the end of season 1 of 24 is accompanied by flashbacks to their happy family life at the beginning of the season.
 * This was especially notable because due to the show's real-time nature (which was played up more in season 1 than any season since), flashbacks and/or montages are otherwise nonexistent. They rectified this by showing the montage on one half of the screen while the other half continued to show Jack in real-time. It's still the only time the show has escaped Limited Third-Person perspective, though.
 * Parodied in Mystery Science Theater 3000. In one episode, TV's Frank has been fired by Dr. Forrester and will soon be Put on a Bus. Mike and the 'bots put together a montage to wish him farewell. (Right afterwards, Frank gets himself rehired.)
 * The M*A*S*H episode "Abyssinia, Henry", in which Henry Blake is killed when the plane taking him home is shot down, ends with a Really Dead Montage of clips of Henry from the preceding seasons, prefaced with the PA voice announcing "M*A*S*H 4077 bids a fond farewell to Lt. Col. Henry Blake."
 * The Carol Burnett Show warmed a few hearts when McLean Stevenson, who'd played Henry, appeared on the show shortly afterward. The intro was Henry on a raft in the ocean waving his arms shouting "I'm not dead."
 * in Robin Hood.
 * An episode of One Foot in the Grave features Margaret very ill in hospital. As Victor watches, she flatlines, prompting a Really Dead Montage. Except, she's not really dead; the montage is interrupted by a nurse banging on the ECG and explaining "It's always doing that."
 * Used in part two of The 4400's third season opener, when dies.
 * Frustratingly enough, the Australian soap opera Home and Away ended a season with a long-running female character being stabbed and lying in a pool of her own blood, followed by one of these montages, set to the song Light Surrounding You, stretching right back to the series beginning (the actor had been with the show for twenty years.) When the first episode of the next season aired, it turned out that the character wasn't even dead!
 * In a sad variant, the end of the final episode of sitcom Father Ted features one of these montages for Ted Crilly—not because the character had died, but because the actor, Dermot Morgan, had died the day after filming was completed.
 * As with the Home and Away example above, daytime soap operas are known to do this even when the characters aren't dead. This happened during John Black's funeral on Days of Our Lives and he had returned by the following year.
 * In Heroes, arch-villain Sylar gets one in the graphic novel immediately following the Volume 4 season finale, where Mohinder recounts the history of Sylar's evil and the Heroes' 4-Volume long struggle against him.
 * Used towards the end of the third season of German The Office copy Stromberg.
 * The final episode of the Filipino show May Bukas Pa ("There Is Still A Tomorrow") spent a half hour showing all the Kid Hero's friends mourning and singing sad songs for him.
 * Filipino television isn't particularly known for its quality. On second thought...
 * Used in the Doctor Who episode "Cold Blood" after
 * And in Doctor Who Confidential after in The Pandorica Opens.
 * Ianto's death in Torchwood.
 * Parodied in series 4 of That Mitchell and Webb Look, where they decide they need to kill someone off to inject some pathos into the show. They choose the bit player who happens to be reading the Facebook page of his beloved girlfriend—and, post-montage, reveal that they fed him into a wood chipper.
 * Done on Suddenly Susan when the character Todd dies. Like the Father Ted example above, it was especially tragic because the actor who played Todd had died in real life. Actor David Strickland committed suicide, requiring the show to find a tasteful way to write Todd out of the show. (The relatively joke-light episode revolved around the other characters trying to track down Todd when he didn't show up for work on time. At the end of the episode they learn he'd been killed in an accident on the way to work.)
 * Used in the recent miniseries The Kennedys, when Robert F Kennedy is assassinated. The death of his brother the president earlier in the same episode is treated less sentimentally.
 * gets this in the final season of Desperate Housewives just before.
 * Any time someone dies on The Walking Dead (and it happens a lot), its follow-up, The Talking Dead, will typically have such a montage, to close out the episode, and include everyone who died in the episode—those who died and then are rekilled as zombies are, of course, included twice.
 * An interesting version appears in "Series/Supernatural" during "Death's Door" in which dies. The entire episode is him going through his memories in an attempt to escape the Reaper.
 * Gilbert Gottfried once did a parody of this while host of USA Network's movie-program Up All Night. Early on in one of the movies, the supernatural villain offs a minor comedy-relief character named "Curly" or somesuch. So, during the next commercial break, Gottfried showed a misty music-saturated collection of clips featuring Curly, ending with the standard "smiling head-shot", before fading tastefully to black. It was hilarious.

Professional Wrestling

 * WWE did a pair of these for Eddie Guerrero after his real-life death; one to Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt", and the other to "Here Without You" by Three Doors Down. WWE also devoted an entire three hour program to Chris Benoit after his recent death - perhaps to make it clear that he was really really dead, unlike the Kayfabe death of Vince McMahon several weeks earlier. They would quickly end up regretting this.
 * Long before either of them though back when it was the WWF, the WWE devoted an entire episode of RAW to Owen Hart, who died in a horrific accident on the job. For about the length of the show every wrestler broke Kayfabe and fondly remembered the late Owen and culminated when the WWE's biggest name at the time, Steve Austin, stepped into the ring, said nothing and toasted a beer to the thirty foot picture of Owen that had been raised earlier.
 * They did it again for 'Macho Man' Randy Savage.

Tabletop Games

 * In the game Feng Shui, your character doesn't just drop dead if they fail a death check and are not stabilized in time: "After death, there is a pause in the action for a slow-motion flashback montage featuring the highlights of the character's career as a sad pop ballad unfolds on the soundtrack. (The player should describe this.)"

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy XI treats you to one of these when you either consider giving up on chocobo raising or when your chocobo is so old as to be automatically put out to pasture. More or less of the Put on a Bus variety.
 * Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core does this to Zack. It should be moving, but instead it feels ill-placed and tacked-on amidst the brutal, bloody, emotionally-draining death scene which preceded it - a better goodbye than a montage could ever be.
 * 's death in Valkyria Chronicles featured a gathering of The Squad around a tombstone, with Rosie singing a new song she promised to sing.
 * The arcade version of Double Dragon II didn't have the happy ending featured in the NES version where Marian returns to life. Instead, the ending shows a photograph of Marian with Billy and Jimmy during happier times in which she sheds a single tear that forms the words "The End", which is as close as you can expect for a really dead montage in an arcade game.
 * Valkyrie Profile uses this over and over. It's how you acquire party members: the Valkyrie herself is there when a warrior soul dies and takes the soul into her squad of einherjar. This makes for a bunch of Tear Jerker moments.
 * In Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2, right at the end, when one the main characters (Xion) disappears while everyone forgets her, and everything about her stops existing (which won't be explained because the explanation is a bit long), before another of the main characters (Roxas) forgets her, a brief flashback of her turning to him and smiling is shown (about 3 seconds long). After a bit, one of his memories of her and the other protagonist (Axel) of eating ice cream shows up, the three of them having fun. Then the same scene appears again, while Xion fades away.
 * In the end of Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepard must choose one of three endings, all of them seeming to end with his/her death.
 * The memorial at the end of Halo 3 includes a montage of photos of people killed in the war, including Miranda Keyes and Sgt. Johnson.

Web Comics

 * The final page of the first volume of Our Little Adventure is a montage of nice/funny events with a parody song of When She Loved Me by Sarah McLachlan. This was at the final part of Pauline's funeral.

Web Original

 * Parodied in this episode of the Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series Fan Vid Gag Dub.
 * Parodied on Homestar Runner in an early Strong Bad Email, trevor the vampire. After Strong Bad believes that Trevor has been killed, he shows the viewer a few of his "favourite Trevor moments". Since he was only made aware of Trevor's existence thirty seconds earlier, however, this consists of little more than replaying everything the viewer just watched. "Oh, Trevor, I pine for you!"
 * Parodied in Dragon Ball Abridged: when a giant bug that Nappa declared his pet dies, it runs to a series of ridiculously bloomy clips of the bug. Problem is the bug was only there for about a minute, so there isn't that much to show.
 * There's one on Is It A Good Idea To Microwave This every time a microwave quits working.
 * The Nostalgia Critic does one of Becky the Duck during his Saved by the Bell review, accompanied by the haunting strains of "My Heart Will Go On".
 * Done (relatively) seriously in Suburban Knights, wherein dies.

Western Animation

 * Parodied excellently in Megas XLR. The episode in which the Big Bad is finally destroyed ends with a montage of memorable moments, mostly from the same episode, entirely accompanied by mournful music and heart-shaped frames around every still. It ends with a shot of the hero and Big Bad with their arms around each other's shoulders and "enemies forever" written in swirly Hallmark Card font above their heads. Of course, he got better.
 * Parodied on Drawn Together with Toot's remembrance of the 'good times' with the briefly reanimated shriveled corpse of "General Mills."
 * In the South Park episode "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls", Mr. Hankey dies and we are briefly treated to such a montage, which inexplicably features a shot of the film made to capitalise on Mr. Hankey. Mr. Hankey then got better and unleashes his vengeance on the Sundance festival (but not before getting killed and resurrected again).
 * sort of had one in Teen Titans, with little clips of her time with the Titans throughout the episode in which she died before her actual death. Sort of subverted in that apparently, the Titans will be trying to find a way to make her better, but considering that the series came from a much darker comic and was meant for a younger audience, the creators might have just stuck that in there to lighten the blow. Though it still caused many ten year olds to curl up in a ball and cry for a while.
 * Done a few times for The Simpsons when a character kicks the bucket. Scratch the "really" part in the  episode.
 * Done in Shrek the Third with the King. Set to Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die", the rest of the characters put his frog body into a shoe box and cast it into the pond.
 * Done in Shrek the Third with the King. Set to Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die", the rest of the characters put his frog body into a shoe box and cast it into the pond.

Real Life

 * It's common at funerals to have a collage with pictures of the deceased.
 * Some medical colleges have a slideshow at the end of every year naming and honoring the deceased who donated their bodies to the students at the college.
 * On a mass scale, the AIDS quilt. And oh god that song...
 * Awards shows such as the Emmys, Oscars and Golden Globes show a clip reel of contributors to the craft who have died over the past year, complete with nostalgic songs. Turner Classic Movies also does this at the end of each year, and a shorter "TCM Remembers" promo whenever an actor, producer or director dies.